The Church on the changing frontier

by Helen Olive Belknap

HITTING THE TRAIL

Will this settler find a church welcome in his new home?

But probably the greatest hindrance to church work has been the shifting population. Churches have trained lay leaders only to have them leave “en masse.” Out of the fourteen churches which have been abandoned in these four counties, nine have gone under because their members melted away.

The carrying over of the care-free frontier spirit often makes for a general slackness. This spirit has in it the freedom of the West, the perfect democracy of the cowboy, and is essentially individualistic. If directed into right channels, it should be an asset instead of a drawback.

What the Frontier Church Is

Five sentences sum up the Church on the Range. It is a church of the center. It is, in the main, a church of the middle-aged. It has been a church with haphazard leadership. It is a church of past achievements and of unlimited future possibilities, provided it has an inspired and sustained leadership. It is a church which needs a social vision.

It is natural that, where the centers along the railroad have been the only “sure” things in a country of constantly shifting settlements, the largest number of churches have been established in such centers. But these churches have not reached the great unevangelized areas around them. The “isolated, unattached Christian,” who lives perhaps only a few miles from town, has been neglected by the church in the center.

It is natural, too, that this should be largely a church of the middle-aged. What is there to attract the young people? Many of the church organizations have no buildings. With few exceptions, buildings are equipped for little else but preaching and listening. Nearly half of the churches have less than four services a month. The Sunday schools are not well organized. With the start the Sunday schools now have, possibilities are unlimited if they can be conducted on a more business-like basis. Yet these young people and children are the great hope of the church. No more wide-awake, vigorous young people are to be found. “If only the Church could work out something that would last through the week,” said one of them, “it would seem more real.” But in many communities the women’s organization is not only the sole organization in the church, outside the Sunday school, but the only one in the community.