Two tasks face the churches in these counties: First, to increase and enlarge the work of the churches already established, and, secondly, to reach and serve the great unevangelized areas. The former is a problem for the individual church and community. The latter is a problem demanding the coöperation of all religious forces on the field, for “there is religious need enough to tax the best energies and resources of all.” The churches in this new western country must keep pace with their rapidly changing environment, and with elastic yet inclusive programs really become community churches.
The county seat towns should assume more responsibility for their surrounding areas; in other words, they should plan and develop larger parishes. Especially in Beaverhead and Hughes, this area is unchurched and to a great extent neglected. While the social and economic life of these “centers” naturally overshadows a great portion of the county areas, yet the churches minister very inadequately to their needs. The church parishes on the map represent few members. The centers are growing, their influence is ever widening, so that the Church, in building up her work at the center with the idea not only of serving the people at hand but of reaching just as thoroughly the people in the surrounding areas, will naturally fulfill her destiny.
To reach areas outside the influence of the church work at the centers, colporteurs should be employed. A Sunday school missionary could give permanence to all Sunday school work and help to organize new schools in Union and possibly in Sheridan County. Some additional churches should be established; others might very well be closed. But it is chiefly up-to-date, educated, resident pastors that are needed, with a belief that the rural task is worth their lives.
Coöperation the Solution
The psychological and religious differences in these four counties have already been shown. All should not be treated alike. Every county is different. Every county demands individual study and treatment. Such conditions call for the survey method and for intensive coöperation. This is the key to the whole situation. Business, though still competitive and on an individual basis, combines for the community good, as in the case of Rotary and Civic Clubs. The churches might well emulate this example in organization. There are competent Ministerial Unions in Pierre and Sheridan City. What is needed now is a Council of Religion in each county with a program enlisting every minister and every church, and including every square mile of occupied land in the county. All problems are related. The causes of church ineffectiveness lie in non-coöperation. Ministers have stayed too short a time to relate themselves to their parish and their people; denominations in establishing new churches have not been curious enough about the lay of the land; the various component parts have been unrelated—the preacher to the church, the fringe areas to the church in the center and, finally, the Church to the people.
The Frontier of the Future
Yesterday the Range population was busy settling down. To-day it is haphazardly here, and still coming. And what of to-morrow? Franklin K. Lane wrote at the end of his term of service in the Department of the Interior: “We are quickly passing out of the rough-and-ready period of our national life, in which we have dealt wholesale with men and things, into a period of more intensive development in which we must seek to find the special qualities of the individual unit whether that unit be an acre of desert, a barrel of oil, a mountain canyon, the flow of a river, or the capacity of the humblest of men.” Here is fertile ground for well directed and progressive development.
The East is crystallized into its habits and customs. The West is more plastic because it is in the social making, and is willing, at need, to change its ways. The social baggage of the eastern states is only partly unpacked in this region. The young West is developing a flexible social and institutional life in keeping with its phenomena of time and place.
Great possibilities are ahead. A real welding process has begun during the last few years as the population tends to become more static, or as it learns to coöperate in such agencies as Red Cross work during the war and the work of the Farm Bureau. A new social spirit is developing. The Church has counted for a great deal on the Range and has done some good, fundamental work. But in order to keep abreast of the new development and to help bring to the Range a “satisfying community life which is profitable, sociable, healthful and full of culture and charm and, above all, full of God,” the Church must make its ministry broader, steadier and more available.