2. Increase effectiveness of rural ministry by training ministry now in service in modern methods of church work and by recruiting and training a new ministry in sympathy with rural life and devoted to its improvement.
3. Organize rural church work so that every rural family will have definitely assigned pastoral care.
4. Adjust interdenominational relationships so that the ideal of but one resident pastor and one church to each community may be realized.
5. Provide means of interdenominational cooperation so that rural religious forces may work together in dealing with common problems of rural social and religious progress.
6. Organize rural work so that it may have due consideration in the general policies of religious organizations.
7. All the above are preliminary to the one great object, from the social point of view, namely, that of making it possible for the rural church and the rural minister to function most effectively in bringing more abundant life in the best sense to rural people.
After religious forces are organized so that they can present a united front in the attack on the great social problems of rural life, then the individual churches and all churches together can undertake to meet the challenge outlined in earlier chapters of this text and also well presented in much of the recent literature on the subject. But effective organization must precede most effective and permanent service.
Certain principles have been the guiding influence in the program on which the rural department of at least one of the leading denominations has been working. For those who come to positions of administrative responsibility from time to time without having been under the necessity of acquainting themselves with the principles that should guide in the safe expenditure of funds for maintenance of pastors, these are given here:
1. Principles of interdenominational ethics should be observed in making grants of missionary funds to local pastors. It is to be feared that too often funds have been used to sustain a local work in the presence of another denomination when efforts at interdenominational adjustment would have relieved the situation by removing the necessity, namely, that of division of local resources by competing religious forces.
2. Owing to the unusual problems presented on charges asking for missionary aid only the ablest ministers should be assigned to such points. They should be supported according to their needs through missionary aid, and their acceptance of difficult work should enhance rather than lessen their standing in the church.