Farm Boys and Girls

by William A. McKeever

Fig. 8.—The fifty-year-old country church at Plainfield.

Fig. 9.—The new country church at Plainfield, Illinois, erected through the inspiration and leadership of Reverend Matthew B. McNutt.

As an example of what the country minister can achieve one needs to read an account of the splendid work of the Rev. Mathew B. McNutt of Plainfield, Illinois. Mr. McNutt was called to this charge in 1900 when a fresh graduate from a Presbyterian seminary. At the time of his call there was in the locality a small dead or nominal church membership and an occasional weak, ineffective service held in the little old church of fifty years’ standing. This devoted and far-seeing man got down among the people with whom he settled, made a careful survey of the economic, the social, and the religious life of the place, and began his wonderful work of reconstructing all this. The ultimate purpose was the improvement of the spiritual well-being. He organized singing schools, granges, literary and debating societies, sewing societies, and clubs of various other sorts, all as a means of awakening the life of the community and bringing the people together in a spirit of mutual sympathy and helpfulness. After less than a decade of hard work a marvelous transformation of the rural life thereabout was achieved. Among other notable changes was a new church to supplant the old one. The new building was erected at a cash cost of ten thousand dollars; has an audience room seating five hundred or more, several Sunday school class rooms, a choir room, a cloak room, a pastor’s study and a mothers’ room, all on the main floor. In the basement below there is a good kitchen, a dining room with equipment, also a furnace, a store room, and the like. The church membership has grown to one hundred sixty-three with many non-members attending, while the Sunday school enrollment increased to three hundred.

Now there are always a few minds who wish to measure all earthly things in terms of a money value. To such it may be shown that the land values in the vicinity of this new country church have gone up to a marked degree and that the economic conditions are all of a most satisfactory nature.

As further evidence of what a rural community working together may achieve for the spiritual welfare, there may be cited the instance of the little side station by the name of Ogden in Riley County, Kansas. Here the people got together and voted to build a country church, and that without determining as to the denominational affiliation. A committee of leaders was appointed to raise funds and to draw plans for the building. In a short time, arrangements were perfected for constructing the building at a cost of four thousand dollars. It was later voted to place this new church temporarily under the direction of the Congregational church in Manhattan, fifteen miles away.

In one or two instances the religious leaders in a country community have succeeded admirably in establishing a “commission” form of church administration. The method pursued has been that of having a committee of three, each a member of a different church, to call by turn from the towns near by the ministers of the various denominations. Further details of the plans provide for the committee to raise funds so that the minister may be paid a definite amount for the service conducted.

One of the first essential steps in the establishment of a rural church is a careful survey or study of the situation. While it may be accounted a sin against God and humanity to add another church where there are already more than the people can support, often it will be found that very large, well populated country districts are wholly without access to any religious service whatever. Verily, the field is white unto the harvest and the laborers as yet are few.