The Challenge of the Country: A Study of Country Life Opportunity

Here again, the problem is mainly one of personality. Given adequate leadership, the church can accomplish wonders as a genuine community builder. But a gun must be a hundred times heavier than the projectile it fires; else it will burst the gun. Small, petty personalities cannot hope for large results in real community leadership. The church needs masterful men, men of power and vision, ministers thoroughly trained for the work of their profession and men whose hearts are kept tender and humble by the spirit of the indwelling God.

V. Types of Rural Church Success

Some Real Community Builders

With so many faithful men in country parsonages to-day who have seen the vision of broader service and permanent success, it would be invidious to suggest a list of names. It will be fully as safe to suggest something of their program. These prophets of the new day for the rural church are doing two distinct types of work. Some are making the village church the center of outreaching endeavor for the redemption of the surrounding country; others are vitalizing the church in the open country as a center of vital religion and broad service.

In Cazenovia, New York, for instance, we find a splendid instance of the effectiveness of the village church in overcoming its handicap with the people outside the village. In most places there is a two-mile dead-line for religion. Outside that limit the church’s influence is seldom felt. But here we find a pastor who has by friendly evangelism in school houses miles from his church, supported by social methods for enriching the daily life of the people, won scores of people to his Lord and Master, and greatly enlarged his church membership and its usefulness. There are many places where similar success is won by the same kind of earnest, efficient work by pastors and their laymen. Unquestionably the village church has a regal opportunity, as great as ever in the past.

The Church in the Open Country

There are many people, however, who doubt the possible success of the church in the open country. Some are advising concentrating efforts in the villages and centralizing church work there on the plan of the centralization of the public schools. In some places this may be wise; but to deny that a church in the open country can be successful is to fly in the face of the facts.

Given an adequate equipment for service, and a well-trained, tactful pastor who knows and loves country folks and lives with his people, splendid results may be expected. A church on the open prairie at Plainfield, Illinois, six miles from a railroad, has become famous in recent years as an illustration of real success in community building. City people would say there is no community, for there is none in sight. But the people for miles around are bound vitally to that church as to their home, for it not only has served their many needs and won their personal appreciation and love, but it has set many of them at work in a worth-while cooperative service.

Ten years ago that community had an unsuccessful church of the old type, gathering a small congregation from week to week but with little influence outside. No one had joined the church for five years. The last minister had resigned in discouragement, with six months’ arrears in salary. The “New Era Club,” a mile away, was wooing all the young people away from the church to its frequent dancing parties; while the church offered no substitute, and helplessly grew weaker year by year.

But in the past ten years a fine modern church building has been built, with fourteen rooms for all purposes, and paid for in cash; the manse has been remodeled; the pastor’s salary nearly doubled; about as much given to benevolences as in the half-century preceding; the Sunday school has grown to 300 members; the people from miles away flock to the preaching services, the lectures, concerts and socials; large numbers have been added to the church; while the “New Era Club” has been crumbling into ruin, simply starved out by religious competition! There has not been a dance there for eight or nine years, though the pastor has never preached against it.

This all began with an old-fashioned singing school which gathered together the young people socially at the church; and from this simple beginning, other plans developed which met the needs of the people and won their loyalty. Though the pastor modestly disclaims special merit or ability, the man who cannot only keep his preaching services at a high standard of success and keep up a system of cottage prayer meetings throughout his parish as centers of the spiritual life, and also gather over 2,000 people for the annual community plowing contest (more than double the population of the whole township) must be a personality to be reckoned with! There is, however, nothing in the situation or in the program of successful achievement which could not be duplicated elsewhere in thousands of purely rural communities, given the same kind of intelligent leadership and consecrated cooperation.

Oberlin: The Prince of Country Ministers

With all the resources of our modern church life, it is doubtful if there has ever been a country pastor more strikingly efficient or broadly influential than Johann Friedrich Oberlin, who died nearly a century ago. He was pastor of four rural parishes in the Vosges Mountains for over sixty years and became the most beloved and influential person in the entire section. He was a graduate of Strassburg University and declined a city pulpit in order to accept the most needy and difficult field of service which he could find. The people of Ban-de-la-Roche to whom he came were a rude mountain folk isolated from civilization; but since Oberlin’s work of transformation they have been a prosperous, happy people with many of the marks of culture.

Seven years before his death, Pastor Oberlin received the gold medal of the Legion of Honor from the King of France, “for services which he has rendered in his pastorate during fifty-three years, employing constant efforts for the amelioration of the people, for zeal in the establishment of schools and their methods of instruction, and the many branches of industry and the advancement of agriculture and the improvement of roads, which have made that district flourishing and happy.” The National Agricultural Society gave him a gold medal for “prodigies accomplished in silence in this almost unknown corner of the Vosges… in a district before his arrival almost savage,” and into which he had brought “the best methods of agriculture and the purest lights of civilization.”

In the early stages of his remarkable career his narrow-minded people opposed every step he took in the direction of community progress. They resented his doing anything but preaching. When he proposed that they build a passable road over the mountains to civilization they jeered at the idea. But he shouldered his pick and began the task, and ere long they joined him. Together they built the first real highway and bridged the mountain stream. Out of a salary of $200 a year he paid most of the expense of two new schoolhouses, because the people refused to help. The other villages, however, saw the improvement and built their own. He gradually revolutionized the educational methods, and even in the course of years, succeeded in supplanting the mountain dialect with Parisian French. He studied and then taught agriculture, and horticulture, introducing new crops, new vegetables (including the potato), and new fruits; even reclaiming the impoverished soil by scientific methods which gradually won the respect of even the dullest of his people.

In all his reforms he kept his religious aim and purpose foremost and his church never suffered but constantly grew in influence and popular appreciation. Gradually he became the honored pastor, the “Protestant saint,” of the whole mountainside. Lutherans, Catholics and Calvinists attended his services. They would even partake of the sacrament together and he furnished them with three kinds of bread, to suit their diverse customs, wafers for the Romanists and bread leavened for the Calvinists and unleavened for the Lutherans; and thus they lived together in peace!

The Force of Oberlin’s Example

Few modern ministers perhaps will need to follow in detail the example of Johann Friedrich Oberlin, but the sacrificial spirit and working principles of his life ministry are as necessary as ever. As President K. L. Butterfield states so well, “Rural parishes in America that present the woeful conditions of the Ban-de-la-Roche in 1767 may not be common, though of that let us not be too sure. The same underground work that Oberlin did may not need doing by every rural clergyman. Schools are busy in every parish. Forces of socialization and cooperation are at work. The means of agricultural training are at hand. Yet the underlying philosophy of Oberlin’s life work must be the fundamental principle of the great country parish work of the future. Oberlin believed in the unity of life, the marriage of labor and learning. He knew that social justice, intelligent toil, happy environment are bound up with the growth of the spirit. They act and react upon one another.

More than a century ago this great man labored for a lifetime as a country minister. He knew all the souls in his charge to their core. He loved them passionately. He refused to leave them for greater reward and easier work. He studied their problems. He toiled for his people incessantly. He transformed their industry and he regenerated their lives. He built a new and permanent rural civilization that endures to this day unspoiled. The parishes about the little village of Waldersbach thus became a laboratory in which the call of the country parish met a deep answer of success and peace.”37

Test Questions on Chapter VII

1. – How important do you consider the country church as an agency for rural betterment?

2. – How important might it become if it lived up to its opportunity?

3. – What four stages do you find in the development of the rural church in America? Describe this evolution.

4. – Contrast the old and the new ideals in country church work.

5. – What is the main business of a church in the country community and what do you regard as the real test of its efficiency?

6. – Describe what you think is the broad function of the church in serving the rural community.

7. – If the church meets its opportunity in this broad way what will it gain by it?

8. – What do you think about the church’s responsibility for spiritual leadership?

9. – Take some country church of your own acquaintance and tell what you think it ought to be doing to build up its community.

10. – Name the chief reasons why many rural churches are so weak and ineffective.

11. – Make a list of factors which would help to make these churches successful.

12. – If local prosperity is at low ebb or the farmers are unsuccessful, what can the church people do about it? Illustrate what has been done.

13. – Why should the church not merely serve its own membership but the whole community?

14. – Why is sectarian competition particularly bad for the country sections?

15. – How can a country village get rid of its surplus churches?

16. – What can a church federation accomplish in a community? In a county? In a state?

17. – Why is a permanent resident pastor so necessary to country church success? What must be done to make this to any extent possible?

18. – What should be the “minimum wage” for a country pastor and how can this be secured? Illustrate how this has been accomplished near Cleveland.

19. – Should denominational home mission boards help pay the salary of their ministers in over-churched communities? What can be done about this?

20. – Draw a rough practical plan of a modern church building costing not over $10,000, and suited to rural needs.

21. – Suggest a practical plan of work for laymen in the country church.

22. – Discuss the religious usefulness of a community social survey. What local facts would you try to gather?

23. – What do you think of the opportunity and importance of Sunday-school work in the country?

24. – Why is the Bible particularly well adapted to people living in the country?

25. – Why are rural Sunday schools often so unsuccessful?

26. – Discuss possible improvements and suggest how you would accomplish them.

27. – What do you think of the general plan of the Rural Young Men’s Christian Association work?

28. – Tell how it is helping the country boy.

29. – Discuss the working principles of this “County Work.”

30. – Describe the broad opportunities for community Christian service which come to the County Work secretary.

31. – What Christian work in country villages needs to be done by the Young Women’s Christian Association?

32. – Why do you find so often to-day a “two-mile dead line for religion”?

33. – What work in the surrounding country can be in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.

34. – Do you believe in the permanent usefulness of the church in the open country?

35. – Tell the story of modern country church success in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.

36. – What were the secrets of the success of that particular church in the open country? Is there any reason why 10,000 other rural churches cannot learn to do the same?

37. – Who was Johann Friedrich Oberlin?

38. – Discuss his remarkable life work as a country pastor. What do you think of his rural church program?

39. – Make a list of the successful country churches and ministers you have known and the chief reasons for their success.

40. – Describe the ideal country church of the future.

CHAPTER VIII

COUNTRY LIFE LEADERSHIP

A. A CHALLENGE TO COLLEGE MENI. The Relation of the Colleges to This Problem

A New Interest and Sense of Responsibility

It has been plain from the start that this book is a book with a purpose. Its object was frankly stated in the preface and the author at least has not forgotten it in a single chapter. These seven preceding chapters have condensed the facts of country life in its strength and weakness and have voiced the modern call for rural leadership. Every call for trained leadership must come ultimately to the college man. Both the need and the worthiness of rural life, its social and religious crisis and its strategic signs of promise, bring the challenge of the country to the man in college.

For two or three years past there have been groups of men in various universities meeting weekly to discuss this problem. In comparing the needs of various fields of service and weighing their own fitness for various tasks, they wished to study the opportunities in rural life for consecrated leadership. These groups are certain to multiply. Alert college men even in city colleges have discovered that we have to-day not only a complicated country problem but a great rural life opportunity; a problem intricate enough to challenge earnest investigation by thoughtful students, and an opportunity for a life mission worthy of strong men.

General College Neglect of the Rural Call

The writer firmly believes that the city has been claiming too large a proportion of college graduates in recent years and that the needs of country life are not receiving due consideration. A large majority of students in most colleges come from the country. Has not the country a right to claim its fair share of these young men and women after they have been trained for a useful life? If only 15 % of the students at Princeton come from the country we cannot complain if practically all of them after graduation go to the city; but when nearly all the students at Marietta College (Ohio) come from the country and 65 % of them go to the city, we wonder why. Likewise 70 % of the students at Stanford University (Calif.) were country bred, but only 25 % return to country life after college days. At Williams (Mass.), a city boys’ college, only 24 % come from the country and about 15 % return; but at Pacific University (Ore.) 95 % come from the country (80 % from very small communities) yet only 45 % resist the city’s call. Bowdoin (Maine) gets but 47 % of its students from the city, but returns 70 %; The University of Kansas receives but 44 % of its students from cities, yet contributes to cities three-fourths of its graduates; while Whitman (Wn.) receives but 40 % from the city yet returns 80 %. Hillsdale (Mich.), a country college with a fine spirit of service, does better; receiving 95 % of its students from small towns and villages, it returns all but 26 %. “Practically all” the students at Adelbert College (Ohio) enter city work on graduation, though 30 % of them are country bred.

It is entirely natural in institutions like the University of Illinois, Ohio State University and Cornell, where there are strong agricultural colleges, that there should be the keenest interest in the welfare and needs of country life; but is it not time that other institutions faced more frankly the responsibility of training more of their students for country life leadership? Certainly, with the splendid signs of promise in country life to-day and the opportunities for a life mission there, no thoughtful man can refuse to consider it.

The Stake of the City in Rural Welfare

It was quite natural that the rapidly growing city should attract a large proportion of college men preparing for business and professional life and various kinds of religious and social service. Not only have larger opportunities for earning money usually been found there, but the city has certainly needed the men. The call of the city in its dire need of Christian idealism and consecrated leadership has been as urgent and definite a call to service as ever a crusader heard. Dr. Strong’s eloquent appeal to earnest young people in his “Challenge of the City” is by no means extravagant. His facts are facts and his logic is convincing. He is quite right in saying, “We must save the city in order to save the nation. We must Christianize the city or see our civilization paganized.” But even if “in a generation the city will dominate the nation,” where are the men who will then dominate the city? Most of them are now in the country towns and villages getting ready for their task, developing physical, mental and moral power in the pure atmosphere and sunlight of a normal life. To work on the city problem is a great life chance; but to train rural leadership is to help solve the city problem at its source.

Thus, the bigger and more urgent the city problem becomes, the more necessary it will be to solve the rural problem, for the city must continue to draw much of its best blood and its best leadership from the country. Professor M. T. Scudder explains in a sentence why this is a continuing fact: “The fully developed rural mind, the product of its environment, is more original, more versatile, more accurate, more philosophical, more practical, more persevering than the urban mind; it is a larger, freer mind and dominates tremendously. It is because of this type of farm-bred mind that our leaders have largely come from rural life.”38 City leaders, of course, ought to be trained in the city, and they usually are, even though born and bred in the country.

Rural Progress Waiting for Trained Leadership

Leadership is the ultimate factor in every life problem. No movement can rise above the level of its leadership. In many fields to-day, progress is lagging because of inadequate leadership. This is acutely true in all phases of rural life. Rural progress is halting for the lack of trained leadership. The colleges must be held responsible for furnishing it.

The agricultural colleges are rising magnificently to their opportunity and are striving to keep pace with the demands made upon them for technically-trained rural leaders. But though some of them double their enrolment every three or four years they cannot supply graduates fast enough for the various agricultural professions, quite aside from other kinds of country life leaders.

All schools of higher education must share the task of training and furnishing rural leadership. The broadening of country life, and its rising standards, puts increasing demands upon its untrained leaders which they are unable to meet. Rural institutions can no longer serve their communities effectively under the leadership of men lacking in the very essentials of leadership. Many country communities are demanding now as high-grade personality and training in their leaders as the cities demand, and they refuse to respond to crude or untrained leadership. Well-trained doctors, ministers, teachers, et cetera, have a great chance to-day in the country, because their training finds unique appreciation for its very rarity and efficiency; while every profession is foolishly overcrowded in all cities.

As soon as adequate leadership, well trained and developed, is furnished our country communities, they will develop a rural efficiency which will make the rural problem largely a thing of the past. But until then, progress halts. Leadership is costly. Trained, efficient personality, ready for expert service is rare and beyond price. The colleges are lavishly sending it to the cities. The country deserves its share and patiently presents its claims.

II. Rural Opportunities for Community Builders

The Call for Country Educators

There is little need of emphasizing to college students the opportunities of the teaching profession. Since 1900 teaching has claimed more graduates than any other life work. Taking 27 representative colleges as typical, more than one-fourth of all college graduates become teachers, the percentage having doubled since 1875. Of the class of 1911 in Oberlin College (both men and women), 60 % have been teaching during their first year out; while of the men in the ten classes 1896-1905, 27 % are still engaged in teaching, presumably as their permanent work.

Unfortunately the smaller salaries paid rural teachers has made the country school seem unattractive, and when accepted by young collegians by necessity rather than choice, it has been regarded often merely as an apprenticeship for buying experience, a stepping-stone to a city position. Country salaries of course must be increased, and they certainly will be, with the new development of rural life and the steady improvement in schools; especially with increased state aid which is more and more generously given.

With a living wage already possible in centralized schools, and the great personal rewards which far transcend the material benefits, the life of the country teacher is one of true privilege and deep satisfaction. College men should regard it as a genuine calling and discover whether its call is for them. If a man has no real love for country life, let him not blight the country school by his subtle urbanizing influence. Most rural discontent is caused by such as he. But if his heart is open to the sky and the woods and the miracles of the soil; if he loves sincerity in human nature and appreciates the sturdy qualities and vast possibilities for development in country boys and girls, he will revel in the breadth and freedom and boundless outreach of his work.

If he is a man of vision and of power, the country school principal has greater local influence and social standing than he would have in the city. He has the finest chance to make his personality count in the great Country Life Movement, sharing his visions of a richer, redirected rural life not only with his pupils but every citizen and gradually leavening the whole community with a new ambition for progress. The responsibility for training the local leaders of the future devolves upon the teacher. It is he who can best teach a wholesome love for country life and help to stem the townward tide. He can organize around the school the main interests of his boys and girls and develop the impulse for cooperation which in time will displace the old competitive individualism and make social life congenial and satisfying. Through organized play, inter-community athletics, community festivals, old-home week, lyceums or debating clubs in the winter, with occasional neighborhood entertainments utilizing home talent, contests in cooking and various other phases of home economics, in corn-raising and other agricultural interests, – the possibilities are endless for making the school the vital social center of the rural community. It will all take time and energy and ingenuity. It will cost vitality, as all life-sharing does. But though it costs, the sharing of life is the greatest joy, and it is the teacher’s privilege in large measure. It is the measure of his true success as well as his happiness. Investing one’s life in a group of boys will yield far greater results in the country than in the city where their lives are already so full they would little appreciate it.