St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1915-12-22
THE COUNTRY CHURCH
Progressive Business Conditions Nee
essary For Strong Church.

! OSSt1Ey OE OeAOAAS OnuTC0s
The Union has received several high.
ly interesting and decidedly fIluminat.
ing letters from Rev. Henry G.. Ives OF
Andover, who went to Columbus, Ohio
at the request of Governor Spauldine
to represent New Hampshire at the
conference on Church and Country
Life, conducted under the auspices II
the Federal Council of Churches OF
Christ in America-interestin because
they were written by man who
knows how to select the salient points
of what he sees and hears, and to re-
Educe them to intensely readable form,
and Illuminating in that they betoken
growing recognition among Ameri-
can church leaders of certain practi-
cal, fundamental facts which have
been too commonly overlooked, both
among the clergy and among the laity
For instance, Governor Willis IF
Ohio, in his address of welcome, called
attention to the shift in population
which has resulted in 81 per cent of
the people of the United States being
now city residents, whereas in 1880
only 20 per cent were to be found in
the larger centers. One in nine of the
country churches has been abandoned
in recent years. Only one-third of
cent have less than 100 members each,
and rs per cent have less than twenty
five members Only 6 per cent have
individual ministers, and less than 30
per cent of the rural population are
church members. Governor Willis
touched upon a very real weakness or
the country churches when he recalled
a community of between $50 and 300
people which possesses three churches
where one church could do the work.
The president of the conference,
Clifford Pinchot, whose name is fam1I-
lar to Americans the country over,
took occasion in his address to bring
out some established and logical facts
well worthy of contemplation by those
who have been accustomed to consider
the church as entirely apart from and
independent of secular influences.
Starting from the premise that nation
al life depends on vital country life,
Mr.. Pinchot laid down the proposition
that a business margin of profit is
needed for the production of an eff
cient country church; and he declared
without qualification that poor farms
naturally produce weak and inefficient
churches. There must be co-opera-
ton between the church and the re-
sources of the community. In this
connection it is interesting to note that
the Presbyterian board is now estab-
fishing demonstration country church
es just as the country agent plan 10
assist agriculture demonstrates farm
ing on the home farm.
These are among the inexorable
facts which keen-sighted church peo-
pie are coming to recognize, and which
they must come more and more to
recognize if the churches, and par
ticularly the rural churches, are 70
survive and prosper. An efficient and
effective church is conditional on an
efficient and effective community gen.
orally; and after that primary cond1-
ton are the subordinate conditions
some Of which will follow as matter
of course-of concentration and unity;
fewer, but larger and stronger, church
societies; we'll equipped church edi-
fees; a better-paid ministry; business
like methods of conducting church
business, and a constant eye to the
fact that church and secular commun-
ity are inter-related and, in greater
degree than is commonly realized, in
ter-dependent. These conditions Will
have to be recognized by everybody
sooner or later; they may as well be
recognized now.-Manchester Union.