The Pensacola journal., 1919-11-16
BAPTIST DRIVE
10 REVITALIz
RURAL CHURCH
ENLISTMENT DEPARTMENT or
HOME MISSION BOARD TO d.
RECT DEVELOPMENT OF 10000
OR MORE WEAK CHURCHES.
(By Frank {. 6urkhalter.)

10y FRANK Es bufknaiIeF.J
Nashville, Tenn, Nov. 15.-While a
higher state of spiritual development
and religious activity for the 10000
rural Baptist churches of the south
is one of the aims of the Baptist
s75.000.000 campaign, the provision OF
well-trained pastors for the 1000 pas
torless churches. the provision OF
houses of worship for the 1000 honne-
less churches. better houses of worship
for thousands or congregations which
occupy very poor buildings at present.
better Sunday schools and more of
them. better educational opportunities
in both the denominational and public
schools. and improved sanitary condi-
tions calculated to promote physical
health and personal efficiency, are also
held in mind by the campaign leaders
Under the direction of the enlist
Tent department of the home mission
Board large attention will be given to
the development Of the 10000 or more
weak rural churches of the south
during the next five years in the hope
of permanently conserving the en-
larged information, inspiration and
activity that have come to these
churches during the campaign. while
large sums will be employed by this
board and the several state mission
boards in gifts to weak, struggling
churches to enable them to get on
their feet, and in loans to other
churches that need assistance in pay
ing off Indebtedness against their
buildings that have already been
erected.
AS the result of 10000 young people
responding to the call for volunteers
for the ministry and other special
forms of Christian service, it is con-
tempated that an adequate number Of
pastors will soon be available for all
the churches, while the strengthening
of all the academies coiieges and SEM
tnaries of the denomination will make
st possible to provide much more gem
eral education facilities for the pas
sors including special vocational train :.
Ing that win enable them to take the
leadership in their communities in the
matter of promoting public healt. !,
education, and other civic interests.
The location of pastors in the COM
munities which they serve, where
better salaries and pastors homes will
be provided is expected to make them
Not only will the forty-two noun
tain schools fostered by the home mis-
sion board be greatly strengthened by
the campaign, but the drive will have
q large effect upon the improvement
of the public school system as WELL,
the Southern Baptist convention
having gone on record as favdfing bet
Ter salaries for public school teachers
as we'll as preachers, for better school
buildings as well as church houses,
and for a more general dissemination
of knowledge as well as religion. To
this end a more liberal support of the
public schools all along the line is
favored.
And the Baptists are making a de-
termined warfare upon tuberculosis.
which heretofore has made much great
inroads upon the rural as we'll as the
urban districts of the south, the eco
norlic loss to the south from this
malady being s175,ooo,00o per year.
More than $50 people die from tuber-
fulosis daily in the territory of the
Southern Baptist convention and in
the hope of saving this awful toll of
life, s1.o0o.o00 will be appropriated by
this campaign to the enlargement of
the facilities of the Southern Baptist
Sanatoriurn at Eel Paso, Texas, where
patients with tuberculosis are treated
and the dissemination of a South
wide propaganda calculated to- inform
all the people as to how they can COM
bat this disease
The country churches have been the
great conservators of religion in the
past, it is declared, and it is the hope
of the campaign commission that rural
life in the South will be so re-vitalized
religiously. educationally. socially md
physically that it will be able to sue
cessfully combat the lure of the city
and continue to provide the world with
the strong Christian manhood and
woman hood that it has contributed to
society since the world began.