What's right with the rural church; an application of Christian principles to the new rural life

Contents

CHAPTER

I. is . Our Neighbors. -

. The Other Church. . Honoring God in the Countryside.

Chapter I

WHAT’S RIGHT WITH THE RURAL CHURCH The Gist of the Chapter. For the past twenty years numerous articles have been written and many speeches have been made telling us what is wrong with the rural church. These analyses of the situation have been valuable. At the same time they have often been discouraging. While thinking so much about what is wrong we have forgotten what is right with the rural church.

The Church_is the only—institution_in our country which serves the entire family. We need this agency to keep our families together. The Church is the only institution which sends missionaries to the ends of the earth. We need an institution to give us altruistic motives in this materialistic age. The Church is still the institution which brings us comfort in periods of sorrow and temptation. It has started practically all modern welfare work and continues to inspire social workers in their unselfish service. The teaching of the Church is still the best antidote for crime. Our greatest need in rural America is leadership, and the Church is one of the most successful schools for training leaders. The rural church, more than any other institution, is the social center in the countryside. Let us think for a while about what is right with the rural church.

Jesus taught in terms of the rural life of his day. He drew his lessons from the fields about him, from the flowers and birds, from the shepherd and the plowman. In the Scripture passage of this chapter he is asking his listeners to observe a man sowing in a field. The seed bed has not been well prepared. The little wooden plow has slidden around the thorn bushes at times and the shelves of rocks lie close beneath the soil in places. But Palestine is a fertile country. When the seed is given a chance in a well-tilled seed bed, it yields a good crop. Jesus draws the lesson that his gospel, likewise, will yield well if it is given a chance to grow.

In a hundred thousand rural churches in America the seed of the Word is still being sown. There are those who see only the thorny and stony ground, what they term the failures of the Church. As together we study this chapter, and those that follow, let us look for some of the encouraging things, some of the well-tilled fields, some of the hundredfold yields of the rural churches in America.

And when a great multitude came together, and they of every city resorted unto him, he spake by a parable: The sower went forth to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden under foot, and the birds of the heaven devoured it. And other fell on the rock; and as soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no- moisture. And other fell amidst the thorns; and the thorns grew with it, and choked it. And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought forth fruit a hundredfold. As he said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

And his disciples asked him what this parable might be. And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to the rest in parables; that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. And those by the way side are they that have heard; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word from their heart, that they may not believe and be saved. And those on the rock are they who, when they have heard, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among the thorns, these are they that have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. And that in the good ground, these are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience.

—Luke 8:4-15.

THE CHURCH THE ONLY FAMILY INSTITUTION

We have many farm organizations in the countryside. The Patrons of Husbandry has 8,000 units with a total of 700,000 members. But it is a secret organization, which requires that its members be fourteen years of age or more. On Grange night the family is separated.

The Farm Bureau is a popular and practical organization for farmers. It discusses intelligently all phases of agriculture. The home economics section, sometimes called the Home Bureau, is equally important. These organizations, only twenty years old, have approximately a million members. But the father, as a rule, leaves the family behind when he attends a Farm Bureau demonstration or lecture.

Farm cooperatives have increased their membership rapidly during the last ten years. Two million farmers now belong to 12,000 codperative marketing associations. Valuable as these economic organizations are, they are not family institutions.

The service clubs—the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis, the Zonta, and many others—take father or mother but not both, and they take none of the children.

A little girl in school was asked to give a definition of “home,” to which she replied, “Home is where we stay while we are getting our automobile fixed.” Too many things tend to break up the home.

The many new interests of the countryside are all valuable, no doubt, but all tend to divide the family. Mary belongs to the Girl Scouts, John to the Four-H Club, father to the Farm Bureau, and mother to her club or lodge, but all four can go together to the neighborhood church.

“Classes for all the family” is the announcement often heard in the Sunday School. In these days when families are separated by so many interests, the rural church brings them all together on Sunday morning. It is the only family organization left in the countryside to-day. It is of interest to all ages; it serves all; it unites all.

The words which Longfellow used to describe the village blacksmith are still applicable to the American farmer on Sunday morning:

He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter’s voice,

Singing in the ‘village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice.

May we not have a new appreciation of and a new loyalty to our greatest family institution, the rural church!

THE CHURCH THE ONLY ANTIDOTE FOR CRIME

We read much about “the crime wave.” The financial tax of crime for the average American family has been estimated as high as thirty dollars per year. The cost in human happiness is much more. Friends and foes of prohibition blame each other for the increase in crime. Judges of juvenile courts blame parents. Parents lay the blame on the World War. But all agree that the Church is the only institution that can successfully stop the so-called crime wave.

A certain county has seven boys and five girls in reform schools. The average cost in taxes for each of these delinquents is $670.82 per year, or a total of $8,049.84. This includes only the amount paid out per year while these twelve children are in the reform schools. It does not include the ~ police or probation officer fees, the court costs, or the possible cost in a prison later. A large sum of money to spend— $8,049.84 a year! One potential Sunday School class of twelve pupils!

In this same county five directors of religious education at a cost of only $7,500.00 are teaching 1,849 pupils in Week Day Church School classes and a thousand others in Vacation Church Schools. Twelve boys and girls without the influence of the Church cost more than the religious training of three thousand pupils. Crime is expensive. The Church is the only institution that can stop the crime wave among American youth. .

A high-school girl in a rural village was on the verge of delinquency. A Sunday School teacher took time off from her busy life to win this girl’s affection and enlist her in another type of venturesome living. Now she is in college preparing for Christian work. Thus the Church is saving countless young people from paying the wages of sin and saving the State from paying the cost of crime.

If we are interested in youth, we will stand by the Church and help to make it more interesting to young people. If we are interested only in saving taxes we will support the Church and help to make it more efficient. |

THE RURAL CHURCH TRAINS LEADERS

During a single year the writer had the opportunity of attending county schools for rural leaders in eighteen counties. These meetings were held under the auspices of the Farm - and Home Bureaus. The county agents selected the outstanding leaders among farmers and farm women to attend. these meetings. The total attendance in the eighteen counties was 1,033.

Only eleven per cent of the thousand and more leaders are members of some lodge other than the Grange. This may indicate to some extent the place the lodges have had in affecting the lives of farm people.

Nearly half of this group, or forty-six per cent, are members of the Grange. In the lecturer’s hour, in the offices, on the degree teams, and on committees, the Grange has trained its members for leadership. A goodly number of these prominent farm people are Grangers or Patrons of Husbandry.

Fifty-four per cent of these leaders are members of the Farm or Home Bureau. These organizations have brought out the latent forces of leadership in their members by placing responsibility on them for conducting demonstrations or teaching classes. Among the women especially, great stress is placed upon the development of “local leaders” for service in their communities.

In contrast with the eleven per cent who are members of lodges, or the forty-six per cent who belong to the Grange, or the fifty-four per cent who are members of the Farm or Home Bureau, we find eighty-six per cent who are members of the Church. These people have been selected by the county agricultural and home economics agents because of the high place of leadership each holds in these thousand different rural communities.

The eight hundred rural churches to which they belong started, no doubt, to train them back in the Beginners Class in Sunday School. As children they probably sang their first song or recited their first “piece” in connection with some Sunday School program. The Junior Choir brought out their native abilities. The Young People’s Society took them at an impressionable age and gave them an office and many ll responsibilities. Later, as they joined the throng of Sunday School teachers, their abilities were challenged from week to week.

“What’s right with the Church?” you ask. It is contributing to every rural society, club, or organization by training leaders. The master of the National Grange is an active Church worker. The leaders of the big farm codperatives are Church men. The Church is training these men to lead in the affairs of their states and in their community life.

In a certain state the leaders of the principal agricultural organizations were interviewed in order to measure the contribution in leadership which the Church is actually making. The president of the state federation of Farm Bureaus is a Congregational, deacon. The Home Bureau state president is active in the Presbyterian Church. The master of the State Grange is an officer in the Reformed Church. The state lecturer is a Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church. The most influential man in the largest farm codperative teaches a Sunday School class in his Methodist church. Thus the Church is constantly making its valuable contribution to modern rural life.

THE CHURCH THE SOURCE OF WELFARE WORK

These are days of new movements. The Church is old. How does it fit into the new day?

The men and women who are managing the social welfare matters of a certain county were listed to see if the Church is making its contribution to the county’s welfare work. The results were as follows:

There are three county school superintendents. One is a Sunday School superintendent; the other two teach Sunday School classes. The two county nurses are active Church workers. The chairman of the county Health Committee is president of the women’s society in her church. The three farmers who manage the county library are active in Sunday School work, one as a superintendent, the other two as teachers. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the county board of supervisors is treasurer of benevolences in his church. The chairman of the county Charities Committee teaches a young men’s Sunday School class. Thus the Church is providing welfare workers for each county and each community.

Let us not think of the Church as out of date because it is an old institution. The ancient Nile still waters the land of Egypt for each succeeding harvest. So the Church which has started hospitals, homes, and colleges, and provided deaconesses, nurses, and parish visitors, is still the same source of welfare work as the new movements come and go.

‘What’s right with the Church?” It is still sowing the seed of social welfare. Its “Good Samaritans” are found in places of responsibility in nearly every organization—poor relief, health, wholesome recreation, education, and public welfare in almost every community.

~ OUR ONLY MISSIONARY INSTITUTION

The Rotary Club in a county-seat town invited all the rural pastors of the county to a Rotary luncheon. The men sang songs and ate a good dinner and everyone seemed friendly. They called each other by their first names or, more often, by nicknames. One of the pastors, when leaving, said, “I wish I could get the men in my rural church together in an organization like this.” He was greatly impressed with the friendliness. as well as with the principles of service found in this Rotary Club.

But who ever heard of a shipload of Rotarians sailing off to Borneo or New Guinea or Sierra Leone and giving their lives to teach the principles of Rotary? Has anyone ever seen a Kiwanian missionary? With nearly a thousand Granges in some of our eastern states, there is no record of any Granger ever having been sent by any state to the mountains of Kentucky or Tennessee. And yet where can we find a thousand rural churches that have not sent a hundred or more of their choicest sons and daughters to the ends of the earth to spread the gospel message? |

Of all our rural institutions, the Church is the only one whose members are concerned enough for its teachings to carry its message to the ends of the earth.

Often when a man is asked to join the Farm Bureau, he says, “What do I get out of it if I join?” But he who affiliates with the rural church asks himself each week, “What more can I give to the church?”

THE CHURCH EXTENDS THE HORIZON

Life on the farm or in the farm kitchen is often humdrum. The dairy cows do not take a summer vacation. The hottest summer months may suggest a trip to the seashore or to the mountains, but this is canning season. Our hands get shaped to fit the plow handle and our minds to the narrow furrow. How provincial we might become! But the message on Sunday morning lifts our narrow horizon. The chores, the live stock, the crops, are left behind as if we were taking off in an airplane. We hear about the work our Church is doing in Allahabad or Santiago or Nanking or perhaps in Albuquerque or on the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota. We get a world view. Our sympathy goes out to the rice farmer in Burma who lives on one meal a day in a five-dollar house. We hear how our representatives are lifting the burdens from the backs of the women in Syria. Our rural church enlarges our world from week to week. :

It is the only institution that unites all races and colors. It is the only organization to which a farmer belongs that takes within its membership peoples from other lands.

One day a Nebraska farmer realized his life’s dream by taking a trip to the Holy Land. As he entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he met a man from California, then another from Oklahoma. The three men walked down the steps under the altar to see the holy birthplace. As they stood with bowed heads looking at the gold star in the floor which marks the reputed spot of Jesus’ birth, quietly down the steps from the other side came a Chinese Christian to see the birthplace of the Christ of China. He stood alongside the three men he had never seen before but with whom he had much in common. Footsteps were heard again and this time it was a Japanese Christian coming to see the birthplace of his Lord. At the manger of Bethlehem and around the cross on Calvary all nations meet.

Our rural church takes us away from the routine things and sives us a world view and an interest in people of every race and color.

NEW FAITH IN THE RURAL CHURCH

We have seen that the Church is our great family institution, uniting families instead of separating them. Likewise it gives us those ideals and standards which offset the age-old tendencies and influences toward crime, vice, and sin. Because of the many Church organizations, activities, and classes, the Church trains men and women for leadership, for work not only in the Church but in all other rural organizations. Most community workers are Church workers first. Most welfare work was started by the Church and is now carried on by Church people. The Church is our one great missionary agency. The last words spoken by the Founder of the Church were, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” To-day eight thousand missionaries are preaching this gospel in China. Six thousand more are proclaiming “the Christ of the Indian Road.” Climbing the Andean slopes and penetrating the deltas of the eastern coast, and throughout South America, three thousand are at work. Winning their way into the jungles of the Congo and overcoming obstacles of rivers and desert, another six thousand are to be found in Africa. It is a great joy to belong to an organization that knows no bounds or obstacles, and transcends all barriers of language or color or race.

Let us renew our faith in the rural Church and be more loyal to its program. May we not each have the well-tilled field, the hundredfold yield, and what Norman Gale calls “The Country Faith”?

Here in the country’s heart

* Where the grass is green,

Life is the same sweet life As it e’er hath been.

Trust in God still lives, And the bell at morn Floats with a thought of God O’er the rising corn.

God comes down in the rain, And the crop grows tall—

This is the country faith, And the best of all.

The Theme of the Chapter. We build up our faith in and loyalty to the Church by looking for its accomplishments instead of its failures.

The Scripture of the Chapter. This passage, Luke 8: 4-15, teaches that the gospel like the seed sown by the Galilean farmer, will yield encouraging results if we give it a chance.

Other Bible passages which might be used in the study of this lesson are; Matt. 7:16-20; Mark 4:30-32; John 8:12.

A LOOK INTO THE HOME COMMUNITY

1. A certain farmer was sick for several weeks during the busy season. One day his neighbors, members of a near-by church, came with teams and tractors and plowed his fields. Suppose that he had been a man who in the past had found much fault with the Church, what do you think would be his attitude toward it in the future? What does this indicate as a way for increasing Church loyalty in the community?

2. “We have a mighty poor excuse for a church,” said one man dolefully. “We have the best church in this whole state,” said another. Which of these two men is probably doing more to get people to belong to and to work in his church?

3. A list of a few of the successful young men and young women who are products of the local church would be a source of much satisfaction and encouragement.

4. The next time some one tells us some of the things that are wrong, let us tell him what is right with the rural church. Let the group make a list of facts they would tell him.

1. One member of the group might prepare a history of the local church, enumerating some of its accomplishments.

2. Another might tell something of the missionary work of the denomination.

3. Several might give short talks on “What the Church Means to Me and My Family.”

4. “The Little Brown Church” might be sung as a duet or by the entire group.

5. A special program for a Sunday evening or midweek service, planned and carried through by the members of an Adult or Young People’s class, in which such subjects as those listed above are discussed, would be an encouragement to the pastor and people and also of interest to nonmembers.

“Steeples Among the Hills,” by Hewitt, 260 pages. Abingdon, $1.75. An interesting account of a successful village church in Vermont.

“Churches of Distinction in Town and Country,” by Brunner, 198 pages. Doran, $1.50. Stories of twenty-six successful churches.

“What Some Rural Pastors Are Doing,” 22 pages. Board of Missionary Codperation of Northern Baptist Convention, 10 cents. Accounts of various successful methods.

Chapter II

THE HOLY EARTH The Gist of the Chapter. The farmer works with God in feeding the world. What we call “scientific agriculture” is simply a knowledge of God’s laws in nature. God expects us to acquire a knowledge of the soil and of the seasons, of plant-breeding and of animal husbandry, of blight and drought and pests. These things that make up our agricultural learning are nothing more or less than a knowledge of how to do what ought to be done with God’s earth. The better we understand the earth, its crops and its seasons, its winds and its rain, the more we shall realize that we who till the soil are cooperators with the Creator of all things. We are workers together with God.

On the other hand, if we wear out the soil, if we expose the land to erosion, if we leave our farms poorer than when we found them, we tear down the handiwork of God. If we take the fish from the streams, the birds from the air, and the timber from the hillsides, without making provision for renewal, we leave God’s earth poorer than when we found it.

We read in the second chapter of Genesis of the beginning of agriculture: “And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

When the Children of Israel had escaped from bondage in Egypt and began to till the soil of the land which God had given to them he showed them in no uncertain terms, through the writer of the book of Deuteronomy, how he would work with them as they tilled their fields and cared for their live stock. :

And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of Jehovah thy God, to observe to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that Jehovah thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth: and all these blessings shall come aby

‘upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of Jehovah thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy beasts, the increase of thy cattle, and the young of thy flock. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

Jehovah will cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thee: they shall come out against thee one way, and shall flee before thee seven ways. Jehovah will command the blessing - upon thee in thy barns, and in all that thou puttest thy hand unto; and he will bless thee in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee. Jehovah will establish thee for a holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee; if thou shalt keep the commandments of Jehovah thy God, and walk in his ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of Jehovah; and they shall be afraid of thee. And Jehovah will make thee plenteous for good, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which Jehovah sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Jehovah will open unto thee his good treasure the heavens, to give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of thy hand.

WORKING WITH GOD IN FEEDING THE WORLD

The Scripture for the chapter makes it clear how God works with us as we till our fields and care for our crops and live stock. Our problem is to see and feel God’s presence as we go about our daily tasks on the farm.

“We never had any sunsets back here in the mountains until you came,” said a woman in a mountain cabin to a home missionary. The sunsets and the beauty of those great Smoky Mountains had been there before the home missionary arrived, but there was no one to look up from the isolated settlements and narrow lives to point out their beauty.

Likewise some farmers may hear only the “chug, chug” of tractors in their tireless trips across the field, while others may see themselves working together with God to feed a hungry world. Harvest time may be to some simply a time of longer hours and harder work. Others may see God’s handiwork in the golden grain and feel that they are honored by working with God in his continual process of creation.

Once after Liberty Hyde Bailey had delivered a lecture on 18 the subject “The Holy Earth” he received an appreciative letter from a farmer, who, although he was without education -and had lived only as he said “in the woods,” looked upon his occupation in a way that few farmers see it. The letter which Dean Bailey received reads as follows: 1

As you say, too ‘many people confound farming with that sordid, selfish, money-getting game called “business,” whereas the farmer’s position is administrative, being in a way that of a dispenser of the mysteries of God, for they are mysteries. Every apple is a mystery, and every ear of corn is a mystery, and every potato is a mystery, and every pound of butter is a mystery, and when a farmer is not able to understand these things he is out of place.

The farmer uses the soil and the rains and the snows and the frosts and the winds and the sun; these are also the implements of the Almighty, the only tools he uses. While you were talking the other day, it brought to mind the recollections of an account I once read of an occurrence which took place in the vicinity of Karlsruhe, in Germany, about thirty years ago, and I want to tell you about it. An old man and his two sons who were laborers on a large farm there went out one morning to mow peas with scythes, as was the method in use at that time, and soon after they began to work they noticed a large, active man coming along a pathway which bordered the field on one side. When he came to where they were, he spoke to them, very pleasantly, and asked them some questions about their work; then taking the scythe from the hands of the older man he mowed some with it and finally returned it and went his way. After a time when the owner came out to oversee the work the laborers told him of the occurrence, and asked him if he could tell who the stranger might be. He told them that he was Prince Bismarck, Chancellor of the empire, who was staying at his country home in Karlsruhe, and was out for his morning walk. They were astonished, and the old man was filled with a great pride. He felt himself elevated above his fellows, and he wouldn’t have sold his scythe for half the money in Germany, and his descendants to this day boast of the fact that their father and Bismarck mowed with the same scythe. Now if it was sufficient to stimulate the pride of this old laborer, if it was sufficient to convert that old rusty scythe into a priceless heirloom to be treasured up and transmitted from father to son, if it was sufficient for all these things that he had once held a momentary, unimportant association with the man of “blood and iron,” how much more inconceivably and immeasurably high and exalted is the station of the farmer, who is, in a measure, a fellow craftsman of the God of nature, of the great First Cause of all things, and people don’t know it.