A working program for the local church

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Foreword

II. The Place of a Church Program

Chapter I Foreword

It has been a practice in the ministry of the author to bring before his official boards, at certain intervals, addresses or papers in which certain vital and practical matters of church life were discussed. These papers have come twice a year, in the form of the minister's annual and semiannual addresses, or, at times, a series of matters have been taken up one after the other at successive monthly official board meetings. The present volume is made up from these addresses. Some of them are about as given; some are expanded and made more general with matters of purely local interest eliminated. A part of two of the chapters, "The Program of Teaching" and "The Program of Training," is the substance of two articles which have appeared in the Sunday School Journal, and indebtedness to the publishers of that periodical for their use here is acknowledged.

Of course the series, while called a church program, is not exhaustive nor complete. The papers are put in this form rather than in the form of an abstract program because it is felt that in this way the suggestions, if any, will be more flexible than they otherwise would be. There is no thought of suggesting a ready-made program or plan which may be applied to a local situation with a little alteration to meet the particular need. If anyone is seeking such material, it will not be found here. This is not an attempt to write an answer book for the problems of church life which the minister can keep in his desk for consultation, as our teacher used to do when we were taking Ray's Higher Arithmetic. Such a task would be as impossible as unprofitable. The aim is, rather, to consider principles and formulas that may be illustrated by certain plans which have proven helpful to us. These are used only as illustrations, however, to show the working of some principle of church life, and are offered, as are all the suggestions herein, in the hope that they may be helpful to others, as so many others have been helpful to us.

The chapter on "The Program of Pastoral Care" is not an attempt at homiletics, neither is the chapter on "The Program of Preaching." The chapters on "The Program of Teaching" and "The Program of Training," and indeed all the chapters, are written from the view point of the practical minister rather than of the specialist.

Chapter II The Place Of A Church Program

At the very outset it will be well to make clear the place a program must occupy in the life of the church. Our conviction is that a program is essential to the highest development and the best results of church life, but we would keep clearly in mind the fact that the program is not in any sense the life of the church, that it is not the end to which we labor, and that if too much attention is paid to it the real issues of church life will be defeated.

The program is the skeleton in the body of the church. The flesh and blood and spirit are of first importance. As the bone gives form and character to the body, that upon it we may build an organization called life, so a program in the church is the framework about which all thought and activity is organized, directed, and given character. The program is not the life itself. It is the servant of the life. It is nothing in itself, but is the basis of everything, in its place. Some people have made mistake here, and, like the old tinker who became so interested in the works of his clock that he forgot its hands and face, and even that it was made to keep time, they have spent all their effort in formulating plans and programs, which were fine specimens for a church museum perhaps, but of little use among living men. We have laws and regulations in society, without which the institution of civilization could not stand. Sometimes an official, like some traffic policeman, will make these regulations so prominent they become a hindrance and a positive detriment to the life they are made to serve. It is not the fault of the regulations. It is the fault of emphasis. Such we see at times in the church until the program which should be hid beneath the life, like the branches beneath the foliage and fruit, becomes the barren, cold tree of the winter season.

The lowest form of life we know is the amceba. It is simply an irregular cell of protoplasm, pushed here and there by the forces about it, feeding upon whatever comes its way, having simply the instinct to exist. Its life has no organization, no direction, no purpose. In a similar way a church without a well-defined program will move with the currents about it, feed without choice upon whatever presents itself, having an instinct to exist.

If this meaning and use be kept strictly in

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mind, then the program becomes one of the vital essentials of the church, without which the life of the institution becomes flabby and ill-shapen, without form and void.

It may be well to say also here that in considering a working program there is no intention to map out a book full of details for finance committees, Ladies' Aids, young people's societies, etc. Recently we looked eagerly into a book called a modern church program, to find that page after page was just the detailed plans for one campaign after another of church activity. Our conviction is that church life is not a series of campaigns, but, like all other life, is a steady growth and development. There need be campaigns at times no doubt — financial, evangelistic, and others — but certainly we should labor toward a more regular and natural continuance of church life and expression.

The thing we try to consider here is something more fundamental than detailed plans. Rather than a system of exercise to get up a sweat and set the blood tingling, we want to consider the deeper processes of respiration, circulation, and nutrition. A special system of exercises with cold baths and tonic becomes necessary to a sluggish body — but far better is a normal life with the vital organs doing their work naturally and well. So, while illustrations of certain plans will be used in the following pages, we say again that they are to be considered only as illustrations. They are not set forth in the hope that they will be adopted, or with any prophecy that they would work should they be adopted. They but illustrate principles of the more vital processes which should control the organized life of the church, principles upon which others can work out their own details according to the peculiar conditions of their local field.

Dr. Jefferson, in his book "The Building of the Church" makes the assertion that a program is essential to the success of any minister as well as to the church. Without such a program the minister and the church which he leads will become swamped in a maze of problems and details and, like the man lost upon the prairie at night, move in circles which arrive at no goal or destiny. It is for this guiding and directing purpose that we suggest a program for the local church.

CHAPTER III EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH How Far Can the Modern Efficiency Test be Applied?

It will be readily seen that the larger question of the application of the efficiency test to modern church life cannot be treated in a single chapter. Able men have taken volumes in which to cover this important matter. There is but one question that we want to raise here, a question that every man faces as he proceeds with church organization. The question is this: How far can the modern efficiency test be applied to church life? Can it be applied to all church work; has it any place at all in church life; or has it place in some activities such as finance and other business, while not in those matters of a more spiritual nature such as prayer and worship? Can it be used in a voluntary organization as in one where a pay roll is an incentive to best endeavor?

These questions we want to consider. Take the last first. "You men ought to run your churches as a business," said a prominent business man to a group of ministers. "There is too much waste in time and effort and duplication in the church." Now, we readily grant that there are time and energy wasted, as he and many others contend. But we might as well content ourselves first as last with the knowledge that you can't run a church as you do a business. One reason why you cannot is because you are dealing with voluntary workers. Your pay roll is persuasion, not bank notes, and as much as we deplore the fact, nevertheless human nature, by the very necessity of existence in many instances, is challenged to best thought and energy by the wages received. When voluntary service has vision and spirit, it is far superior to paid service. This is illustrated in Belgium and other war-stricken countries, where volunteers, many of them Americans, are giving the best of life, even life itself, in volunteer service. And any man who has been long in church service has experienced some fine examples of noble Christian lives giving more willingly and even more efficiently in service to the church than to their daily work. The fact remains, however — and we are sure it would have been well for us if we had understood this earlier in our ministry — that the majority of church workers keep in the near margin of their consciousness the fact that they are free-will

EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH 15

agents who can come and go as they choose and stop or start as they feel like it. We have a notion that by better training in our churches, especially in our church Sunday school — by less petting in the case of spoiled and touchy natures, with a little more strictness in which the cause is uppermost rather than the feelings of some people — we will get better results; but, even so, we never can run a church as a business. We don't want to. We can lead a church and get far better results than to attempt to run it. This, however, does not imply that there is no place in the church for efficiency methods. When we go into one of our modern factories or department stores we find that each department has its specific tasks to perform, and that there is no conflict either in the work that is done or in the time and place of doing the work. The thing runs like a clock. There are many wheels, but they run in harmony. We find, if we inquire, that they have applied one of the big words of the age, this word "efficiency." This word has been written so large and spoken so loud and applied so universally that it has been accepted by some as a panacea for all the ills of the day. We test our machinery, we standardize our business and our schools, we raise our potatoes and our babies by efficiency. Of course the word has hit the churches, and some of them have been badly hit. But there are some things in this world which the modern test of efficiency cannot test, and they are not all in the church. There are values which it can never measure. Can efficiency measure the actual business power and the accompanying business success of the personal spirit of good will between employer and employed? Can efficiency test the actual development of the child mind under the influence of a given mental stimulus from the teacher? Can efficiency measure the power of courtesy? Can it follow the influence of will upon will, of soul upon soul? Manifestly no. When the newspaper totals the expense of one of Billy Sunday's campaigns and then divides into that the number of reported conversions, with the result of so much cost per soul, it is as much nonsense as to expect a minister to make a microscopic study of the souls of the children of his Sunday school and report the number converted during the year. The main difference is that the newspaper rather intends its report to be taken as nonsense. You cannot count the presence of souls as you can the noses at an Epworth League or Christian Endeavor group meeting and then award a banner. You cannot pay for souls by piece: you cannot apply the time clock to

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the working of the leaven. There is a realm of the intellectual, of the moral, and of the spiritual that cannot be unlocked by the efficiency key.

But beeause there is a realm, especially in the work of the church, which cannot be tested by business efficiency, many voices are raised against it altogether, and say, "You have no place among us. There is no phase of our work where your measure can be used." Certainly, this attitude is as wrong as to try to apply practical efficiency tests to spiritual values. The schools have not done this. They have thrown wide their doors and said to efficiency, "Work where you can." Business, of course, has taken the same attitude, even more freely than the schools, and so have many religious organizations, such as charitable societies and the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. But here the church has been very backward. It has too often followed a sort of a do-asyou-please-and-trust-to-Providence plan. Even though certain phases of church work (and the most important phases) are closed to the modern efficiency test, at the same time it would be exceedingly interesting, and no doubt profitable, to test the work of the average church and the average minister by the time clock and the piecework system. Probably no record would be so interesting as one's own.

Certainly, the business methods of many churches — their methods of raising money, their system of keeping records, their disbursement of funds, their use of the church plant, their form of organization, their general program of work — are exceedingly unbusinesslike to say the least. And we find that churches with fine business men on their boards who apply the most modern business methods in their own work often do not bring them into use in the church. This has been a source of wonder, but the reason is probably because men pay more attention to tradition in the church than they do in business. But is it not reasonable that we should use every legitimate principle of efficiency which can be used in a religious organization, applying it wherever it has application and just so far as it can measure, then have the sense and the patience to wait for the development of those slower processes of nature, just as we have learned to have patience with the tender plant and young mind in its gradual unhurried process of unfolding ?

We must apply both impatience and patience in church work with wisdom to know where each will effect the best results. Realizing that the work of building the kingdom of God cannot all be done this year, nor in our life, we should lay with permanence the part given

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us to build. Some people are never satisfied unless they are working on the top story. They are interested in the finishing end of every job. They long to harvest the fruit. It may be that we are called, however, to build well a foundation or plant the seed that we shall never see push above the ground. If such be the case, we can be sure that if we do it well, we will have done our duty, and our reward is as certain as though we were heralded the world round as one who brings to completion a great task. There is comfort in this to the man who is doing his utmost. There is danger to the man who would use such a principle to hide shirking inefficient efforts.

Throughout the following pages then we shall keep in mind that there are realms of church life which cannot be measured by the modern business efficiency test, yet much of church activity that can and therefore should be so tested.

Chapter IV Organization And Records

It is not our purpose to take up here the question of the details of the various organizations in the local church, which would be quite an impossible and quite as useless a task. Organizations do not necessarily mean organization. Sometimes they make organization impossible. By the program of organization we mean a general plan which underlies the organized life of the church. Life is an organized plan. The circulatory, respiratory, and nutritive systems are a part of that plan. They are complete in themselves, but they do not work at cross purposes with each other. Such is our idea in having a fundamental plan of organization in the local church, a plan through which all the separate organizations of the church live and move and find their life and purpose. We well know that such is not always the case. A bit of experience will illustrate.

Two young men entered the morning preaching service late. They had both been at the Sunday school session preceding, but had lingered for fifteen minutes at the close of the session in one of the classrooms, where they were engaged in a very serious and somewhat heated conversation.

"So it's true we have lost Phillips." "Yes, it's true. And it's a bloomin' shame. We not only have lost Phillips but we will lose most of his boys. It's a shame — that's all — something has got to be done."

The facts back of this conversation were simply these: Phillips was at the head of a boys' department in the Sunday school. This boys' department had been planning for an entertainment to be given in the church on a certain date. When the tickets came out for the affair, they found that one of the other societies of the church had planned a special business meeting for that night, and that the Ladies' Aid Society was giving a chicken-pie supper just two nights before. The boys' entertainment went through, but it was a dismal failure. The chicken-pie supper had taken all the cash the people had to spend that week, and the extra business meeting took from the boys' entertainment others who might have come. Some people were sorry; others accepted it as a matter of course. Phillips took it to heart, and without any to-do about it he simply wound up his work in that church and went to another. Similar things had happened too often, and there seemed to be no remedy. Now, the results were not simply that Phillips left, but, as predicted, some of the very finest young men of that department of the Sunday school left also, and some of those boys simply went out of that church into the world and have never as yet come back to any church. All because two societies, both trying to do good things, happened to conflict in the time of their activities.

Let us give another illustration. This time it was two women's societies. One of them was having the only affair which they were to give during the year. When they were making their final preparations for the affair they found that another women's society of the church had planned something just the night before and, because neither would give way, friction was started which hurt that church for years to come.

Now, these two cases may be extreme, and yet we doubt not that the church of any size is an exception which has not felt the conflict of its various organizations, either in the work they were undertaking or in the time of its execution, unless there had been established some efficient coordinating agency in the church.

Some one says, "The trouble with our church is that it is overorganized." But as a matter of fact that is not the trouble. The trouble is that it is not organized at all. Yet that person was right in what he intended to express. He simply meant that in his church there were so many organizations, and they were so unrelated, and therefore so conflicting, that a very large share of the effort and energy of the working force of the church went to waste and friction — probably more friction than anything else. Such a thing can be duplicated over and over again. Where is the efficient force to unify and direct the increasing number of authorized organizations in the local church? In many cases, instead of the organizations in the local church marching in step and file under one common authority, each waits till it gets an inspiration, and then, as Bishop McConnell says of the Mexican soldier, "just blazes away." The result is that instead of hitting the enemy, one organization is more likely to hit some other organization in the solar plexus and deal its efforts a deathblow or start a fratricidal war. Undoubtedly, one of the great needs of a local church of any size is some agency which shall unify the efforts, direct the campaign, and train the guns upon one common enemy rather than upon its own troops.

Especially is there need of some such body in the local Methodist church, if a program covering several years is to be drawn and carried on, because of the possibility of changing ministers who may each have a program of his own. A church with a program can go forward steadily instead of readjusting itself every few years to the plans of a new minister. It can select its ministry with this in view.

1. Now, what shall this central organization or authority be? We have to take account of existing organizations and their authority, but if there is to be efficiency, this body must represent all the organizations and societies in the church. If there is to be authority, it must be delegated authority, not imposed. If there is to be leadership, the people must feel that they are responsible for the leadership, then they will be responsive to it. One naturally turns for such authority in the Methodist Church to the official board. And while the official board has power (and should exercise it) of passing on all general church activities, it has limitations, as I shall try to show.

a. It is too large to call together for things that need immediate action.

b. It is not familiar as a whole with the details of much of the work of the church, such as the Sunday school, the young people's work, the women's work.

c. The Discipline guards certain other boards in the local church, such as the Sunday School Board, and gives them certain powers which this board cannot violate.

d. And, further, there are so many varied organizations in a church of any size that there is need of a representative "Central Board" to act as a clearing house for the whole.

For convenience let us call this "Central Board" the Church Cabinet, or Council. Such a Cabinet should have upon it a representative from each separate organization in the church; that is, it should be composed of the representatives from the trustees (and the official board other than the trustees), the Sunday school, the men's organization, the women's organization, etc. This Cabinet will meet and receive the program of activities of each of the several organizations, and from these compile one general program of activity for the whole church (which it is well to publish for the general information of the church membership), or it would be still better if this Cabinet would draw and suggest to all the organizations represented a comprehensive program of which all would have a part.

This would, as will be seen at once, eliminate much overlapping of activities. It would create understanding and sympathy on the

9S A WORKING PROGRAM

part of one organization for another. It would give each organization a better perspective of its own work amidst the whole. It would also make each organization look farther ahead, and thus plan its work better, so that we need not have organizations saying, "Go to now, it's time to have something," and then go off half prepared. It would tend to give care and dignity to the character of the program of activities of each separate organization; it would also create the ideal that each organization was an integral part of the whole, working in cooperation with each other organization instead of being a separate entity; it would give encouragement and education to weaker organizations and generally unify the efforts of the whole church.

At first it might seem that such a Church Cabinet would be as unwieldy as an official board, but it would not be, first, because it would be much more representative and democratic, and each organization would come to feel the necessity of being represented in its meetings, and then after the first few meetings of this Cabinet as a whole, in which the general program was drawn, there could be elected from its members a smaller Cabinet or committee of say five, to which would be given power to steer the general program and attend to minor details that would arise. The whole Cabinet could then meet about once a quarter to review and advise the work of this smaller group.

Further, however, if the organizations of a church are properly coordinated, this Cabinet would not be so large as would be the case in the average church, where there are often two or more organizations undertaking to do the work that one could do better. For example, many churches have three or more women's societies. There is no doubt that one woman's society with three departments covering the three organizations would be in the end much more effective in the general work of the church. It would create understanding and sympathy between the organizations which often does not exist at present. It would also facilitate an approach to new women coming into the church in a united way as cannot be done now, and it would cut down a number of meetings a month so that the women could be released for other important work. This same thing could be said with reference to the Brotherhood and organized men's classes, and it applies as well to groups of young women like some Philathea classes, who often carry on a very effective missionary program, working side by side with such young ladies' missionary organizations as the Queen Esther Circle and the King's Daughters. One thing that makes it very difficult to coordinate this work, and also that of the women's societies, referred to above, is the independent regulations of the general women's societies — the Foreign and the Home Missionary Societies. It would seem that these societies would do a great service to the church if they were to make arrangements for such possibilities of coordination. It might for a time — possibly a year or two — decrease the offerings from one or the other, or both of the local societies, but it would undoubtedly create an understanding and a sympathy among local church women that would be highly desirable, and in the long run be greatly beneficial to the cause of missions. Now, very often there is rivalry between these societies that is manifestly against the very underlying spirit of missions.

This same thing is true of our young people. There is great waste of time and energy, as well as confusion, among local young people because of the demands of two or more general boards, such as the Sunday School and the Epworth League Boards, offering programs that have no relation to each other. More will be said as to this in the chapters on "The Program of Teaching" and "The Program of

Training," but just here let us say that it seems only reasonable that one general organization with departments of activity related in one common program would give our young people far superior training than the present plan. There are churches that have felt this need so urgently they have worked out for themselves some such plan and would not think of going back to the old complicated, unrelated system. The well-organized Sunday school can do all that an Epworth League and a Junior League can do, and much more, without duplicating workers and work. This is true also of children's and young people's missionary organizations. Better missionary instruction and training can be done under the authority of the Sunday school than in separate organizations; and if our parent boards would only see this and cooperate instead of insisting upon setting up separate organizations (often without consulting the minister or other local authority, except the local missionary organization), much more would be accomplished in the end than under the present plan. Of course this cannot all be done at the usual Sunday school hour, but all these other organizations take extra hours and workers who could be used as well or better under Sunday school authority than separately.

At first any such change in the local church is bound to be confusing, the more so among voluntary workers who have been brought up under the old system. This coordination, however, in my mind, is the thing to which the general church is tending, and which is necessary to the future of the life of the local church. It is its plain duty to get its own organizations and to conduct its own work upon the most efficient scientific basis, so that it can direct that power in the uplift of the community and the world, rather than to spend the major portion of its energies upon its own existence.