The Challenge of the Country Part 22

This all began with an old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 towns.h.i.+p) 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 Stra.s.sburg 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sable 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. b.u.t.terfield 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 pa.s.sionately. 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 leaders.h.i.+p?

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? Ill.u.s.trate what has been done.

13.--Why should the church not merely serve its own members.h.i.+p but the whole community?

14.--Why is sectarian compet.i.tion 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? Ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation?

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?