Part 5

6. The Benzonia Christian Endeavor Society purchased a stereopticon for use in the Larger Parish. It was equipped with electrical apparatus to be used in the villages, and with acetylene light for the schoolhouses and country places where there was no electric current. It could be easily carried from place to place, and became a very practical and useful instrument in the work. Slides on various subjects were easily obtained, and the effect of lectures and talks was greatly increased. The people in these days want to see things as well as to hear about them, and the sight helps out the hearing. They never get tired of looking at good pictures. It became easy with the help of the lantern to provide an interesting and profitable evening entertainment, and the people showed their appreciation by their presence in large numbers and their careful attention. "The Panama Canal" was thus presented and illustrated, and "The Other Wise Man." Some lectures by the pastor--"On Horseback through the Holy Land," "A Week in and about Jerusalem," "Three Months on an Ocean Steamer"--were made more vivid and attractive by views from photographs taken on a foreign trip. In many ways the stereopticon has proved a valuable acquisition, and especially in a country parish can it be used with great profit and satisfaction.

7. In a local option campaign the influence of the Larger Parish made itself felt in an effective way for the banishment of the saloon. Debates were arranged on the question in the neighborhood clubs.

The pastors preached on the subject and made addresses at the meetings held throughout the county. One of the assistant pastors gave valuable service on the Central Committee. In all such movements that have for their object the purifying of the community and the establishment of righteousness the forces that are active in the Larger Parish are lined up on the right side, ready to coöperate and promptly available for practical work.

An Every Member Canvass for home and foreign missions is carried on throughout the whole parish. Each year a letter is prepared, giving briefly the progress of the work for the year past and setting forth its present condition. These letters are sent by mail to nearly all the families in the parish, with small collection envelopes for the different members of the household, with the request that they bring the offerings to their accustomed places of worship. The children as well as the older people are encouraged to bring in their offerings, and we have found this an effective way of cultivating in them the spirit of benevolence. There is much gain in leading them to feel that they have a part in the work.

VI

THINGS YET TO BE DONE

Their name is legion. Everything is to be done. Only a beginning has been made. Nothing is finished. What has been accomplished is only a prophecy of the larger and completer work that lies before us in the future. Religious and community work is not mechanical. You cannot finish it up and store it away as the carpenter finishes a box, or the housewife a garment. Life is a development, a growth, and those who deal with life must always be content with beginnings. "Nothing that has life is ever finished." Life in its larger unfolding and its fuller meaning must always be in the future. A life that is finished and complete would better end, and a community that has reached perfection should be translated to another sphere. We must ever be content to spend our labor upon beginnings, thankful for such fruitage as may appear from time to time. The real ingathering must always be in the future. What has been accomplished in the Larger Parish gives us confidence in the methods employed, and encourages us to expect larger things from the better and completer application of those and similar methods in the days to come.

In may be well to mention some of the things that have not as yet been fully done, but that we hope to see accomplished in the Larger Parish in the future.

1. The first and most important aim of this work, and of all church work, is to bring people into the kingdom of God. All social and community work must be subordinate to this and lead up to it. The Church must be something more than a social settlement. I still hold to the old-fashioned idea that men need to be saved, and that the only salvation that there can be for them is found in loyalty to Jesus Christ. While this salvation is a matter of the spirit, affecting one's standing with God and his relation to the great eternal realities, it also affects his standing with men and his relation to society. And here comes in all the humanitarian and community work that is a legitimate and important part of the church's concern. Community work can never take the place of the work of God's Spirit in the individual life. To be permanently valuable it must be the _result_ of that work. The kingdom of God embraces the complete ideal, and if we can induce men to live according to the principles of that kingdom, careful attention will be paid to all the work that needs to be done for the community. Therefore the work of the Larger Parish is primarily, though not exclusively, evangelistic. We are trying to lead men to become Christians, not in a narrow sense, but in the large, rich meaning of that word which the teaching of Jesus gives it.

During the three years that we have in review there have been some such results. A goodly number have decided to begin the Christian life and have taken their places in the ranks of the followers of Jesus Christ. We are thankful that the army of the Lord has received so many new recruits. But there are many more who are not as yet willing to enlist. The number of those who are still outside the ranks is greater than of those who are marching under the banner of the visible Church. Much remains to be done in this direction. The work is far from being complete in this its most vital and important aspect. We have only made a beginning. It will not be finished until every person in all the wide parish is openly and positively arrayed on the side of Christ. At the present rate of progress it looks as if the Church had work laid out for it for a long time to come. It is not in danger of soon running out of material. There is a great work yet to be done in the way of bringing men into the kingdom of God. We hope to keep that always in view--to make it our central aim and our uppermost thought.

2. There needs to be created in the hearts of the people more respect for the Church, a better understanding of its mission, and a fuller appreciation of its work. Many people have mistaken ideas of the Church, and therefore fail to appreciate its work or its purpose. Some regard it simply as a venerable institution that has long had a place in human society. In former times it has done an important work, and still has its value. It is to be honored for its record and still encouraged in a mild and patronizing way. They would not banish the Church--they are not yet quite ready to undertake to conduct human society without it. They tolerate it and perhaps support it in a half-hearted way, but they do not regard it as absolutely essential or its work as vitally important. They do not understand the Church. The Church may be in some measure to blame for this. It has not always understood itself. Its conception of its own mission has been small, narrow, and inadequate, and it was inevitable that no truer or larger impression could be made upon the community. When the Church undertakes to do all for which it is responsible and prosecutes it with the vigor and earnestness that it deserves, the people will begin to understand it better and to appreciate more fully its mission.

Many people regard the Church as an institution to be supported. In common thought this institution, for some reason that may not always appear, has assumed the right to lay the community under tribute for support. Some accept this traditional idea without thinking much about it, while others are in revolt against it. One of the assistant pastors was calling at a house for the first time. The master of the house, when he was introduced, said, "Oh, another preacher! Well, I suppose they all have to be supported." And he was not the first representative of the Church that has met with such an indignity.

Here again the Church may be at least partially to blame. It has too often regarded its office as that of preying upon the community as well as praying for it. It has not always been careful to give value received.

It is our purpose to make the Church a necessity in the community. Its good works, its efficiency as an element of power in everything that is for the improvement and uplifting of the people, should be so great and so evident that no one can reasonably call them in question. That is one of the things that needs to be done, and that by the method of the Larger Parish we hope to accomplish. We propose that the Church shall have such a spirit of helpfulness, that it shall be so wise and practical in laying out its work, so energetic and aggressive in prosecuting it, that all shall recognize it as a potent and most blessed force--an institution that they gladly support because of its practical value. Some progress has been made in this direction. The Church has gained immensely in the respect of the people since it began the work of the Larger Parish. The people can see that it is really doing something.

3. There needs to be created a stronger and more universal community spirit. The tendency in the country toward isolation and independence is especially strong. Each farmer is separate from every other. He lives alone, somewhat like a baron in his castle in old feudal times, sufficient for himself, without much necessity of borrowing, or thought of lending. Living in such conditions it is quite natural that he should grow selfish, and should come to think largely if not exclusively of his own individual interests. He is in danger of overlooking the fact that society is an organism, and he is a part of it; that he has duties and obligations to the general public; that his life cannot be complete if it is lived alone; that he owes something to the community at large, and that he must get something from it if he would really be a man, do a man's work, and fill a man's place. He must come to see that the public good means private advantage, and that when he cuts himself off from others and thinks only of his own individual interests he is following a foolish and suicidal policy.

This community spirit needs to be carefully cultivated, and that work has been going on in the Larger Parish. The community spirit has been growing. The people are more interested in one another and in those things that are undertaken for the public good than they formerly were. But there is still much to be done in this respect. Not all the people are yet able to look over the narrow boundaries of their own possessions and see their neighbors' needs. Not all grasp the idea of the solidarity of society. But this spirit is growing and there will be larger fruitage in the coming days.

4. There needs to be more team work among the people, more coöperation in carrying out the schemes that are for the public good. When all the people take hold together, there is scarcely anything that needs to be done that cannot be accomplished. A single individual is comparatively powerless, but a common movement in any community is bound to succeed. One of the foremost services to any community is to unite its forces and bring the people to work together heartily and enthusiastically in some good cause.

The work of the Larger Parish has been useful in this direction. The Team Work Committees of the neighborhood clubs have this for their object--to lead out in anything in which it is desirable for the people to move together. It is easier to bring the people to unite their efforts now than it was three years ago, but much more remains to be done. The goal has not yet been reached. The effective team work that we have seen is a prophecy of that completer coöperation in all good things that we hope and expect to see in the coming days.

5. In some way more variety should be brought into the lives of country people. Farm life should become one of the most attractive and interesting spheres of activity. Its freedom, its independence, its close contact with nature, should give to it for multitudes a compelling charm. It would seem that a strong current of human interest could be made to flow from the crowded and unwholesome conditions of the city to the open country, where the fresh breezes play and the flowers bloom. At present it is not so. The stream flows in the opposite direction and every year the city swallows up much of the best blood of the country. It is the city that attracts, and the country that repels. This can be explained very largely by the isolated and monotonous character of country life.

The only way by which this movement can be checked or reversed is to give more variety to rural life; to break up its monotony and to introduce into it those intellectual and social pleasures and employments that are a necessary part of a healthful and contented life. Young people crave variety, they must get together, they must have some kind of amusements, some form of recreation. If they cannot find it on the farm, they will go to the city where it is supplied in lavish abundance but often in objectionable forms.

It has been the object of the work of the Larger Parish to supply this need of country life. It has provided and promoted frequent opportunities for the people to come together in a social way. The Sunday services established in so many places have not only served as opportunities of worship, but also of neighborly intercourse and of the interchange of friendly greetings. The neighborhood clubs have been a kind of social and literary clearing-house for the community, affording many a pleasant and profitable evening and providing something wholesome to think of and to plan for during the day. The Ladies' Aid Societies have brought the women together, in projects and accomplishments of common interest, relieving the weeks of monotonous toil with forms of coöperative fellowship. Much more needs to be done to impart interest and attraction to life in the country, and it is something to which the Church, in its desire to minister to the whole man, may very appropriately give its thought and effort.

6. Machinery seems to be a necessity in all kinds of work. Nothing can be done without a method, an organization, a machine--some kind of an instrument to facilitate the process. But the machine is never properly an end in itself. Sometimes it is made an end, but no farmer could be satisfied with a reaper that did not cut the grain, however beautiful and well-made it might be or however smoothly it might run. Nevertheless some churches seem to be satisfied with the smooth running of the machinery, even though the results of it all are very meager.

The primary object of the work of the Larger Parish is to help the people and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some organization, is necessary. Our thought is to supply it when the necessity comes, but not before. When it is needed it must be invented or discovered, or in some way brought into the service. Certain methods have been introduced. There have been employed some forms of organization, some machinery has been set in operation. Some things we have tried, that did not work satisfactorily and they had to be discarded. Some of the methods that seem to be successful at present may not always continue to work so well, and they will have to be exchanged for others. We must ever keep in view the prime object for which we are working--to serve the people and to uplift the community life--and to that object we must adapt our methods and adjust our machinery.

If we do the work that needs to be done in the coming days we shall need a true and unwavering purpose, a clear eye to discern the situation, a calm and correct judgment to fit the method to the work, and above all, the constant leading of the Holy Spirit. The Larger Parish is not a method, or organization, or machine, that one can secure and put in operation and then the work is done. It is a vision--an ideal--that must be a living reality in the soul, and then must be wrought out in actual life in the best way possible.

VII

SOME RESULTANT CONCLUSIONS

This story began with "Some Convictions." It ends with "Some Conclusions." There has been an attempt to tell how a vision became a reality. The vision originated in convictions. The conclusions have come from the realization of the vision.

There are a few things that may be stated with confidence as the result of the three years' work in translating the vision into the fact of the Larger Parish. The mention of some of them will round out the story.

1. The village church, if it would do its proper work, must belong to the people and be in close touch with them. It must minister in some way to all the people and be a force in the life of all the people. Churches like individuals are known to have certain characteristics, to possess certain temperaments. Some are aristocratic and exclusive. They gather to themselves a number of select families who have common tastes and are congenial with one another. They have good times together, and within that narrow circle there is a delightful social life. Those few people are well trained, and well instructed in the facts and principles of religion as they are understood by them. But they do not seem to get hold of the idea that the church is for all the people; that as Jesus conceived it it is essentially democratic. They have no sense of obligation for the community at large, and make no effort to affect it as a whole and to lift it up to a higher level.

The village church that would do its work must be democratic and must have a community consciousness. It must belong to the people--be in close touch with those of each and every class.

2. The village church, if it would do its proper work, must recognize its obligation to minister in some way to the religious and social needs of the people in the outlying country districts. The village should not be its parish, but rather its base of operations, from which it goes forth to all the wide-stretching territory that lies beyond.

3. The church which has this vision, which recognizes this obligation and seeks to discharge it, will find some way of doing it. The work within the towns and villages is often great and difficult. Many churches have failed to reach all the people within the sound of their church-bell, and there is much work at their very doors that they have not yet accomplished. Shall they reach out and extend their parish threefold, and multiply their duties and obligations many times? If they do not do all that ought to be done in their smaller parish, shall they increase its boundaries and assume greater obligations? Yes. That is what many churches are languishing for--a bigger job, something that it is worth while to do; something that will challenge all their powers and awaken to enthusiasm their sleeping energies.

4. The only village church that will continue to abide in strength and vigor in the future years will be the church that is all buttressed about by a strong and vigorous country work. It must be done as a means of self-preservation. The village churches are as much in danger of losing their lives as the country churches are. The church that confines its efforts within the village boundaries is sure to languish and dwindle and after a while it will give up the ghost, as it ought to do. As the city is fed from the towns and villages, so the towns and villages are fed from the country. If the work goes down in the towns and villages, it will be felt in the city, and if it loses its hold in the country, it will soon lose its grip upon the villages and towns. The country needs the work of the Larger Parish, and it will perish without it. But the village church needs to do the work even more, and unless it takes it up with vigor it is doomed.

5. When the churches come to be more interested in the promotion of the Kingdom than they are in the promotion of their own particular denomination, they will begin to have that prosperity which only those can have who are really doing the Lord's work. The chief hindrance to the work of the churches is often the churches themselves. One of the greatest needs of the villages and rural regions is fewer churches.

If in each small village there was a single church in which all the Christians of the community could unite, they could easily organize the work in all the surrounding country and carry it on successfully. But where there are a number of churches they are in the way of each other and effectually prevent any widespread and efficient work. Still, even in that unfortunate condition, something may be done in a systematic way to help the rural regions. Why cannot the representatives of the various churches get together, make a united survey of the country for miles in every direction, become fully acquainted with the situation and conditions, and seeing clearly what needs to be done, divide the territory up between them, giving each church its own particular field, and allowing it to arrange for its cultivation in its own way? I believe that some such arrangement is feasible when it is the Kingdom that the churches are chiefly interested to promote, instead of the particular denomination to which they happen to belong.

6. When all the religious forces in any community can combine and work together, all the work that needs to be done in the community can be done, and there will be no lack of resources to carry it on with vigor and success. In almost every community there are Christians enough, and there is money enough, for the work, if only they can be assembled and utilized. But when they are scattered about, lying around lose and uncombined, or when they are organized into competing camps, they are useless for any purpose of aggressive and effective work. It isn't the poverty of the people that stands in the way, or the small number of professing Christians. It is the lack of team work, the lack of coöperation, that constitutes the weakness of the cause. No work can be done in the country that is at all effective without this coöperation and combination. With it, all the work that needs to be done, can be done.

7. The church that sees the vision and with faith and courage undertakes to make it a reality, will be prospered. Perhaps the experience of the Benzonia church may be cited as proof of this. Situated in a small village, composed of people of meager means, in a country that has not even yet emerged from pioneer conditions, it had for many years carried on its work only with much sacrifice and careful economy. Three years ago, by a unanimous vote, it formally adopted the policy of reaching out and annexing all the territory within a radius of five miles in every direction, thus greatly increasing its obligations and more than doubling its annual budget of expenses. There was some questioning as to how it could be done, but, without waiting for clearer light, it moved forward unanimously to the enlarged work.