06-The Open Country
06 THE OPEN COUNTRY
Text: “He was manifest in another form unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country.” Mark 16:12. The call of the country parish is coming up clear and insistent from every quarter of the land. The country-dweller is coming into his own in material, things, but this new prosperity will prove a blessing only when the forces of righteousness shall control and direct the awakening life of a rehabilitated countryside. The country church, under the leadership of a consecrated, country-loving pastor, must dominate the community life with spiritual ideals, and organize the Christian forces of an awakened membership for Kingdom service.
I shall not attempt to discuss in full the specific problems of the rural church. That there is a rural church problem must be acknowledged because of the fact that there are so many country churches today standing idle, rotting on their timbers. No doubt some of these churches ought never to have been built. They must give way in order that some other church, which is really fostering the religious life of the community, may not be hampered and hindered in its divine ministry to all the people of the neighborhood. Where the community is over-churched the inefficient church, must pass. No doubt it is still true however, that many a country church is dead, and many others are living at a poor dying rate, while scores of country folk living within a “team-haul” and needing its ministry never darken its doors, or meet anywhere else for public worship. The natural location and surroundings of the country church condition its work and increase its problems. Its isolation and the scattered condition of those whom it seeks to serve make a situation not easily met. The standards of life in many rural communities are low, and are likely to drift toward a dead level, which is always lowering. That condition has too long prevailed in our country districts whereby the community oil has all been poured into the lamp of the “bright boy,” and the pride of the community has centered in the man who has gone out from the little settlement and has made a name for himself in the World. The church that is lifting its eyes toward the great wide world, in a sense, may be the best fitted to meet the religious needs of the local community. But the feeling must be overcome that the church can express itself through a few chosen individuals while the membership in general remain irresponsive to the Kingdom interests about them. Community life must be developed in its own terms. Some one has well said that “the task of the country church is to maintain and enlarge both individual and community ideals under the inspiration and guidance of the religious motives, and to help the rural people to incarnate these ideals in personal and family life, in industrial effort and in political development, and in all social relationships.” In some great day The country church Will find its voice, And it will say, “I stand in the fields Where the great earth yields Her bounties of fruit and grain; Where the furrows turn ’Till the plowshares burn, As they came ’round and ’round again; Where the workers pray With their tools all day In the sunshine and shadow and rain.
“And I bid them tell Of the crops they sell, And speak of the work they have done; I speed every man In his hope and plan And follow his day with the sun; And grasses arid trees The birds and the bees, I know and feel every one.
“And out of it all, As the seasons fall, I build my great temple alway; I point to the skies But my footstone lies In commonplace work of the day; For I preach the worth Of native earth To love and to work is to pray.” church must pass. No doubt it is still true however, that many a country church is dead, and many others are living at a poor dying rate, while scores of country folk living within a “team-haul” and needing its ministry never darken its doors, or meet anywhere else for public worship. The natural location and surroundings of the country church condition its work and increase its problems. Its isolation and the scattered condition of those whom it seeks to serve make a situation not easily met. The standards of life in many rural communities are low, and are likely to drift toward a dead level, which is always lowering. That condition has too long prevailed in our country districts whereby the community oil has all been poured into the lamp of the “bright boy,” and the pride of the community has centered in the man who has gone out from the little settlement and has made a name for himself in the World. The church that is lifting its eyes toward the great wide world, in a sense, may be the best fitted to meet the religious needs of the local community. But the feeling must be overcome that the church can express itself through a few chosen individuals while the membership in general remain irresponsive to the Kingdom interests about them. Community life must be developed in its own terms. Some one has well said that “the task of the country church is to maintain and enlarge both individual and community ideals under the inspiration and guidance of the religious motives, and to help the rural people to incarnate these ideals in personal and family life, in industrial effort and in political development, and in all social relationships.” In some great day The country church Will find its voice, And it will say, “I stand in the fields Where the great earth yields Her bounties of fruit and grain; Where the furrows turn ’Till the plowshares burn, As they came ’round and ’round again; Where the Workers pray With their tools all day In the sunshine and shadow and rain.
“And I bid them tell Of the crops they sell, And speak of the work they have done; I speed every man In his hope and plan And follow his day with the sun; And grasses arid trees The birds and the bees, I know and feel every one.
“And out of it all, As the seasons fall, I build my great temple alway; I point to the skies But my f ootstone lies In commonplace work of the day; For I preach the worth Of native earth To love and to work is to pray.”
“We need such, a leadership in the rural church as will help her to find this voice, even as Dean Bailey prophesies. Leaders are needed who have a realizing sense of the presence of God in his world; who are sensitive to the divine voice, and who believe that for many people God’s will can best be worked out in connection with the cultivation of the soil.
Some one has said, “The cultivation of the soil is secondary to the cultivation of the soul.” This is quite true. But it is not a question of the cultivation of the soul as over against that of the cultivation of the soil, but of cultivating the soul while cultivating the soil.
“The church assumes no temporal authority as lord of the parish, but is rather the heart, supplying the life-blood of the Gospel to every member, and inspiring the activities of moral and social progress.” It must be a spiritual center, providing a common place of worship, but no amount of effort put forth to impose upon rural folk a spiritual leadership of the brand of the middle ages will succeed.
“What is needed is not that the qualities of life shall be pigeonholed, the religious qualities drawn out on occasion, but that every activity of life shall be shot through with the religious motive. Instead of branding everything related to the industrial life as secular and therefore essentially and forever opposed to spirituality, every vocational and social activity of rural life should be given its rightful and religious significance.
Religious zealots of the past have tried to make the world over and to fill it with miracle and wonder, so as to appeal to a falselykeyed spiritual sense, declaring that only the miraculous has religious significance. “What we really need to do is to attune our spirits to the multitudinous voice of God in the divinely ordered universe. It may be well to believe, and to be thrilled with the thought, that Jehovah fought for Israel on that day when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon. But may we not receive daily help from the consciousness that God is with us in the rising of the sun over Pine Hill or the moon in the Loup Valley. It is a curious thing that as soon as we begin to learn something about how a thing is done in the natural order, we immediately declare that God is not in it, or at least not to that degree that he is in the miracle; and that which should bring him nearer because helping us to understand him better, instead drives him farther from us. I remember very well an effort some years ago by an old soldier to prove to me that “ Providence Spring” was falsely so called. This spring of fresh water broke out just inside the dead line in Andersonville Prison, and it came as such a relief to the famishing prisoners who had only a limited supply of the foulest kind of water that it was called by them Providence Spring, many believing that a pitying God had provided it. But my aged soldier friend had discovered that it could be accounted for by the natural slope of the surrounding land, by the condition of the soil where the spring broke forth, and by a rainy season. These were very natural reasons, easily explained, and therefore to his mind there was nothing providential about it.
I am not denying that often the ways of Providence are past finding out. But I do say that many times we discover God in the natural order. And here is the opportunity, especially in the rural community, for the minister who appreciates the religious significance of the book of nature to help men to learn the lessons it would teach. “When men asked Jesus for a miracle-sign he condemned them for their lack of faith. We ask God for a wand and instead he gives us a hoe. This is far better, for it indicates a closer relationship between God and men. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to co-operate with God in reclaiming the earth and in making it serve the higher ends of life.
It is a blessed thing to be permitted to serve a God whom you can really help; one who reveals so much of his plans and methods that you can assist intelligently in making them serve their benevolent and eternal purposes.
We need leaders who can appreciate the fact that industrial life, especially of the rural sort, furnishes opportunities to work in harmony with the divine plan, and to promote the divine ideal. The right kind of pastoral leadership will be progressive, but it will not be self-assertive.
He makes a mistake who loads himself down with ready-made plans which he seeks to impose upon a church at the first opportunity, whether they fit or not, and whether or not the time is ripe and the people ready. The most successful plans for religious work are indigenous, native; the product of the very soil you cultivate; growing out of local conditions and needs, and flourishing in the atmosphere of present opportunity. Plans may be imported and adapted, but they must not be dragged in and flung at folks.
Once when I was a boy I overheard my mother and an Irish neighbor woman discussing the question of giving children disagreeable medicine. It seemed that my mother had had some difficulty with some of my brothers along this line. I remember quite distinctly Mrs. Feeley’s advice. She said, “Trow ’em down and put your knee on ’em, like I do my Mikey.” No doubt the neighbor woman’s method was quicker and easier for her, where she had to overcome rebellion, but it was correspondingly hard on Mikey.
Denunciation is the easiest thing in the world; and the next easiest thing is to give advice. But the real task of the religious leader is to evolve methods of Christian work among his people which shall express their own life, and at the same time to lead to higher planes of religious thought and life: Dealing with nature and her products gives occasion for reflection upon God’s providences. This reflection gives enlargement of soul, and makes one sensitive to the divine in all about him.
These awakened forces should be harnessed up to the great tasks of the kingdom of God. This can be done, not by segregating religion from the daily life, but by organizing all life’s activities upon the religious basis. And the church should be so organized that when every department is functioning properly each member gives conscious expression to its life. The rural church should be the center of the social life of the community. That is, provision for the social needs of all classes and of all ages in the community should be included in the program of the church of the open country. And this should not be provided for as a concession to a certain “worldly class,” and for the declared purpose of barring “ worse evils,” but because the church sees in the social and recreative instincts a real religious asset, and an opportunity for positive moral and religious training. Perhaps there are those who would have me throw in a warning here against the dangers of such a social program under the auspices of the church. I grant that it carries with it a great responsibility, but this the live church desires and is glad to assume where so great a service can be rendered. Let me with greater emphasis, warn against the danger of not taking care of the social life of the country folk. In the language of Kenyon L. Butterfield, “The countryside is calling, calling for men.
Vexing problems of labor and life disturb our minds in country as well as in city. The workers of the land are striving to make better use of their resources of soil and climate, and are seeking both larger wealth and higher welfare. But the striving and the seeking raise new questions of great concern. Social institutions have developed to meet these new issues. But the great need of the present is leadership.
Only men can vitalize institutions. It is well enough to discuss the problem in its theoretical aspects. It is desirable to organize large movements on behalf of the rural church. But more than all else just now, we need a few men to achieve great results in the rural parish, to re-establish the leadership of the church. No organization can do it. No layman can do it. A preacher must do it do it in spite of small salary, isolation, conservatism, restricted field, overchurching, or any other devil that shows its face. The call is imperative. Shall we be denied the men?”
“He was manifest in another form unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country.”