Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 103 



souri, all churches in Pike county, the country churches and the 

 little town churches. 



I want to show you right now the opposite of this picture. 

 This one is about preachers and where they live. I want to tell 

 you that absentee pastors of the churches are a detriment. We are 

 trying to get the country pastor on the farm and active in his own 

 community. I was told that in one town there were thirty-three 

 ministers, but that only twenty-three of them were preaching. That 

 must not go on. I was told that the preachers live in one place 

 and preach in another. One lived at a place, I think, that was 

 thirty-two miles away from one of the churches he preached in; 

 I do not remember the other distances, but he lives in one place 

 and preaches in four others. I want to tell you that thing has got 

 to go. Farmers, do you know that you are paying high for the 

 preaching you receive in the church. I want to tell you that in 

 proportion you are paying bigger salaries to these absentee preach- 

 ers than the city churches pay to their pastors. You pay on an 

 average of $250 a year for a man to come out from some town once 

 a month, in most instances, and preach "at you." Sometimes they 

 live so far away that funerals have to be conducted by the elders of 

 the church. We have got to stop that kind of business if we are 

 going to make Jesus Christ King of our country. 



Do you see those lines that look like shooting skyrockets? They 

 represent the distances preachers live from where they preach. 

 See this line up here? That fellow lives away down in St. Louis, 

 and he comes up there (in Northeast Missouri) once a month to 

 preach. And there (pointing to chart) is a man in Vandalia, but 

 the man in Vandalia doesn't preach in Vandalia. There is another 

 fellow from another town that comes to Vandalia to preach, and 

 this Vandalia preacher goes out fifteen or twenty miles to preach. 

 It is estimated by Dr. Wilson that one-sixth of all time taken by 

 country ministers is taken up in journeying to and from their 

 churches. We are trying to group these churches, and it is our 

 effort to solve this problem by having the ministers live among the 

 people. We have taken the churches that can be grouped naturally 

 and that can pay the minister, and we are picking out men that 

 will live among people and stay on the job. We have had so many 

 preachers, that is the trouble, but not enough pastors. When I 

 graduated from seminary about twenty years ago and began preach- 

 ing I did hope that I would end up in a city church with stained 

 glass windows and a pipe organ and learn to say "eyther" and 



