298 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



he thinks of all business transactions and of public welfare solely 

 in terms of self-advantage when he is a farm lad, he will think of 

 them in the same way when he becomes a part of the big complex 

 business interests and a citizen in a municipality where there are 

 so many advantages to be gained through political manipulation. 

 Thus if the farmer should be a sort of primitive individualist in his 

 attitude toward the community instead of being so well Christian- 

 ized in his moral ideals that he puts public welfare by the side of 

 private welfare, he will be the same sort of a selfish business man 

 and politician when he gets into the city where his selfishness 

 becomes so much more inimical to public welfare because life is 

 so much more complex and men live and work less to themselves. 



But we are here to talk more specifically about Missouri 

 churches, especially about our rural churches. We have found that 

 in. this State only about ten per cent of all our country churches 

 have resident pastors. For illustration, take the Baptists and Dis- 

 ciples, two of the strongest religious bodies in the State. They 

 have together some 3,500 congregations and not more than 600 of 

 them have resident pastors. Now, the country church can no more 

 succeed without efficient pastoral care than can the town church. 

 What is there about farmers that makes them less in need of church 

 oversight and pastoral care than grocerymen and carpenters? For 

 what reason can it be argued that a city church cannot succeed with- 

 out a resident pastor but a country church can? Our rural churches 

 are dying in many cases for lack of resident pastoral leadership. 

 The speaker who said they were not afraid of death was right in his 

 diagnosis; too many of them are afflicted with the paralysis of in- 

 difference due to lack of leadership and the ideals that the man 

 who is trained to be a church expert, i. e., the pastor could bring, 

 if he was resident with them, and gave them something of himself 

 and his organizing ability as well as his sermons. After all, the 

 sermon is not the only consideration in church life. It is paramount, 

 perhaps, but it is only one phase of the religious work of a congre- 

 gation. That of organized work is only a little less important, and 

 the sermon multiplies its power immensely by being delivered to a 

 congregation that is "tuned up" by the interest that comes through 

 effective organized and active church life. 



We are told that there are not enough preachers. I am inclined 

 to think there are too many churches. If there were not more than 

 one country church for every three miles square of farm region 

 and a parish system were adopted, we would have much less trouble 



