Preaching in the Country 85 



for they are already in many respects trained leaders. 

 Let these ministers be provided if possible with an 

 assistant, a layman it may be, for both their town 

 and country work. Then let each of them have a 

 rural appointment to which they may go from one 

 to four times each month; and, inspired by a 

 vision of all the possibilities ahead of them and 

 endued with divine power and guidance, enter 

 earnestly into the great work of rehabilitating the 

 country community. It is evident that the minister 

 who will leave his town congregation with perhaps 

 only one Sunday sermon and go to a country church 

 and preach to the adults, and teach and lead the 

 young, while his assistant takes charge of the second 

 Sunday service at home it is evident that such a 

 minister will not only wear longer in the locality 

 in which he is stationed, but that he will find in the 

 rural work just mentioned such a flood of zeal and 

 inspiration as will more than make up for and 

 repay the effort. Many of the town ministers are 

 preaching to audiences that are more or less irrespon- 

 sive to what they have to say. Under present con- 

 ditions they are compelled to preach to the same 

 audiences too much. Their sermons grow stale. 

 But under the arrangement here recommended, 

 such conditions would not obtain. They would come 

 back from the rural appointment so laden with 

 new ideas and ideals as to appear to the home 

 congregation in a most advantageous light. 



