432 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



to encounter. According to data gathered by the Ohio Rural 

 Life Survey, the churches, as a rule, whose membership is less 

 than 100 do not prosper, while the smaller the membership the 

 greater the proportion of the churches which are dying; yet in 

 rural Ohio it appears that more than 4,000 churches have a mem- 

 bership of 100 or less, more than 3,000 a membership of 75 or less, 

 more than 2,000 a membership of 50 or less. 



Membership must not be confused with attendance. I have 

 personally visited a considerable number of churches on Sundays, 

 have counted their congregations and have compared the attend- 

 ance with the membership. In this State I have, in no case, found 

 the attendance as large as the membership. In this respect the 

 best record in any church I have attended is that of a church 

 whose membership is sixty and the attendance forty. In one 

 church the membership was 125, the attendance 34; in another 

 church the membership 300, the attendance 136. 



One of the striking facts brought to light through the survey 

 is the lack of an adequate number of resident ministers. "While 

 a reasonable degree of interchurch cooperation should result in 

 the maintenance of a resident pastor in nearly every inhabited 

 township, at the present time the church falls far short of real- 

 izing this possibility. In fact nearly 4,000 or about two-thirds 

 of the churches in rural Ohio are without resident ministers. 

 In 26 per cent, of the townships no church has a resident pastor. 



More than 5,000 of the churches are without the undivided 

 service of a minister. More than 2,200 churches have only one- 

 fourth of a minister's service or less, more than 3,300 have only 

 one-third of a minister's service or less, while more than 700 have 

 no part of a minister's service. These figures do not take into 

 consideration the fact that a considerable number of the ministers 

 have other occupations than the ministry. I personally have met 

 several ministers who have secular occupations and yet are each 

 serving two or more country churches. 



One of the most striking features of the situation is the fact 

 that whereas there are superintendents who are responsible for 

 the supervision of churches of their own denominations, there is 

 no superintendent, or official, who accepts responsibility for the 

 general moral and spiritual conditions in any considerable area. 

 However bad condidtions in a county or region may be there is no 



