THE COUNTRY CHURCH PROGRAMME 173 



eral Council and the Home Missions Council. Its pur- 

 pose was to discover the amount of " overlapping " in 

 mission work. It revealed instead so great an amount 

 of " overlooking " of need that those who were supposed 

 to know most about conditions almost resented the find- 

 ings. But this survey has become the historic seed of 

 nation-wide activities. One of its fruits was the deci- 

 sion, in January of the present year, of the Home 

 Missions Council, consisting of representatives of the 

 boards of home missions of the twenty-four leading 

 denominations in the United States, to carry out, as a 

 common undertaking, a survey of every State from 

 Kansas to the coast, in order that " the endeavor to 

 Christianize a continent be based upon the widest pos- 

 sible basis of ascertainable facts."* 



Material is abundant for use in the direction of such 

 a survey. George Frederick Wells has published an 

 excellent manual. " A Social Survey for Rural Com- 

 munities." The Commission on Social Service of the 

 Protestant Episcopal Church has issued another, en- 

 titled " A Social Service Programme for the Parish " ; 

 the Young People's Missionary Movement, a third ; the 

 Russell Sage Foundation a more comprehensive one for 

 general use in city or country. " The method is cor- 

 rect, and it is the only corrective method." 



One of the needs revealed by every survey yet made 

 gives us the next desideratum for the church's pro- 

 gramme. Church Union, or, where organic union be not 

 feasible. Federation. The situation shows the absolute 

 necessity of co-ordinating our forces. Not the planting; 

 of the church in immigration areas alone, but the orien- 



* " Consultations upon Western Neglected Fields," Home 

 Mission Council, p. 3. 



