oth fields offer fruitful ground for the spread of
unsocial types of religious expression.

The solution of this phase of adjustment of the church to community
needs lies in a patient educational program carried on by the
minister of the gospel. He must be a man of broad vision and must have
the fullest appreciation of the slowness with which the rural public
mind works. He must be everlastingly tactful and not attempt more than
the simplest advances at the beginning and not more than one at a
time. He should have at hand an abundance of educational material in
the way of literature, lantern slides, and periodicals which can be
used in showing what actually happens when the church embarks on a
broader program of rural service. A national educational program of
this type will in a few years create a demand that must be met and
that rural churches will pay well for as the value of such work will
be recognized.

The more serious phase of this problem is the lack of adequate
preparation for this service on the part of the ministry. In one of
the leading denominations (Methodist Episcopal) over twenty-nine per
cent of the charges are cared for by supplies, men who by reason of
educational preparation, age, or for some other cause are not now and,
in a large proportion of cases, never will be eligible to membership
in the Conferences. Of the remainder, only a small proportion are
graduates of schools of higher learning, such as colleges and
theological seminaries. At a time when a large number of those living
in rural communities are either agricultural college graduates or have
attended short courses in agriculture, it becomes apparent that an
uneducated ministry is becoming a menace to the future of the rural
church.

But of those who have had the advantages of a college or theological
seminary training, the type of training has not fitted them for
effective rural service. The training of ministers has gone through
the same process as other types of training. It was once thought that
since the sole business of the minister was the personal appeal to
accept Christ, with the emphasis on the personal atonement features of
Christianity rather than on the principles of Christian living, the
same type of training would fit one to deliver the message whether he
was in the slums of the city, on the shores of Africa, or in the
mountains of Colorado. Moreover, for some reason, it appears to have
been accepted that the rural minis