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Publicity for the Burlington Self-Survey on Human Relations
""Missions Accomplished"" Page 31
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A Mission to Rural America WHILE CITY CHURCHES confront the problem of over-crowding, daily requests for counsel and help come from parishes where distance between neighbors is measured in miles instead of feet. The rural church program of the Board of Home Missions seeks to provide the needed counsel. Training, "tools" and information for the 4,000 Congregational Christian Churches in rural America are provided by the Division of Church Extension and Evangelism through its Town and County Department, Committee on the Marginal Church, Student Summer Service, town and country committees of state conferences and the Congregational Christian Rural Fellowship. Training to Lead A major element in the rural church program is training for leadership. Scholarships are granted to rural ministers for in service training schools and conferences. Short courses are taught for rural ministers in some fifty state universities, colleges, theological schools and elsewhere, in addition to state conference institutes and the Board's two national summer schools for ministers. The Town and Country Department strives constantly to further awareness of rural problems and their solutions by advising with seminaries and students on rural courses, and by encouraging seminary graduates to pursue further studies in rural sociology at agricultural colleges. Parish Tools The publications familiarly known as parish "tools" are provided by the Board to deal specifically with parish methods and rural church problems. Titles like Parish Workbook for Town and Country Church, Successful Rural Church Methods, Rural Congregationalism in America, and scores of others, are designed to offer the best advice available, on many occasions in lieu of a staff visit, since it is impossible to visit all churches as often as could be wished. Visits to rural parishes do take place as frequently as possible and are under the guidance of the state Conference concerned. Where it is feasible, groups of rural parishes are brought together around a common interest, such as an eastern Montana conference on space and sparse settlement in the high plains, for pastors serving whole counties in that vast region. Rural projects like the Merom Rural Life Institute in Indiana are designed to demonstrate what the rural church can do as well as to serve a specific rural community. From these and many other projects comes much field research data processed and coordinated through the Board's Research Department, and forming a factual basis for effective program and policy developed by the Town and Country Department. Its aim is to analyze the task of the rural churches, and to gather facts to help understand the rural requirements of the Fellowship. In the last biennium 14 rural studies emerged from this activity covering topics from Rehabilitation of the Marginal Church to Theological Issues in the Rural Movement. In Ekalaka and at Yale Special brief training courses on rural problems are held each year - 21 of them in 1953. The locations of these conferences ranged from Waynoka, Okla., and Ekalaka, Mont., to the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. Happily, concern with the success of our Mission to Rural America is not confined to the mountains and the plains.
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A Mission to Rural America WHILE CITY CHURCHES confront the problem of over-crowding, daily requests for counsel and help come from parishes where distance between neighbors is measured in miles instead of feet. The rural church program of the Board of Home Missions seeks to provide the needed counsel. Training, "tools" and information for the 4,000 Congregational Christian Churches in rural America are provided by the Division of Church Extension and Evangelism through its Town and County Department, Committee on the Marginal Church, Student Summer Service, town and country committees of state conferences and the Congregational Christian Rural Fellowship. Training to Lead A major element in the rural church program is training for leadership. Scholarships are granted to rural ministers for in service training schools and conferences. Short courses are taught for rural ministers in some fifty state universities, colleges, theological schools and elsewhere, in addition to state conference institutes and the Board's two national summer schools for ministers. The Town and Country Department strives constantly to further awareness of rural problems and their solutions by advising with seminaries and students on rural courses, and by encouraging seminary graduates to pursue further studies in rural sociology at agricultural colleges. Parish Tools The publications familiarly known as parish "tools" are provided by the Board to deal specifically with parish methods and rural church problems. Titles like Parish Workbook for Town and Country Church, Successful Rural Church Methods, Rural Congregationalism in America, and scores of others, are designed to offer the best advice available, on many occasions in lieu of a staff visit, since it is impossible to visit all churches as often as could be wished. Visits to rural parishes do take place as frequently as possible and are under the guidance of the state Conference concerned. Where it is feasible, groups of rural parishes are brought together around a common interest, such as an eastern Montana conference on space and sparse settlement in the high plains, for pastors serving whole counties in that vast region. Rural projects like the Merom Rural Life Institute in Indiana are designed to demonstrate what the rural church can do as well as to serve a specific rural community. From these and many other projects comes much field research data processed and coordinated through the Board's Research Department, and forming a factual basis for effective program and policy developed by the Town and Country Department. Its aim is to analyze the task of the rural churches, and to gather facts to help understand the rural requirements of the Fellowship. In the last biennium 14 rural studies emerged from this activity covering topics from Rehabilitation of the Marginal Church to Theological Issues in the Rural Movement. In Ekalaka and at Yale Special brief training courses on rural problems are held each year - 21 of them in 1953. The locations of these conferences ranged from Waynoka, Okla., and Ekalaka, Mont., to the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. Happily, concern with the success of our Mission to Rural America is not confined to the mountains and the plains.
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