es 147-234.) More than 5,500 of the 6,642 country churches
are without the full time service of a minister; 3,755 have only one-third
or less of a minister's services; 2,500 have one-fourth or less; while
more than 750 have no regular service of a minister at all. A large number
of ministers have other occupations than the ministry.

Moreover it is a rule of nearly universal application that ministers of
country churches in Ohio do not remain long enough in their parishes to
make effective service possible. According to the official records of the
conferences of the largest and doubtless one of the most efficient of the
denominations, in the fall of 1917, 48 per cent of its rural ministers
were about to begin their first year, and 74 per cent either their first
or second year of service in the fields to which they were appointed. Only
26 per cent had had a two years' acquaintance with their parishes, while
only 8 ministers, or scarcely more than 1 per cent, had served as long as
five years. This condition is no better in nearly all the other
denominations.

Because of this, and also because the effort of the ministry is divided
among various and widely separated churches, the people who live in the
rural districts in Ohio receive too little pastoral service. The short
term also discourages the ministers from attempting to discover and meet
the needs of their communities and from formulating and carrying out any
adequate plans of community service. The churches, as a rule, are not
trained to expect such service, nor the ministers to render it.

In certain extensive areas in Ohio the country church seems to have broken
down. (See Chapters IV and V.) In regions where it has been active for a
century it has failed and is now failing to dispel ignorance and
superstition, to prevent the spread of vice and disease, and to check the
increasing production of undeveloped and abnormal individuals. Because of
the lack of an organization to cooerdinate the work of the denominations,
and to study the field as a whole, no one has been conscious of
responsibility for such failure. The conditions have not even been known
by many of the church officials who were responsible, and a situation has
been permitted to develop which threatens the welfare of the whole State
and demands the immediate redirection of the Church's missionary
activities.

The pay of the country ministers in Ohio is small, the support of the
church meager. Accordin