y church in the community, for
by far the larger number of rural communities in Ohio should have but one
church. Since, on an average, there are five churches in a township and
only 1,448 persons, the formation of community churches is evidently both
advisable and important.

The community church may be a denominational church or a federated church.
It is the judgment of most of the denominational officials who are members
of the Committee of Interchurch Cooperation of the Ohio Rural Life
Association that wherever possible churches should be united in one
denominational church through the reciprocal exchange and elimination of
small churches by the denominational organizations. In such an exchange
church members of denomination A would unite with the church of
denomination B in community M, while members of denomination B would unite
with the church of denomination A in community N, and so on. A number of
such exchanges have been made, and so far as can be learned, they have
worked well. But the members of the small churches frequently refuse to
carry out this plan. They often care more for their local church than for
their denomination, and are not willing that their own church organization
should be destroyed. While such exchanges will doubtless continue to be
made from time to time, it is unlikely that rapid progress will be
achieved by this method alone.

On the other hand, the members of a local community are usually ready to
form a federated church when they understand it. This has been done in
Northfield, Aurora, Wayland, Olmstead Falls, Milford Centre and
Huntington, in Greene Township, Trumbull County, and in many other
communities. A description of some of them may be found on pages 60-69. If
the officials and superintendents of the church should become as favorable
to the formation of federated churches as they are to exchange between
denominations, and should actively further the movement, they could
without question bring about the unification of the churches in very large
numbers of communities which stand greatly in need of it.

Here then we have two possible methods of uniting the Christian people in
the rural communities. One of them--denominational exchange--is favored by
the officials but often opposed by the people in the churches. The
other--the federated church--is favored by the people in the churches and
opposed by many of the officials.

It is our contention that in the majority of cases the