  What of the Church? What country landscape is complete without the church spires? In this spacious western region, in the heart of awe-inspiring natural scenery, the church spires are guideposts to almost 50,000 people. This land is new. It has been the changing frontier. Tremendous developments have been in process. The country is in a transition stage between the stock-raising past and the agricultural future. Population has increased rapidly; population has been shifting. The whole background has been kaleidoscopic. The Church has faced bewildering changes and growth. The burden of increasing its service and equipment has been heavy; it has not been able to “keep up” with the pace of civilization. The story of early church growth in the cowboy country is one inspiring loyalty since it eloquently traces the faithfulness of a few in a country where God was easily forgotten. One of the first things to be read of rough-and-ready Bannock, among the earliest mining towns on the Range, is that church services were held there. The Church migrated with its congregations. Missionaries from the East came through with the fur trappers and preached the word of God. When the land began to be taken up by settlers, impromptu meetings were held, and Sunday schools were started in many places which had no ministers. Some of these points of worship gradually developed into organized religious bodies so that at present there are churches which have grown up with the country. A Difficult Field The Church in this frontier country has always faced great difficulties. Chiefly, there is the vast area of it, with a scattered and transient population. Homesteaders are a restless, uncertain, human quantity. Some are engrossed in getting a start. Others move on as soon as they have “proved up” on their claims. All are poor; there is always an economic struggle going on. The old frontier spirit of “let have and let be” survives from the cowboy “Good-bye, God, we’re going to Wyoming,” said a little Boston girl as the family was starting west. This typifies what happened as people from the East and Middle West moved out to the frontier. In the desperate struggle for existence homesteaders had little time for Christian enterprise. Because of the great distances and scattered population, adequate church ministry has been difficult if not impossible. People had for so long lived without a church that indifference developed. The longer they stayed the less they took the church for granted. The older the section, one finds to-day, the less likely it is to want church ministry. Newer homesteaders, recently come from other parts of the country where the church was more available, are more eager for church and Sunday school. A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS The M. E. Church at Mosquero, Union County, N. M. Development and Distribution The differences in religious development and psychology according to the time of settlement are well illustrated by these counties. Generally speaking, Beaverhead grew up before the Church had NO ROOM FOR BOTH The Presbyterian Church at Melrose, Montana, and its next-door neighbor, a deserted saloon. Church work has been going on in these counties since 1867, when Protestant work was started at Bannock, in Beaverhead County. Churches were organized in the other counties in succeeding decades. The first Protestant church was organized in Hughes between 1870 and 1880, in Sheridan and Union Counties between 1880 and 1890. In this comparatively short time, some churches have gone under. Beaverhead has had nine Protestant churches, of which six are now active. One church, located just outside the border of the county in Melrose, a small hamlet, is included in this report. Dillon, the county seat, has four churches, or one Protestant church for about every 675 persons. Outside Dillon, the habitable rural area of the county has two Protestant churches, or one church for about every 1,800 square miles and for about every 2,300 persons. Roman Catholics have two organized churches in the county, Mormons have one active and one inactive church, and there is one Christian Science church. COMMUNITY MAP OF SHERIDAN COUNTY, WYOMING MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF SHERIDAN COUNTY CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO COMMUNITY MAP OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO Sheridan County has had twenty-two Protestant churches, of which seventeen are now active and two are inactive. The city of Sheridan has nine Protestant churches, one church for about every 1,020 persons; outside Sheridan, the habitable area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 220 square miles, and for about every 1,130 persons. The county has five Catholic churches, a Mormon, a Christian Science, and a Theosophical organization. The newest county of the four has the most churches. Thirty-nine Protestant churches have been organized in Union County, thirty-one of which are now active. Clayton, the county seat, has four churches, one for about every 625 persons; outside Clayton, the rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 280 square miles and for about every 525 persons. There are five organized Catholic churches. The four counties now have a total of seventy active Protestant churches representing eleven different denominations, but there is an acute need of a more strategic distribution. Churches located in the city of Sheridan will henceforth be referred to as “city” churches; churches located in the towns of Dillon, Pierre and Clayton will be referred to as “town” churches; those located in villages, a classification applying to all centers with a population of 250 to 2,500, will be referred to as “village” churches; and those located in hamlets of less than 250 population or the open country will be known as “country” churches. Classified in this way, nine, or 13 per cent. of the total, are “city” churches; thirteen, or 19 per cent., are “town” churches; fourteen, or 20 per cent., are “village” churches, and thirty-four, or 48 per cent., are “country” God’s Houses A live church organization should have a building of its own. It is hard, indeed, to preach the reality of religion without a visible house of God. Yet nearly one-third of the organizations have no buildings and must depend on school houses, homes or depots. Some of these churches, located in strategic places, acutely need buildings and equipment if they are to hold their own in the future. For others, however, the possession of buildings would be a tragedy, since they would thus become assured of a permanency which is not justified. All the city and town churches have buildings, as well as twelve of the fourteen village, and fifteen of the thirty-four country, churches. In addition, two inactive organizations have buildings which are available and are used to some extent. EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND PARISH HOUSE Beaverhead County, Montana. The majority of the buildings are of wood; fourteen are of brick, cement or adobe. Unfortunately, the Range has no typical pioneer architecture of its own. Most of the buildings are reminiscent of New England forbears. Many of them look barren and unkempt. Standing forlorn upon the plains, most of the open country churches are unrelieved by any sign of trees. Little or no effort has been made to make them attractive. Thirty buildings A new kind of community house was built last summer by the Sheridan Presbyterian Church. It is a summer camp on a mountain stream not far from the Big Horn Mountains, about twenty miles south of Sheridan. The building is used for kitchen, dining room, rest room and general headquarters. Each family brings its own tent when using the camp. The purpose is to make it a place for tired people, and especially for those who have no cars or other means of taking an outing during some part of the hot weather. The community idea expresses itself in a plan whereby those owning cars shall sometimes transport a family that otherwise might have no outing. Church property is valued at $592,323, and it is noteworthy that the churches have acquired property of such value in so short a time. The fact that church growth is a present-day phenomenon is illustrated by the two splendid buildings erected since this survey was made, and the preparations for a third which will cover an entire block. The highest value of any city church is $70,000, of any town church $75,000, of any village church $7,000 and of any country church, $4,000. Twenty-eight churches have parsonages, their total valuation amounting to $61,300, or an average value of $2,189. About one-third of the churches carry some indebtedness on their property. Twenty-five churches report a total debt of $57,695, of which amount $28,500 was borrowed by six city churches, $21,700 by four town churches, $2,905 by five village churches and $4,590 by eight country churches. The money was spent for new buildings, new parsonages, repairs and, in one case, for a garage to hold the preacher’s Ford. Curiously enough, instead of being a hardship, working to pay off a debt often brings church members together into a unified working group. The interest paid ranges from 4 to 8 per cent. Church Membership Even more important than the material assets of the churches are their human assets—their members. The total number enrolled in Protestant churches in the four counties is 5,820. Active members number 3,956, or 68 per cent., while 1,013, or 17.4 per cent., are classed as inactive, i.e., they neither attend church services nor contribute to church support, and 851, or 14.6 per cent., are non-resident. The country and city churches have the highest proportion of non-resident members—16.9 per cent. and 16.6 per cent., respectively; the town figure is next at 11.7 per cent., and the village percentage is 9.83. These people have moved, or else live too far away to come to church services. In addition to the enrolled membership, there are members of distant churches who have never transferred to local churches. They are scattered through all these counties, and their number is, of course, not known and cannot be estimated. Some may have been asked to join local churches, but it is certain that some have not, and that no one knows or seems to care if they have been members of some church elsewhere. They may attend local churches occasionally, but it is more likely that they do not. Some of them feel like the little hard-working ranch lady who said, “I was a church member out in Iowa, thirty-five years ago, but I’ve never done lifted by letter and I’ve been here so long now, I guess I never will.” CHART I CHART II Most of the churches are in the larger centers. Of the total resident church membership nearly 43 per cent. belong to city churches, 28 per cent. to town churches, 11 per cent. to village churches and only 15 per cent. to country churches. As the center decreases in size, the more it draws from the surrounding country. Thus, 93 per cent. of the total resident families of city churches live in the city and 7 per cent. live outside; 87 per cent. of the total resident families of town churches live in the town and 13 per cent. live outside; 62 per cent. of the total resident families belonging to village churches live in villages and 38 per cent. live outside. Somehow the Church has failed to appeal to the men. A prominent man who never came to church in one of the towns in the counties studied, said to a minister: “Here is a hundred dollars. For God’s sake, don’t let the church go down!” This man realized that the community needed the church, but he chose A larger proportion of young people are enrolled in the city and town churches than in those of the village and open country. City and town church memberships have 9 per cent. boys, and 14.36 per cent. girls. Villages have 6.75 per cent. boys, and 12.26 per cent. girls. Open country churches have 8.19 per cent. boys, and 9.26 per cent. girls. One reason for the small number of young people is that many grew up without the Church. The children now growing up have better church opportunities. The hope of the Church for the future is to reach the children. The small church prevails on the Range, the average active membership being only about fifty-seven. For the various groups, the active membership is as follows: AVERAGE ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP
The country churches have an average of eighteen, the village churches thirty-five, the town churches ninety-one and the city churches 185 members each. Forty-nine of the seventy churches have fifty active members or less, and thirty-six, or 51.4 per cent., of these have less than twenty-five each. Twenty-one churches have each more than fifty active members. Forty-four out of the forty-nine churches of less than fifty members are either in villages or in the open country. All the churches of more than 100 members are either town or city churches. CHART III CHART IV It is an acknowledged fact that the size of membership has a good deal to do with church efficiency; in a word, that the small church is a losing proposition. Until the present, the small church on the Range has been a necessity because of the small and CHART V In the matter of gain or loss in membership, it is to be noted that, during the last year, a little more than half the churches made a net gain in membership, sixteen churches broke even on the year and seventeen showed a net loss. Thus, 3 per cent. of all the churches remained stationary, 24 per cent. lost in membership and 53 per cent. gained. Of the churches with 50 or more members, 82 per cent. gained; of those with less than 50 members only 33.3 per cent. gained. Seven hundred and sixty-four new members were taken in during the year. Forty per cent. of these were taken in by letter, the rest on confession of faith. This gain by confession was about 13 per cent. of the previous net active membership. Gain was distributed according to sex and age as follows:
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