Accent on Youth

During his 50-odd years of farming in Iowa's Warren County, squinty-eyed old Ed Russell had received many a pastoral call. But never had he seen a Methodist parson like pretty, plump Bobby-Soxer Ruth Greenwood. Last week, Bible in hand, she came from Pleasant Hill Church ready to chat with Ed, read some Scripture, and pray.

Ed was glad to see her. He reminisced about the good old days at Pleasant Hill, when a Sunday congregation numbered as much as 115 instead of the present dozen or so. "Out in the country," said Ed, "they are going to take our churches away from us. The younger generation is moving away from these farms. Things is different from when my father used to put all us kids in the back end of a wagon and away we'd go a-bellering."

Sacramental Shock Troops. It is these changes in rural Iowa that have set 20-year-old Ruth Greenwood and others like her on their pastoral rounds. Last August, when brisk, cheerful Rev. Gene Carter, 30, took charge of the Warren County Group ministry, he found no less than 21 Methodist churches serving a population of 17,000. Eight of the churches had closed; the remaining 13 were getting along with three full-time ministers and "supply" preachers. Pastor Carter, a teacher of sociology and Christian leadership at Simpson College (Indianola, Iowa), decided to throw his students into the breach.

By last week he had organized a team of 17 boys (twelve of them ex-G.I.s) and 13 girls who conduct Sunday services, organize community activities, visit the sick and preach sermons among Warren County's undermanned Methodist churches. He had taught them how to baptize, given them pastoral pointers.

So far, only one of the girls--dark, earnest Wauneita McConnell, 29--has been permitted to administer the sacraments, though Ruth Greenwood, a preacher's daughter, expects to be licensed by the bishop this month. All students plan to enter the Methodist ministry or church work of some sort.

Too Many or Too Few. Most Warren County churchgoers have taken well to the accent on youth. Attendance at the student-served churches has picked up. But the benefit cuts both ways. Explains Carter: "When I was a student, 42% dropped out of the ministry because of the strain of doing a job without any help or supervision. These young people learn more in a month under supervision than we learned in three years by trial and error."

Young Gene Carter takes firm issue with last month's 70-page report of the independent Committee for Cooperative Field Research, which suggests that the remedy for rural Iowa's religious anemia is to reduce the number of churches. It seems to him that there are not too many churches but too few ministers. Says he: "I've never seen an area where the church was closed and the whole congregation goes elsewhere. A lot of the people just quit going to church."

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