RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1307, 9 December 1911, Page 9

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

CHURCH DEBTS AND PROGRESS. A TIME TO CALL A HALT. The P.ev. W. Llewelyn Williams, writing in the "Christian World" of October ill, slates :- Uy church debts, in this con nee ti on, is meant tho debts incurred in the provision or buildings for wor.-liiu and work. Dming the last decade the fire Churches have engaged in extension work on a vast suiie. New places of worship have been erected, fresh schools accommodation has been provided, old churches have been reconstructed, enlarged, and improved. The lollowim; statistics, whien do not include Sunday School accommodation, set forth the facts lor 1900-190'J:- , New Churches. Additional ,_ , etc. Sittings. Wesloyan Meth°(li!;t GAT 250,000 (estimated) Primitive Meth<>(list 502 153.051 Congregational If!) 2(10.000 (estimated) Baptist dl'J 173,300 Total 2,007 780,411 If can with confidence lm affirmed that so tar as regards premises, these bodies aro far better equipped for their work (nan at any previous stage'of their history. There is onlv ono unsatisfactory feature. Those buildings are largely unpaid lor. Hugo debts have been contracted Tho Twentieth Century Funds nave had a twofold influence upon church finance. Thev exhausted for the time being the available resources of the Churches, and tiicv inamruratod an era of extension without n parallel in Iho history of the Kreo Churches. The grants-in-aid indle-a-l churches to conceive schemes of extension on a scale hitherto undreamt of, on a scale from winch they would have shrunk but for no moneys voted from ihee centra! ",»."> M a result . financial resv.onsiIjihtics have ton incurred heavier than most lrre Churchmen will believe pos■sible. Rarely vera the people in any given locality able to raise bv prodigious ollork over 50 per cent, of tho total cost ot their ambitious schemes. Loans and mortgages were the means bv which the immediate difficulty was met. To-dav a burden of debt rests mion the churches [and it involves other burdens, e.g., interest on loans), which crinnles to no sliff.it, extent both pas|ors and people in their Christian work. Mv inouiries' have revealed amazing facts, which account in no small decree for the comparative failure of spiritual work during the la-t few years, and nermnt for what Mr. Shakespeare has termed "the arrested progress of the Church." L?t me, with the minimum of comment, state the facts as . have found them. The writer gn PS on to refer in detail to the position of the AVe«lpvnii. P-Vuiiivo Methodist, United Methodist tional. Baptist, and English Presbyterian Churches, and then proceeds:— The total indebtedness of the leaden" Free Churches may be presented in one table, as follows:—

YTeslcyan Methodist J;l fi-17 G-l-7 Primitive Methodist I,l9''V(o Presbyterian 122957 United Methodist (estimated)".. (KOJCCO Congregational (estimated) 1,000 COO Baptist (estimated) 1,000.000

JC.5,'183,250 This represents the minimum debt. In tho case of (ho two last in the list, I am pretty certain that if it were possible to ascertain even the approximate debt, it would be much larger than the above estimate. To this total h.a.s to oe added the debts of the minor bodies some of which, like the Calviiiistic .Methodists of 'Wales, arc important and very aggressive churches. If the debt* of the "churches wore put at .£0,500,000, it would be fairly near the mark.

And if this total only carries interest at 4 per cent., it mean's that a sum of anything between .£200,1)00 and .£2SO,GOO has to bo paid yearly for interest clone. Before one penny of dcht can be extinguished this huge sum has to lx> raised every year.

That it is an oppressive burden, handicapping the churches in their work, the slightest inquiry demonstrate;:. Consider what a heavy building debt upon a Christian community means. No pastor will need illumination. The whole strength of the Church is concentrated upon (he debt. The pastor becomes i« "debt raiser"—a bcg.jar or funds from any and every quarter. His mind is diverted from his proper work. I speak from experience. There are literally hundreds of pastors in all the churches whose time and energy are so absorbed in attempts to.rai.se funds that they have none left for study or visitation. The only special efforts possible are the sales of wort or bazaars, so properly condemned by the chairman of the Congregational Union at The whole horizon of the Church is bounded by its debt. A M'esleyan minister holding one of the foremost pulpits iu London frankly confessed to mo (hat he regards the policy of extension which followed tho administration" of the Century Funds as wholly disastrous to the work of the Church. In my peregrinations I have come across numberless cases which more than justify this strong judgment. Sitting accommodation has been increased by hundreds of thousands, and the attendance steadily decreases. It is easy fo blame the pastors. But it is wiser to recognise that all over the country there v aro churches at their wits' end to discover how to make ends meet. Everything is subordinated to the one object. Pastors' salaries, iu hundreds of eases, are determined not by the worth of the man but by the margin which remains when the claims of the debt arc met. Even that is not the worst. Men who ardently desire to engage in aggressive evangelistic work—surely the supremo work of the Churches—find that a debt, where or.e exists, effectually blocks tho way. Take the case of Mr. Tolefrce Parr and i the Surrey Chapel. Its last report is pitiful reading. Here is a man, whose praise as an evangelist is in all tho Churches, kernny alive to the need of evangelistic effort in south-oast London, j and prepared to spend himself in tho attempt to make it. But a long-standing debt, amounting to thousands of pounds, blocks the way. "A very large portion of his time," says the report, "has to be spent in soliciting donations, and the energies of the members are also diverted from evangelistic to money-raising efforts." That is the invariable story. t The time ■ has fully come to cry "Halt!" For years to como the Churches have more than enough to do to meet' the obligations imposed unon them by existing debt. Leaders in all the Churches should frown upon any building scheme, save under (he most exceptional conditions. In all cases they should insist upon a larger proportion of the cost being, if not in hand, at least visible. They should insist nix-n less ambitious schemes, upon (he necessity of spending a larger proportion of their resources on their school premises, and loss upon (lie building used on the average three or four hours per week. Above all, they shouli. censo to acquiesce in the existence of debt and in finding excuses for it. Wo I should have less brick and mortar extension, but this would bo richlv comp°n--saled for by the growth in-all essential directions which would follow the concentration of pastor and iieoplc upon (ho spiritual aims of the Church.