Religion: Planting Churches

Through the sparse wasteland south of the Grand Coulee Dam last week crawled a motorcade with 59 ranking Protestant churchmen and churchwomen. They were studying “planting” 22 new churches in an area where even houses are now few & far between.

Ten years from now, the churchmen believe. the sparse clusters of houses and lonely filling stations will be thriving communities. Irrigation in the Columbia River basin is expected to raise the population of some sites from nearly zero to as much as 15,000 by 1960. With the help of the National Council of Churches, the denominations intend to be ready with a church for every 1,500 to 2,000 Protestants, churchgoing or not.

Said Dr. Claton S. Rice, president of the Washington-North Idaho Council of Churches: “Our fundamental thought is to avoid the ruinous competition which has strangled churches in many towns. In some places there are feeble, self-supporting churches 50 years old competing with another denomination in our group.”

“It costs $74 a member per year to continue a small church competing with others. We can maintain a new, noncompeting church, with 50 to 100 members, for $15 to $25 annually per member.”

Of the 22 new churches to be established in the region, the Baptists and Methodists have been given the job of building four each; the Congregational Christians and Disciples of Christ, three each; the Presbyterians, two, and six other denominations, one apiece. Each new church is expected to cost from $80,000 to $100,000.

Dr. Rice is confident that there will be no trouble finding preachers. “I have found there is still a little of the old missionary zeal in the men in our divinity schools,” he says. “I seldom fail to find a young fellow ready to tackle the toughest spot we can assign him.”