Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin, 41, number 3, December 1948

Bulletin o

COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

DECATUR, GEORGIA

Vol. XLI

DECEMBER 1948

No. 3

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Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Decatur, Ga., under Act of August 24, 1912

PUBLISHED QUARTERLY AT DECATUR, GEORGIA

Field Work and Evangelism

New Rural Training Program

Indiantown Country Church Award

Student Body Statistics

COLUMBIA FIELD WORK COVERS LARGE TERRITORY

The program of Field Work of Columbia Seminary is one of the most
varied and richest in opportunities for student experience offered by any
seminary in the south. It covers every phase of urban, rural, and institutional
work and reaches both negroes and whites.

Every student in the seminary is engaged in some form of field work,
voluntary or remunerative. The age groups served range all the way from
mothers of babies at Central Presbyterian Baby Clinic to the inmates of
the Fulton County Old Folks Home. The institutional work stretches all the
way from Lawson General Hospital on the north side of Atlanta to the Fed-
eral Penitentiary on the south side. Gospel teams of different sizes serve
regularly in such institutions as Lawson General Hospital, Hospital 48, Fulton
County Poor Farm, Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children, DeKalb
County Jail, U. S. Federal Penitentiary, U. S. Honor Farm, DeKalb County
Work Camp, Atlanta Stockade, Central Church Baby Clinic, and others. In
most of these places groups of students teach, preach, lead the singing, serve
as quartettes, pianists, organists, or choir directors. In some of them they
minister to groups, and in some their work is personal from bed to bed.
Hundreds of people are touched each week by this far-flung ministry.

The seminary has a number of students capable of service as song leaders.
The two or three quartettes are being called upon increasingly to conduct the
evening services in churches and to challenge youth groups with their testi-
monies and with the call to full-time Christian service. Over 90 students
are serving churches in one way or another as Sunday School teachers, Di-
rectors of Youth Work, Supply Pastors, and Assistant Pastors. The four foreign
speaking students are being used constantly by churches to speak on subjects
related to foreign missions. Through these various activities the work of the
classroom is being complemented by a rich and varied program of practical
work, that the ministry may be "thoroughly furnished unto every good work."

EFFECTIVE EVANGELISTIC WORK
DONE BY SEMINARY STUDENTS

The Department of Evangelism and Field Work of Columbia Seminary
recently made a survey of the results of the ministry of the seminary students
for the summer months of 1948. The results were highly encouraging in the
evidence provided that these men are not only evangelistic in spirit but effec-
tive in their presentation of the Gospel message. Although some of the student
reports are still incomplete, the answers already provided by the large ma-
jority give an inspiring picture of the work which has been done. The ques-
tionnaires which were answered by the students gave information concerning
the various phases of their summer ministry which are related to evangelism
along such lines as surveys and censuses, prospect lists, revivals and evangelis-
tic services held, Vacation Bible Schools, personal work, Home Visitation
Evangelism, and additions by profession of faith and by letter. The results
are listed below:

Number of students reporting thus far 76

Churches served as reported 132

States in which these churches were located 12

Revivals in churches 55

Vacation Bible Schools 73

Personal Work Engaged in 70

Home Visitation Evangelism 23

Students having Religious Census or Survey 26

Students preparing Prospect Lists 59

Students Preaching Evangelistic Series in

their own Church 20

Students Preaching Evangelistic Series in other churches 9

Additions through student work 586

(By Profession 277 By Letter 309)

During the current school year approximately 60 students are serving
over 90 churches as pastors.

NEW RURAL TRAINING PROGRAM
HOLDS LARGE POSSIBILITIES

After more than a year of planning, a new Rural Training Program
was initiated at Columbia Seminary with the beginning of the fall quarter.
Under the sponsorship of the seminary Department of Country Church and
the Home Mission Committee of Athens Presbytery an eight year financial
grant has been secured for the erection of this unique experimental laboratory
within the bounds of Athens Presbytery, where there are over thirty rural
churches available in a small geographical area easily accessible to the sem-
inary. The churches and the presbytery are uniting in the program and the
work will be carried forward under the constant supervision and direction of
Professor Cecil Thompson of the Department of Evangelism and Country
Church at Columbia Seminary. This group of rural churches has long been
dormant and approximately 42% of churches organized in Athens Presbytery
across the years have died. It is a field which affords a great opportunity and
challenge for developing a new and more effective type of program for the
country church and for training men who expect to give their life ministry
to this vitally important work.

An executive committee has been elected within the Presbytery of Athens
with four prominent business men and one minister as its membership. The
committee is composed of the following: J. Swanton Ivy, Athens, Wade
P. Huie, Sr., Elberton, Secretary, M. O. Schaap, Cornelia, Treas., George
Rice, Commerce, and Rev. C. P. Phillips, Supt. of Home Missions. Rev.
Cecil Thompson is a consulting member of the committee. The budget for
the next eight years for operation of the proposed plan is $25,000.

An enriched and developing program is now under way and four training
classes have already been held. The group of students serving home mission
and rural churches in Athens Presbytery, all other students interested in rural
church work, and all home mission pastors of the Presbytery constitute the
group in training. Seven commissions for research and study have been
formed to deal with such matters as surveys, terracing and conservation,
insurance and upkeep, rural projects, rural church bibliography, and mate-

rials, and various other phases of rural church work. Seven specialists in
these various fields have already met with the group, and a wealth of material
is available in nearby institutions and agencies for resources in developing the
program. The University of Georgia College of Agriculture, the Georgia
Agricultural Extension Service, Toccoa Falls Institute, Rabun Gap Nacoochee,
The Toccoa Health Clinic, various Agriculture and Government Soil Con-
servation Agencies are cooperating in the work. The meetings of the group
are held for one full day each month with over 20 attending. The training
classes meet each time in a different country church and do their work right
on the field, where observations and experimentation can be made.

Every church in the presbytery is now supplied with regular services.
There is much interest in the results and a growing spirit of anticipation and
of hope. Rearrangement of the grouping of churches has been completed. The
quality and number of services within the churches will be enlarged. Renova-
tion of some buildings has begun. New church and Sunday School buildings
are not only contemplated but in some instances are under construction.
Plans are being made for the erection of the six new manses which are needed.
A great deal of study is being done by the students with a view to determining
not only the needs and problems of the fields but the resources which are
available for them. A wealth of resources is being discovered. The program
will be a constant but continuing one, and will require a considerable number
of years for its completion.

Each participating church has already officially elected its members for
a Rural Church Council which will assemble once each three months for a
planning meeting and supper in a central place. This will bring together from
sixty to eighty lay leaders, home mission pastors, student pastors, and leaders
from various fields of the rural church for inspiration, education, and pro-
motion of the program. It is believed that a new day is dawning not only
for these struggling country churches but for the development of a program
which will be helpful in other areas of the Assembly and for the more ade-
quate training of a qualified rural ministry and leadership.

INDIANTOWN COUNTRY CHURCH AWARD
GOES TO ROBERT DALE DAFFIN

The announcement of the winner of the Annual Indiantown Country
Church Award at Columbia Seminary was made by President J. McDowell
Richards at a recent chapel service. This award was established in 1947 as a
gift from three young business men of the Indiantown Presbyterian Church
near Hemingway, South Carolina, in appreciation of what the country church
had meant to them and in a desire to encourage the enlistment and training
of more men for the work of the rural ministry.

The award is to be made annually to the student who in the judgment
of the Faculty does the best and most creative piece of work in a rural field
during the vacation period between his Middle and Senior years at the sem-
inary. The winner of the first award of $100.00 in 1947 was Rev. Wilbur
Parvin, now pastor of two fine country churches in South Carolina.

An indication that this award is already serving its purpose is found
in the fact that more students engaged in this type of work during the past
summer than perhaps ever before, and that there was greater interest in
such work.

The award this year went to Mr. Robert Dale Daffin of St. Andrews,
Fla., a member of the present Senior Class. His work during the summer was
in a group of five open country churches near Ripley, Miss, which had been
without a pastor for a considerable period of time, and which had suffered
greatly in consequence. The work was of a definitely pioneer and missionary
type. Mr. Daffin has accepted an invitation to supply these churches from
time to time during the present school year and to continue with the field
as regular pastor after graduation next spring. Mr. Daffin entered the sem-
inary after serving for a number of years as a certified public accountant and
is committed to the rural ministry. He is a son of the manse and his father,
who was formerly a missionary to Brazil, is now pastor of the Presbyterian
Church at St. Andrews, Fla.

COLLEGES AND STATES REPRESENTED
AT COLUMBIA SEMINARY

An analysis of the educational and geographical background of the 106
undergraduate students enrolled at Columbia Seminary during the fall quar-
ter of 1948 reveals a number of interesting facts. Although more than half
of the student body came from the five synods which own and control the
seminary, the group included representatives of sixteen different states and
of four foreign countries. Thirty-nine different educational institutions were
represented by their graduates. Thirty-six students, or roughly one-third, are
graduates of colleges of the Southern Presbyterian Church, fourteen of these
being graduates of Presbyterian College and fourteen of Davidson. Ten stu-
dents took their training in Presbyterian Colleges other than those of the
Southern Presbyterian Church, and eleven attended institutions similarly
related to other denominations. Seventeen men are graduates of state univer-
sities, colleges, or technical schools, one of the United States Naval Academy,
and twenty-six of various independent universities or colleges. This classifica-
tion of institutions given above does not include the schools at which our
foreign students received their training, although these are included in the
list printed herewith.

The list of states and foreign countries represented and the number of
students from each is as follows:

Alabama 6

Louisiana 2

Mississippi 7

Missouri 2

New York 1

North Carolina 9

Pennsylvania 1

South Carolina 10

Tennessee 8

Virginia 2

West Virginia 3

The distribution of students according to the institutions at which they
took their earlier training is shown in the following list:

Arkansas

2

Brazil

1

China

1

Colorado

1

Czechoslovakia

1

Florida

14

Georgia

32

1

Korea

2

Alabama Polytechnic Institute... 2

Arkansas College 2

Benjamin Franklin University 1

Birmingham Southern College 1

Bob Jones University 4

Bucknell University 1

Choo O. Seminary, Kobe, Japan 1

Davidson College 14

Denver University 1

Duke University 1

Emory University 5

Erskine College 4

Geo. Washington University. 1

Georgia School of Technology 5

Georgia State College 1

Houghton College 1

Howard College 1

John Hus Theological

Faculty, Prague 1

King College 4

Lafayette College

Louisiana Polytechnic Inst

Maryville College 4

Mercer University

Mississippi Southern

Oglethorpe University

Presbyterian College 14

Southwestern at Memphis

U. S. Naval Academy.

University of Alabama

University of Chattanooga 5

University of Florida. 4

University of Georgia 3

University of Miami 5

University of Tampa 1

University of Shanghai 1

Westminster College 1

Wheaton College 2

Yenching University, Korea 1

Young Harris College 1