Bulletin o COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY DECATUR, GEORGIA Vol. XLI DECEMBER 1948 No. 3 RETURN POSTAGE GUARANTEED 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