This is the way for a church to grow. The more it exercises its muscles
in pulling men out of their pits, the more dexterous, powerful, and
altogether desirable it will be, because the world will need it, and it
will no longer appeal only to those who prefer its form of worship or
have a bias towards its particular church polity. The law of demand and
supply should be recognized as applying equally to the church as to
other agencies. The desire to be needed, to find work, and not merely to
be a big party product can alone develop communions able to remove the
stigma of being either parasites or fads.
If a church is really anxious to fulfil its functions as set down in the
only book of instructions for each of them; if it wants to call forth
latent energy, as a Washington from his homestead, or a Lincoln from his
farm, it must cease to lay stress on orthodoxy and get to work where the
world really needs it. A surgeon may be ever so correct in his knowledge
of operative surgery, but he must find a practise or he is useless. It
is not so much for holding services, as for rendering services, that the
world is looking to the Church today.