far from Grand Rapids. That the people appreciate the value of the services of this church is shown by the fact that on a bleak and bitter winter Sunday a hundred and twenty gathered within its walls to worship God, some of whom had come eight or nine miles for the privilege. The membership is not large but they remember every one of our denominational benevolent causes in their offerings, and their cozy house of worship, valued at $4,000, is equipped for modern social and educational work. It belongs in the list of Sunbeam churches. The record of usefulness which such country churches have given is amazing. They have kept men face to face with God. They have exalted the ideals of Christ. They have developed and trained conscience. They have safeguarded the country from the inroads of vice and crime. They have sent forth preachers and missionaries and teachers and Christian workers by hundreds to better and bless the world. They are a mighty force in helping to advance the Kingdom of God. Never were they more needed than now. Ours is a dark and troubled world just now, with many perplexing problems to solve. The light of a Sunbeam church will help it. JENISON, MICH., CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IT The Children's T is not true that the church is a place for grown-ups only. It belongs to the entire community and is the place for everybody. It belongs to the children as well as their parents, and if rightly administered POMPEY'S PILLAR, MONTANA, CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH it will become dear to them as their religious home. The roof under which they were born and where they share the daily life of the family will always be peculiarly precious. But the house of the heavenly Father may become equally dear, and as the home of the larger family which is the whole community it has a special character-making importance. Childlife is of much greater interest to the churches now than in former days. A sermon to the children is a regular feature of the morning service in many churches. A vested choir of children is an important feature of the musical service in others. The Sunday School has developed from a half-hour session sandwiched between the morning and afternoon preaching service, into an institution for religious education on modern pedagogical principles, with separate departments and graded classes. The church is made a center for social and recreational life for children and young people. The Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls and Knights of King Arthur are under the care of the church as part of its program for helping the young people. From the kindergarten the little ones rise step by step up the ladder of Christian training in this church home. Not all the older churches have modernized their methods or sought to make the church building an attractive home for young as well as old. It costs something to do this in time and money and effort. But it is these often one of the characteristic features of new churches in a new country. Children and youth are an important part of a frontier community, and the farsighted builders of society try to mould the young life so that the future may be strong and safe. The group of children at Judith Gap, Montana, hints the splendid possibilities lodged in these young people, and a vigorous effort is made in that church to make its recently constructed building an attractive home for them. Here they may not only worship, but laugh and play and study and grow into physical as well as spiritual strength. Sunday School classes can have separate compartments. A good kitchen and other rooms provide for social gatherings. They have not forgotten that young people need recreation, so they have provided for a varied. program including dramatics and gymnastic games. In asking the people for funds to complete the Community Church their appeal was, "for the children's sake let us arise and build." The same thing is true in Brantford, North Dakota, where in a little hamlet, the center of two hundred and fifty people within three miles, we helped to complete a modest church ten years ago. There were no other churches within twelve miles. Not only were the older people eager for a place of worship, they realized that the children and youth of their families needed a church home. The work has prospered and the Sunday School has increased fifty per cent within the decade. It is a great thing to work for the children that they may grow up to be loyal and heroic citizens and may add to the welfare of the world. We have an army of nearly eight hundred thousand of them in our Congregational Sunday Schools, and we must make the church their dearly loved home. + BRANTFORD, N. D., CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH So also in the young Congregational Church in Pompey's Pillar, Montana, organized only last year, where Miss Louise Herrick has been the enterprising pastor, there is special thought for the children. The fifty families living there are making this a community church. They bought a schoolhouse which had been recently erected, and added a larger building across the end, providing folding doors so that the two rooms can be thrown together. The room used as a chapel seats eighty persons, and when the doors are opened they have a community service room capable of seating two hundred and fifty. They have movable screens so that + IN THE HOOSIER STATE INDIANA is famous for many things. Its nearly three million people located at the heart of the Republic are a potent factor in our national life. Politically it is often a pivotal state. It has furnished a President and a Vice-President to the country, and has good material for another supply. With such writers as Lew Wallace, Booth Tarkington and others, it may well claim to be a literary center. PLYMOUTH CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA Its Congregational Churches are not as numerous as in some other states of the Middle West, but some of them are remarkably fine in quality. Terre Haute, a busy city of seventy-five thousand, has three of these. Our First Church has had a notable history of nearly ninety years, having been organized in 1834. More than half a century ago it had for one of its pastors Lyman Abbott, a young preacher of that day. Today it has another young preacher as its leader, Rev. John W. Herring, son of the late Secretary of the National Council. has been eastward. There is such a multitude of homes in that part of the town that this young church is now near the center of population. For a quarter of a century the church occupied a frame building, which was sufficient for its early life, adjoining which stood the parsonage. But the old edifice has become entirely inadequate, as the swarming crowds of children overflowed it. A new house of worship became necessary. Now they have this large, fine equipment, a fine brick edifice, with auditorium and parlors on the first floor, and in the basement rooms for Sunday School, social and recreational needs. They are making it hum with their varied activities. The entire plant has a value of $56,000. This society was able to help secure it by its grant and loan and parson Thirty years ago Plymouth Church, of which Rev. Henry Russell Jay is pastor, was organized a mile east of the mother church in a rapidly developing new section of the city. The Wabash River limits expansion of the city on the west, so that the growth age loan. EDUCATION SOCIETY New Developments in Missionary Education ABOUT one-third of our Congre gational schools have been using the missionary education chart during the past two years. About twice as many schools ought to use it. A new form of chart and some changes in the plan will be ready for the fall of 1923. Meanwhile a few suggestions as to the use of the plan during 1922-23 will be helpful. Alternative Plans for 1923 Three plans are suggested to meet different needs. The program material, which is the real heart of the whole, will be the same in all three. Plan A. Get a new chart and use according to instructions in the booklet, "Missionary Education in the Church School." This will naturally be the procedure of schools that have never used the plan before. Plan B. Schools that have used the present chart for one year may secure star shaped seals and strips of a different color from those of the first year and use these over those already attached. This plan was followed by most of the schools this year that had used the chart in 1921. It worked well and gave added interest because its record was a comparison with that of the preceding year. Schools that have used the chart for two years may either adopt Plan A and begin anew with a fresh chart or may adopt the third alternative. Plan C. Enroll for the plan and use the programs each month either without the chart, or better still, make a chart or posters of your own. This plan will develop more interest than either of the others as people are usually more interested in something they do for themselves. 1. A Chart and Poster Hints The National Council pamphlet, Panorama of the World-Wide Work of the Congregational Churches," and the leaflet, "The A. B. C. of Congregational Organization," both have a cut of a chart which suggests one easily made for any school as follows: In the center of a large sheet of paper or cardboard paste a picture of your own church. Draw lines radiating out from this, each terminating in a small circle. Draw as many lines as there are boards or organizations to which you give and through which you work. These represent the arms and hands which your church reaches out to the community, the nation, and the world. Mark each line with the initials of one of the boards or organizations, as you come to it in the course of your year's program. year's program. Around the circle. at the end paste pictures or letter inscriptions representing the amount of money, or kind of gift, or the work for which you are giving. This brief description suggests the varied possibilities of such a chart. It gives opportunity for much originality. It will be individual and different and can be made to represent the whole missionary and benevolent enterprise of your school in a most interesting and impressive manner. 2. Prepare a series of posters, each one representing the work of one of the boards or other cause for which gifts are made or service rendered. Such a series, prepared upon sheets of cardboard of uniform size, and hung upon the walls of the room as completed will attract attention and be a distinct factor in increasing knowl |