For a time, it appeared that the Laurel Presbyterian Church called as Bird's successor yet another pastor of the quality of Baker and Bird. On August 14, 1910, the church's pastoral nominating committee, constituted in much the same way as the one that called Bird, recommended to the congregation the Rev. Walter W. Edge, of Davis , West Virginia , as pastor. Edge had a good record in Davis , and the church there held him in high regard. That congregational meeting elected Edge pastor, and he occupied the Laurel pulpit for the first time on September 27, although presbytery did not formally install him until April 19, 1911. Within a very brief time, Edge initiated changes in two areas: Sunday School and worship. In the Sunday School, he reorganized its entire structure by making it, for the first time, a graded school with eight classes. He instituted better records keeping procedures, established a new financial system, and arranged for substitute teachers for every class. He also had a librarian elected.

Whereas these Sunday School reforms caused little or no friction, Edge ran into problems in his attempts to change worship by introducing the church's first permanent choir. When Louise Gray, the organist, resigned, the search for a replacement led to a number of rumors and misunderstandings which Edge had to correct publicly. Meanwhile, in late November 1910, the Session voted to establish a choir and elected seven members (including six women) to it. The Session appointed Mr. and Mrs. A.B. Chase to direct both the choir and the church's entire music program. When the choir sang for the first time on January 22, 1911, however, only four persons took part. The presence of a choir in worship raised certain problems as the organ had to be repositioned to make room for the choir. All of this disruption and the moving of the organ, which had to be done several times to find a suitable arrangement, caused quite a bit of dissatisfaction in the congregation. Edge, meanwhile, had to face yet another problem concerning worship, Church records state that a small group of people regularly sat in the rear of the church and made snide, rude comments concerning those things of which they did not approve. Edge finally rebuked this group during worship and two members of the church walked out. The heckling, at least, came to an end.

All of these seemingly small irritations underscored a change in the tone of congregational life, a change also reflected in the outcome of a series of evangelistic services held at the Presbyterian Church in March 1911 by evangelist J.W. Atwood. The church hoped that those services would attract a large attendance from the larger community and result in numerous conversions. In actual fact, little came of the poorly attended services, and even members of the church, especially the men, showed little enthusiasm for them. In short, unlike his two immediate predecessors, Edge did not open his ministry in Laurel with the style of pastoral leadership which generated excitement and an impressive response to church activities. Edge failed to communicate a vision of ministry and mission beyond the walls of the church building to which the church's members could commit themselves. Thus, he could not sustain the sense of momentum initiated by Baker and sustained by Bird even though church records show that the church kept much of Bird's program in place during Edge's ministry.

The church year of April 1911 to April 1912 witnessed a number of changes. The congregation elected another Sunday School Building Committee which, after some study, reported back its conclusion that the church could not afford to build a Sunday School building at that time. Elder Winnemore left town and gave up his position as Clerk of Session. Elder Orr took over the office as he was the only member of the Session left. The church did elect two new deacons, Mr. W. Roland Thawley and Mr. Warfield Peters, to fill the vacancies in that long moribund body. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment and 'change' of the year came with the purchase of a manse. After a long, complicated period of negotiations the church sold its Laurel Avenue property and purchased a house on Collins Street . The Edge family moved into the new manse in early January 1912.

The statistics for 1911-1912 do suggest that the church responded positively to Edge's ministry in a modest way. Both the size of the Sunday School and the amount of church giving increased over the previous year, and the church resumed giving relatively substantial amounts to benevolences. Although membership did drop, the weeding of the church roll caused that drop. The annual report of April 1912 also noted a steady improvement in worship attendance as well. In short, Walter Edge's ministry did show promise of a quality of program better than anything the church had experienced prior to Baker and Bird. The flames of the 'great decade' did not leap so high, but they did not die out either.

But, then, it happened again. After a ministry of only two years, Edge accepted a call to a Northern Presbyterian congregation in New Jersey . The church expressed regret over his loss when the presbytery accepted his resignation, effective October 1, 1912. As already noted, Edge did maintain some of the gains of the Baker-Bird decade, and he appeared to have the potential to do even more than just maintain their programs. Considering the degree to which the congregation depended upon pastoral leadership, Edge's departure shattered any hopes that the church would continue along its new path. The church now reverted to its old nineteenth century patterns. Indeed, Edge recalls the ministry of Reese in the early 1870s—an apparently good but very brief ministry that led to a period of decline.

The records do not state why Edge left, but one problem stands out as a probable cause: money. In a lengthy treasurer's report for April 1912, George Earle established clearly that church receipts could not meet all of the church's obligations, especially the pastor's salary. After Earle resumed the treasurer's position in January 1912 (when the previous treasurer, Winnemore, moved), he made strenuous efforts to improve congregational giving, but in April 1912 he reported that his efforts had not improved the situation enough to make any difference. He also reported that he had offended some members by those efforts. Earle noted that the deaths over the years of a number of wealthy 'friends' of the church had deprived the congregation of an important source of funds. Thus, Edge quite possibly left Laurel because the adverse financial situation of the church showed no hope of improving. The loss of leadership on the Session, which left only Elder Orr on that body, must have given even more weight to Edge's doubts about the church's future.

Following the usual pattern, giving and attendance immediately dropped off when Edge left. Elder Orr as the sole remaining member of Session took it upon himself to soften the blow of Edge's leaving by shortening the interim period. Acting on his own authority, Orr presented the names of four candidates for pastor to the church in January 1913, and the congregation elected the Rev. Henry C. Bird, a member of Washington City Presbytery of the Northern Church , to the pulpit. In conferences between Bird (not to be confused with Andrew Bird) and the church, the church appeared uncertain as to whether it could actually pay a full pastor's salary or not. Bird then proposed that he serve the church as stated Supply with a reduced salary, and he began work on these terms in March 1913. His brief stay proved to be a less than happy one. A stormy congregational meeting in November 1913 found Bird in tension with a large number of the members of the church and the church divided in its opinion of him. Congregational records state that several people believed he accepted the call to Laurel only so that he and his family could live in the manse rent free until they built their own home in town. Bird could not continue under these conditions. The only event of any significance during his brief stay took place in April 1914 when the Trustees elected Olive Rogers church treasurer. Rogers thus became the first woman to hold an official, elective church office outside of the Sunday School.

After the departure of H.C. Bird as stated supply, the Laurel Church called Mr. Raymond S. Hittinger, a licensed preacher and recent graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary from Lehigh Presbytery in the Northern Church . Hittinger passed his presbytery exams on October 1, 1914, at Second Church in Washington, Andrew Bird's parish, and presbytery ordained and installed him the following week. Bird gave the charge to the congregation as he had when Edge was installed,

So few records remain from the period of Hittinger's ministry that it is difficult to make an informed judgment concerning it. The 1915 annual report indicates low attendance at worship and only a few faithful contributors. Hittinger, thus, became the first pastor in the history of the church, excepting only the special case of Nicols, who failed to show gains in attendance and giving within the first year after his arrival. Indeed, Trustees' records display an almost frantic concern over the finances of the church. By April 1916, the Trustees asked Hittinger to go to presbytery and get a renewal of aid to the church. At that point, Hittinger also reported to presbytery that the Laurel Church had to borrow money to pay his salary, Unfortunately, presbytery responded only with a statement that it already supported more churches than it could help adequately. Laurel had to get along an its own. The election of George Earle and J. Arthur Remington to the Session in September 1915 strengthened that body but did not help the church solve its financial problems. In October 1915 Orr resigned as Clerk of Session and Remington replaced him.

Matters came to a head in September 1916 when the Trustees sent a letter to Hittinger informing him that the church could no longer afford to pay his $1000 per year salary. The letter blamed Hittinger for the situation because he would not allow the church to use fund-raising methods other than pledging and Sunday morning offerings. The letter also stated that the condition of the church generally caused several people to stop giving or even to leave the church entirely. The letter asked Hittinger to meet with the Trustees on the matter.

On October 3, Hittinger met with the Session, Trustees, and representatives of various church organizations. He stated that the church's finances were not as serious as the Trustees claimed. George Earle disagreed with him and a lengthy discussion followed. That discussion revealed that the church was divided into strong supporters of Hittinger over against the rest of the membership, Under the circumstances, Hittinger could do little else than resign from the church, which he did in December 1916. When presbytery dismissed him, it passed a resolution of sympathy for both Hittinger and the Laurel Church. It sympathized with Hittinger for not receiving his salary regularly and on time. It sympathized with the church for having to struggle with a salary it could not really afford. Presbytery also advised the Laurel Church that it should not call pastors for salaries it could not pay. Significantly, Andrew Bird had a large hand in the drawing up of this resolution, and it likely reflects something of the pressures he (and Edge after him) experienced in Laurel .

Although brief and unproductive, Hittinger's ministry proved significant in at least two ways. First of all, that ministry clearly demonstrated the dilemma the Laurel Church faced in trying to obtain competent pastoral leadership. As a small church, It faced all of the needs, issues, and problems larger churches experienced. But its smallness meant that it had difficulty finding the leadership it needed to deal with its situation. It did not have the resources needed to pay regularly a salary high enough to attract that level of pastoral leadership. Secondly, the end of the Hittinger ministry led to the first significant period since the 1860s during which the church had no pastor. By a divided vote of seventeen to eleven, a congregational meeting in February 1917, voted to postpone calling a pastor until the church could pay off its debts,

Thus, we meet the Rev, Henry C. Bird again. At his suggestion, the church agreed to pay him a half-salary as stated supply, and he began his second stint in that position in April 1917. This time his ministry seems to have brought an immediate sense of relief and calm. The church's condition even began to improve slightly, and Bird's formal relationship with the church continued until June 1919. Bird gave most of his attention to financial and property matters to the point that when Rogers resigned as church treasurer, in June 1911, he took her place. One of the most intriguing events of this period took place just before Bird became stated supply again. In March 1911, the congregation took the unprecedented step of electing three women, namely, Olive Rogers, Miss M. Edmonston, and Mrs. R.G. Knowlton, to the Board of Trustees. Not again until the 1960s would the church elect women to serve on one of its governing boards.

Frustration marked the year 1919. Although Bird resigned as stated supply in June, he seems to have continued unofficially to fill that office beyond that date since the church did not relieve him of his position as church treasurer until September 1920. In the meantime, a congregational meeting held in June 1919 expressed the church's deeply felt need to call a new pastor by voting thirty to one to rescind the 1917 decision to postpone seeking a new pastor. The church subsequently, however, twice failed to call a pastor, once in September 1919 and again in December. Finally, the church went to the presbytery with its plight, and in April 1920 presbytery's Home Missions Committee granted the Laurel Church up to $400 in assistance as needed to reach a salary of $1400. Even then a third man declined a call to the church.

The congregation finally succeeded in acquiring a new pastor in August 1920. The Rev. Theodore B. Anderson faced a difficult task of rebuilding when he assumed pastoral leadership of the church in September 1920. The statistics of the preceding April showed giving had dropped to a mere $724 in 1919-1920 (as opposed to $1514 In 1916-1917), and the Sunday School dropped from 44 to only twelve pupils in that same period. Although the church rolls showed a decrease of only four during those four years, the actual strength of the church decreased by much more, as many members had been placed on the non-resident list. Church records reveal little about Anderson 's first months at Laurel , but statistics and reports for April 1921 show that the situation improved considerably. Giving, attendance, and membership increased. The congregation again participated in ecumenical services and activities. The women re-established their missionary society. Life seemed to return to the body.

Yet, certain basic realities in the life of the Laurel Presbyterian Church remained constant. First of all, attendance at the Sunday and Wednesday evening services continued to be low, with very few attending the Wednesday evening prayer service. Sunday morning worship, on the other hand, saw some 30 of the church's 49 members in worship. Secondly. the church's gender imbalance remained a problem. The rolls for 1921 showed 31 women and fourteen men listed as members. Women continued to make up better than two-thirds of the church's membership. The fact that a number of the men and a few women of the church worked in either Washington or Baltimore made this imbalance all the more serious as the male leadership of the church had less time to give to it than did the majority of women. Thirdly, the church remained a highly mobile congregation. While its 1917 statistics showed only three non-residents among its 64 members, by 1920 the non-resident roll grew to some fourteen of 60 total members. And in 1921, the statistics showed an increase of eleven members but a total membership of only 49 with seven non-resident members. Thus, resident membership dropped from 61 to 46 in just four years, and even with vigorous growth in 1920-1921 it dropped even further to 42.

Symbolic of all of this coming and going, former elder Emmitt Pettit returned to Laurel in 1920 and once again became an elder. Even though by 1920 the congregation had been highly mobile for several decades, significantly, all of these membership changes led to no major changes in program or direction. At best, particular combinations of members and lay leaders at any one time influenced the effectiveness of pastoral leadership. As in chemical experiments, the personality and abilities of the pastor remained the catalytic agent.

Under Anderson , the congregation focused its attention on the Sunday School, because it believed that the Sunday School was the church's most important source of new members. Anderson initiated a strategy for strengthening the church in the long term by strengthening the Sunday School. Anderson and the congregation assumed that they could improve the Sunday School's program only through the construction of a Sunday School building, and in May 1921, the congregation elected yet another Sunday School Building Committee. By December 1921, the congregation approved a set of plans for a new building to be built right behind the church building. In the meantime, Anderson sought to strengthen the Sunday School by instituting a system of prizes for those who memorized verses and for those who brought in new students. He sought to make the Sunday School program more attractive,

The church appeared to respond to Anderson 's ministry with some of the enthusiasm of the golden decade of 1901-1910. On the last day of the year, the church surprised him with a gift of a $20 gold piece, given in appreciation of the success of his first sixteen months in Laurel . The church's annual narrative of April 1922 gave further evidence of Anderson 's effectiveness. It reported that attendance at Sunday morning worship had risen to 80 per cent of the membership (about 31-38/Sunday) while Sunday evening attendance had grown to 50 per cent.

In this atmosphere, the Session addressed a letter to presbytery urging greater assistance in paying Anderson as the church wanted to raise his salary substantially. The Session argued that Laurel , halfway between Baltimore and Washington, occupied a key geographical position for the PCUS. The Southern Church had almost no presence in this large area. The Session noted that even in Laurel fewer than one person in three belonged to a church. Therefore, the Laurel Church had an especially important role to play, and Anderson had already laid the groundwork for fulfilling that role, He was indispensable to the church's carrying out the role it could play. The presbytery responded by granting the Laurel Church an increase in assistance to $600 for 1922-1923.

This brief era of good feelings in the church extended to Elder George Earle as well. In June 1922, thirty members of the church held a surprise birthday party for him on the occasion of his 70th birthday. This signal honor touched Earle deeply. Further recognition of his long years of service came to him in September 1922, when Potomac Presbytery elected him Moderator. Between its founding in 1912 and 1925, Potomac Presbytery so honored only two other laymen, and no other elder of the Laurel Church before or since achieved this same prominence. Hard upon the heels of his election to the moderatorship, the presbytery also elected Earle a delegate to 63rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S., 1923, which met at Montreat , North Carolina .

It did indeed seem that the church had returned to the days of Baker and Bird. In the church year 1922-1923, it established a Men's Association, a Boy Scout troop, and a Christian Endeavor Society. The year came to its culmination on April 1, 1923, when the church occupied its new Sunday School building with an Easter sunrise service, The church's records emphasized Anderson 's active role in pushing the construction of the building and in collecting funds for it. He accomplished what even Baker, Bird, and Edge could not achieve. For some time afterwards, the church used the Sunday School building heavily in support of the church's most active program in a decade, In another letter to presbytery, the Session described the experimentation and growth Anderson had brought to the church and gave him most of the credit for it all. The Session observed that, 'The Spirit of the Church has changed entirely; from being a listless body it has become a Church Militant eager for the fray.'

In light of the above statement and all that Anderson achieved, the events of 1924 seem baffling and disconcerting. Below the surface of all of these accomplishments there must have been something else festering, for on Sunday, February 11, 1924, the Session voted two to one to inform Anderson that 'the church' wanted him to hand in his resignation because, according to these elders, the church was not growing as rapidly as the Session felt it should. They blamed Anderson . The Session met with Anderson a week later and Elders Orr and Remington called again for his immediate resignation in spite of Anderson 's request for time to consider their charges against him. Whatever caused this sudden about-face, it divided the congregation into factions with George Earle leading the 'pro-Anderson' group. Finally, however, Anderson did resign, but the presbytery accepted his resignation only after consultations by the Home Mission Committee with him and the church on the matter. Presbytery then dissolved the pastoral relationship as of June 16, 1924. These events took place in spite of the fact that the church's statistics right up through April 1924 showed membership, giving, and church activities increasing.

For a time, then, it looked as though Anderson would lead the church back to something akin to the great years of 1900-1909. Whatever it was that brought on the dissatisfaction with Anderson not only killed that possibility but also resulted in a weakened, divided church that did not recover for years. After Anderson left, the church's most prominent elder, Earle, never again attended a Session meeting. Unfortunately, the causes of the events that led to Anderson 's forced resignation stand just beyond the boundary of the church's living memory. Later, in May 1926, the church elected Mr. Walter D. Lanahan, a younger life-time member, and Mr. B.H. Yoris, a new member from Washington , to the Session.

The next two pastorates, those of Rev. L. H. Eikel (September 1924-November 1926) and the Rev. W. L. Smith (February 1927-October 1928) made little or no impact on the church. Evidently, the church, particularly the youth, thought well of Eikel, and, in later years, the church credited him with strengthening and solidifying the church's youth program. The church thought less well of Smith, and his brief pastorate was one of the shortest pastorates in the church's history.

The next sixteen years in the history of the Laurel Church passed quietly. From October 1928, the Rev. Lewis R. Watson supplied the Laurel pulpit for nearly three full years until he became too ill to continue. Watson worked for the government and only came up to Laurel on Sundays. In the meantime, Rev. A.E. Baker had returned to the area as pastor of the Dickey Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore , and he retired from that charge in April 1931. The Laurel Church then called him as its stated supply with presbytery giving $300/year to help pay his salary. Baker took up that position on April 1, 1932. A letter from the church's Clerk of Session, Elder Remington, to the Stated Clerk of the presbytery indicated that the Laurel Church felt content in its arrangement with Baker. It was glad that the widely liked former pastor had returned to Laurel . The church's gratitude at having an experienced pastor must have increased in the next few years as the life of the church, along with that of the nation, slowed under the weight of the Great Depression. Potomac Presbytery minutes recorded, for example, that nineteen of its 35 churches in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia depended upon presbytery aid while an unspecified number of other churches received direct assistance from a few of the presbytery's very large churches. Thus, the years up to 1937 passed uneventfully, marked mostly by the deaths of some of the older members including George Earle who died in 1933. The church elected Mr. A. R. Weston to the Session. It also engaged in evangelistic services on at least one occasion and also reinstituted mid-week services, which had lapsed.

The Laurel Presbyterian Church of the later 1920s and the 1930s was a small, conservative Southern Presbyterian church organizationally isolated from the Laurel community. The Christian Endeavor Society emphasized Bible study, memorizing verses, and learning catechisms. The church worshiped in a very formal manner with little or no lay participation in worship leadership. The women participated in the life of the church only within carefully circumscribed bounds. The Laurel Presbyterian Church of those days between the wars had a certain stiffness and sense of propriety about it that harkened back to even earlier decades. It gave no thought to making the Bible or church 'relevant' to the larger world nor did the church seek any mission beyond itself. Its members were people of modest means and modest learning, and the 'big' events of its life included an annual picnic and a special Christmas Eve service of giving, candles, and dedication of self. Elder Lanahan organized the scouts into a fife and drum corps, and he became an increasingly predominant voice in the life of the church.

Thus, the congregation remained a quiet corner in an increasingly brutalized, anxious world and drifted without much internal tension under the gentle, almost grandfatherly guidance of its stated supply. Baker, like the church itself, was soft-spoken and without the zeal and fire of his previous years in Laurel . By and large, those still living who participated in the church of the 1930s remember it fondly. As for youths and young adults, the church functioned almost as a family for them, and many of the adults, particularly the Sunday School teachers, played an important part in shaping their lives and their understanding of the Christian faith.

By 1931, however, portents of change appeared on the horizon as the smaller churches of Potomac Presbytery, including the Laurel Church, emerged from the trials of the Depression. Baker reported to presbytery that the Laurel community was growing rapidly and that attendance at worship had improved. The church's statistics for April 1937 indicate the first growth of any significance in the church since 1928. The advent of World War II gave some further impetus to growth in the church as its membership lurched forward fitfully to just over sixty members by 1943-1944. Even though giving and the Sunday School remained at the same levels as they had for several years, the tremendous demographic changes assaulting the entire Washington region would soon affect the Laurel Church as well. Thus, when Mr. Baker died in October 1943, shortly after having resigned his position as stated supply, the church stood on the verge of a new era. It would be another year before the church sought a replacement for Baker, and that year was the last year before the congregation began to feel the force of the demographic changes taking place around it.

The Laurel Presbyterian Church of 1944, in a sense, still lived in a world rapidly passing away in the expanding East Coast megalopolis in which it was located. It clung to a slower paced world of 'old time' values which still set apart Sunday as a holy day and frowned on such activities as horse racing and dancing. It was still very much a Southern Presbyterian Church, a church comfortable with a retired minister who had entered the ordained ministry back in the 1890s. This Laurel Presbyterian Church still lived in a Laurel that epitomized the small Southern town of segregated races and distinct roles for men and women. It was a traditional church solidly rooted in the nineteenth century.