COUNTRY MINISTERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 115, 25 February 1937, Page 9

COUNTRY MINISTERS.

YALUE NOT APPRECIATED. (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, February 24. A statement that the church did not sufficiently appreciate the value o country work was made at the New Zealand Methodist Conference to-day by Mr R. Hampton, in his ex vicepresidential address. There was much pioneering work still to be done, be said. There was a tendency to place young ministers and home missionaries in rural areas without experience of circuit building and leave them in isolation. The chairman of districts were much overlooked. “AVe should cultivate more of the spirit of daring in our Christian living,” said Mr Hampton. “It has been said with some truth that we cannot preserve a living faith with safety first as a slogan. A leader in one of our Christian churches is credited with saying ‘I sometimes wonder whether all the harm that is done by scandals in the church by church members who really go wrong has anything like the same disillusioning effect on men’s minds as the humdrum respectability of the ordinary Christian and church member.’ ”