WOMEN’S PLACE IN CHURCH

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 28, 12 November 1949, Page 4

WOMEN’S PLACE IN CHURCH

WORK HIGHLY PRAISED BIG TASKS AHEAD The possibility of inviting ■ Women to take their place in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand was mentioned by the Moderator (the Rt. Rev. R. S. Watson at the annual meeting of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, held in Timaru yesterday. Women of the Union had doubled their numbers and more than doubled their contributions to the work of the Church in recent years. They were carrying out a great work, too, by teaching other women in study groups.

The Presbyterian Church needed men and women to carry out its work, for Christianity was faced to-day not with a world empty of God but with a world full of gods—false gods. The missionary task of the Church had only just begun, he said. The vast increase in the -population of New Zealand was a challenge to men and women in the Church to bring in more members. In 10 years the population of Auckland alone had increased by 70,000, but during that time there had been no increase in ministerial manpower, said the Rev. A. D. Hortvell, Director of Home Ministry. The Assembly was asking the Church for £500,000 to back its work. But more men for ministers and more women for deaeon'esses were needed as well, and he asked women of the Union to go back to their parishes, pick out promising young men and women and ask them to give full time service to the Church. The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand was made up of three closely allied groups, the Home, Overseas and Maori • Missions, he said. In its forty-third annual report, the Union showed that there had been a strengthening of numbers in , every department, a growth in amounts of money collected and a definite deepening of interest in the mission work of the Church. In the report, of the General Assembly it was stated that a committee had been set up to investigate and report on ways by which women could be given a voice in the courts of the Church, and what constitutional changes would be required to do so.