CHURCH DOORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 246, 18 October 1933, Page 5

CHURCH DOORS.

" OPEN THEM WIDE."

PLEA ON BEHALF OF YOUTH. " GOSPEL OF RESTRICTIONS." A plea to the Church to open wide its doors to youth and to the poor, and to make them see that within those doors lay, not restrictions and impositions, but perfect freedom, was made this morning to delegates of the Baptist Union assembly by the Rev. W. S. Rollings, of Lyall Bay. The stream of life to-day, he said, was flowing past the churches. For that the Church was responsible, and should tile methods of the Church and its organisation be. revised so as to give the truth to every man for whom Christ died? A changing order sometimes demanded new methods. It was possible that the Church might lose contact with the people by becoming enslaved to old methods which had served great ends but which had had their day. Could the Church adopt new methods to bring it into vital contact with the people ? St. Paul himself had been all things to all men.

There were three world conditions affecting the Church's ministry. The iirst was the. uprising of the spirit of youth. Youth had come to the conviction that the old men of the day had "let it down," that it had been robbed of its heritage. "Youth is suspicious of the Church and has reached a conviction that the Churches are in a conspiracy to rob it of part of its heritage."

Margin of Leisure. The second factor was the wider margin of leisure, and the third the tragedy of unemployment. If the Church returned to the New Testament, and expressed the teachings therein, it would be able to capture youth. In the, minds of youth there was the deeply-lodged sentiment that the Church meant a loss of self-expres-sion and freedom. It was easy to criticise that, lie said. It was sometimes said that the self-expression and freedom meant only sex-expression, and not the, expression of glorious man and womanhood. The speaker pointed out the first to whom Jesus had appealed had been the young men, who had lived religion not as a creed but as a life. "Preaches Restrictions." "To-day we have the gospel which preaches restrictions and impositions. The young people regard us as a set of wowsers. The method of Jesus and the Apostles was to inspire and uplift. We should present not the pale lily of abnegation but the red rose of delight. By the provision of social amenties for young people the Bible classes were leadiner the Church. "Let us not suspect that any such movement is contravening t'ho principles of the New Testament." If the Church rose to tho challenge of unemployment it would retain its contact. The relief that the Church could give would not cure the problem, but no Church was worthy to be called a Church of Christ which did not stretch out the hand of help. There should not be a religious tract sticking out of a loaf of bread.