BAPTIST UNION.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18508, 9 October 1925, Page 17

BAPTIST UNION.

ANNUAL CONFERENCE. (fkxss association- telegram.) AUCKLAND, October 8. The Baptist Union Conference opened to-day. The president (the Eev. F. E. Harry) said that the Church needed life to carry it. forward, and the dull drone should forsake the pulpit and become an undertaker. Their work should be red-blooded and virile. No one charged them to-day with being full of new wine, and they were forced to ask themselves whether they were too cold, too cautious, and too calculating. He was not a pessimist, but there were widespread signs of immorality and unrest. Order must prevail in the Church, whose crown was not chaos, l>ut Christ. The annual report stated that the total membership of churches was G045. The balance-sheet showed receipts £1975 8s 2d, and expenditure £2370 16s 2d. The secretary (the Eev. Bf. P. TV. Lascelles) and other speakers expressed concern at the smallness of the increase in membership for the year. The president said it was not possible to judge, the condition of the Church by statistics? Four churches had purged their rolls, and removed "dead heads." He had visited most of the churches in the Pominion, and had never seen, one that was suggested by one speaWfer, "As dead as a door nail." The evangelistic passion of the Church was greater than that of any other church in New Zealand.