CLAIMS OF YOUTH.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19757, 23 October 1929, Page 3

CLAIMS OF YOUTH.

THE CHURCH'S PART. "We have heard a great deal since the war of Youth movements, all over the world, and sometimes we may have been disturbed by their revolutionary tendencies. I fancy that things are changing, and thatrfnany of the movers are realising that it is a more difficult matter to run the world than they thought,'' said Bishop West-Watson in his address to the Diocesan Synod yesterday. "In consequence some have turned rather to the attractions of 'this present world,' some struggle on with their ideals. But allowing for everything, it is, I think, certain that youth, inside the Church as well as outside, is claiming liberty to dream dreams and to organise and plan for itself. And herein lies a great hope. In Xew Zealand the Bible Class movement is a notabte expression of this desire, and links up some 30.000 of the flower of our youth. Our Church has welcomed the movement and felt the inspiration of it, and in return the movement looks to us for help and guidance. But youth work is a specialised work, like so much of the world's work to-day. Many of us have neither the gifts nor the temperament to help as we would in it. Some of the Churches have created a special department to deal with it, and I believe that sooner or later, I hope sooner, we shall have to plan something of the sort, and have a director specially detailed to help and guide in it. After all, we clergy are most of us perforce 'general practitioners,' and I think we should welcome the help of a specialist, who is in close touch with youth movements and their spirit and aims. 1 nave no immediate plan to propose, but I want vou to be thinking about it. I am glad to see that 'youth' has now been put down as one of the subjects for Lambeth Conference, and also that it is proposed as the subject tor our own Church Congress here in Chiistchurch."