MELANESIAN MISSION

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27498, 4 November 1954, Page 2

MELANESIAN MISSION

ADDRESS BY BISHOP OF DUNEDIN

ANNUAL MEETING OF COMMITTEE

The devotion to their church and the very real faith of the native Christians in Melanesia, who attended the services associated with the consecration and enthronement of the Bishop of Melanesia (the Rt Rev. A. T. Hill), had been deeply moving, said the Bishop of Dunedin (the Rt. Rev. A. H. Johnston) in an address at the annual meeting of the Central Committee of the Melanesian Mission in. Christchurch last evening. “We can learn a great deal from these newer Christians, and I am not at all certain that we won’t have missionaries from Melanesia coming to New Zealand one day to bring back something of their freshness of faith and awareness of God to us here,” Bishop Johnston said. Bishop Johnston assisted the Primate of New Zealand (Archbishop Owen) at the consecration of Bishop Hill at Honiara, in the Solomon Islands, last May. Bishop Hill’s consecration had been the first in the Anglican Communion to be held in Melanesia, and was most significant in the history of the church there. Bishop Johnston said. Now that the old mission ship Southern Cross was out of commission, the life-line of the islands had been broken, he said. The ship had been the Bishop of Melanesia’s only home for many years; it had transported patients to hospital and had taken children to school. It was absolutely essential that the appeal for a fund to provide a new ship should succeed as soon as possible. Officers were elected as follows: chairman, the Rev. Canon I. L. Richards; committee, the Ven. Archdeacon W. T. Williams, the Revs. R. J. Witty. B. O. Plumb, C. Gault, C. W. KentJohnston, C. E. Tanner, and C. S. Knight, Mesdames M. G. Sullivan, W. B. Gracie, J. D. Thomson, W. W. Averill, and M. Smith, Miss M. Hurse (life member); secretary. Miss L. G. Cameron.