SYDNEY CHURCHES’ WORK ON YOUTH PROBLEMS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 15

SYDNEY CHURCHES’ WORK ON YOUTH PROBLEMS

Vandalism in churches by Sydney youths is one of the problems now faced, by a former minister of the Linwood Congregational Church, the Rev. F. J. Kay. Mr Kay and his family are staying in Christchurch on a month’s holiday. The Newtown Congregational Church had been broken into 200 times, Mr Kay said. Furniture and books were thrown round, and many things broken. Churches were organising clubs and societies to attract the youths and keep them off the streets and away from certain railk-bars, Mr Kay said. “Some milkbars, as the newspapers have reported, are places which exist for illicit relations among people. They are often run by persons who have moral standards far different from those accepted by mpst Australians and New Zealanders. Mobs of young people are gathering in them. “Different churches are tackling the problem in different ways. On the whole, great attention is being paid to youth clubs. The Methodist Central Mission in Sydney, where the Rev. Alan Walker is minister, runs a cabaret on Saturday evening with a nonstop programme. This is a new venture started about three months ago “Modified youth clubs and discussion groups are being formed. The whole idea is to cater for the emotional, the physical, and the spiriutal needs of the adolescent. "In these clubs, too, we have to be on the watch for variations,” Mr Kay said. “But they

achieve something—in the clubs at my own church two of the club’s first members have become ministers, and another, once known to other members of the club as a ‘spiv,’ has become a church deacon.

“If these young men and women attain a stability, then they will ultimately create a more stable adult society,” said Mr Kay. Mr Kay’s ministry in Christchurch lasted from his arrival in New Zealand from England in 1945, until 1950. He later worked in the North Finchley Church in London, and in 1958 went to his present position with the Strath-field-Homebush Congregational Church in Sydney. “To retire on the Cashmere Hills is my ambition,” he said. "I look on Christchurch as a sort of ‘Paradise Regained.’ But perhaps my ambition will only prove to be a pipe dream.”