METHODIST BISHOP

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 9

METHODIST BISHOP

Visit By U.S. Preacher As head of the Methodist C&urch in southern California and the States of Arizona and Hawaii, Bishop G. Kennedy is expected to make preaching missions overseas once every four years. He said in Christchurch that he had decided to use this opportunity to come to New Zealand and Australia—two of the few places in the world he had not visited. Bishop Kennedy said he was one of 43 Methodist bishops in the United States. His area was divided into 10 districts, each with a representative and 44 Ministers. The Methodist Church organisation in the United States was formed before the Government and it was run on similar lines, he said. Every four years a general conference farmed a programme that bishops were expected to follow in governing their areas. The system was “vastly different” from New Zealand’s system, he said. Here there were no Methodist bishops, for instance. Bishop Kennedy said he found New Zealand a beau-

tiful country. He also found a less inhibited attitude among the people. They were more like the people of the United States than Britain. Bishop Kennedy is known as the author of 18 books, mainly collections of sermons and critical essays on the state of the country, church, and world. He has been referred, to in "Time” magazine as a “tireless Circuit rider.’’