TRAINING OF CLERGY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29942, 2 October 1962, Page 7

TRAINING OF CLERGY

Bishop’s View

Of Essentials

■ "I am concerned that under our conditions in New Zealand our men must be taught in their theological colleges about the things of God.” said the Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt. Rev A. K. Warren) in his presidential address yesterday at the second annual session of the thirty-fifth Synod of the Diocese of Christchurch. “Other skills must come later, and later opportunities have been provided for them.”

Bishop Warren said that the training of clergy was to come under review and that the board of theological studies had been asked to ret vise its syllabus. “For some time there have been those who have expected our . theological colleges to implant in our students a large and varied number of skills. In the United States it has been found t that the practice of pumping in under pressure all kinds of skills into the theological students has merely ended in producing the organisational pastor who is capable of conducting a parish canvass, or skilled in the art of non-directional counselling, but who knows less and less of the essential knowledge of the true pas* tor.

“Moreover, as Dr. Max Warren has reminded us, the Archbishop of Canterbury, immediately after his return from New Delhi, emphasised the importance of the fact that we have ‘got to know the Churches in Asia far better than ever before, and indeed intimately. We have always rather given .the impression that Christianity is something European, in European dress, and I think from now on Christendom is going to be more able to present itself to the world as something which is as much Asiatic as European.' This is a concept which must be inculcated into the minds and consciousness of our theological students. "Over the last few years our clergy have had outstanding opportunities of learning some of the supplementary and special skills from men who are world authorities or highly trained specialists,” Bishop Warren said.