CHURCH WORK DEPENDS ON FULLEST CO-OPERATION

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30482, 2 July 1964, Page 2

CHURCH WORK DEPENDS ON FULLEST CO-OPERATION

In recent years there had been a new emphasis coming from the Wor Id Council of Churches on the importance of greater co-operation between men and women in the work of the church, Mrs Olive Stanley said in Christchurch last evening.. .

With her husband,-the Rev. H. Stanley, who is a former secretary of the Congregational Union of England and W ales, she is in New Zealand to make a - gesture of friendship and encouragement to Congregational Churches.

“Women’s work” should not be thought of ' as something separate in the life of a church: “It is all the church’s work, and the aim of women’s groups should be the same as. the ministers’—the furthering of this work as a whole,” said Mrs Stanley;

Cooperation between ■ the men and women in the church was what was wanted, not competition. Speaking for her own church, she said there was a growing feeling that women should be formed on church work, and take an active and interested part in it “We are asking our women’s groups to look closely at their programmes,” she said. The Congregational Church enables women to be ordained as ministers. "There are not very many, but there are some very good ones." Far-seeing leaders of the church were trying to break down barriers between the church and the world outside, she said. CHURCH UNITY

“I feel the new Coventry Cathedral is a symbol of this attempt to break down the barriers, and of the search for unity between churches," she said. A part of the new Anglican cathedral was dedicated to church unity, and members of other denominations could hold gatherings there.

Though particularly concerned with the women’s side of Congregational church

work in Britain, Mrs Stanley 1$ also the only woman member of an inter-church relations committee there. A welcome trend in Britain in the last few years had been a growth in numbers of “first generation Christians,” Mrs Stanley said. “Many of our young people are joining the church because of their own convictions, not because their: family came.” Indeed many came from homes where there was no encouragement at all for children to attend church. The student population was also becoming increasingly interested in the church, she said. It was a fact that church attendance was higher in communities where there were many students than where there were not. DEEP INTEREST Before her marriage Mrs Stanley was the headmistress of a girls’ high school in Shropshire. Though she gave up a career in -teaching she has found “many rich friendships” through her work with her husband in the church. She has travelled widely, and attended conferences in many countries with him.

She still retains a deep interest in education, however, and is a trustee of a training college for women teachers in Cambridge. It was at Cambridge, at’Newnham College, that she herself gained her M.A. degree in classics. After their return to England, Mr and Mrs Stanley will live in Sussex, where they recently moved from London. “My husband retires from his present position later this year. But he is going to take up pastoral duties again, so I will be the minister’s wife.”

One of the highlights of her brief visit to New Zealand was at a Samoan Congregational Church service in Auckland. “They sang a hymn that had been composed by my great-uncle, the Rev. Edward Newall, who was one of the early missionaries in Samoa,” she said. This afternoon Mrs Stanley will address an interdenominational women’s gathering at Trinity Congregational Church.