METHODIST CIRCUIT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30632, 24 December 1964, Page 12

METHODIST CIRCUIT

Appointment To Sumner The Rev. M. A McDowell, of St. John’s Methodist Church, Nelson, will take up his final appointment in the Sumner-Redcliffs circuit in January. , Mr McDowell was born Tn Heathcote Valley in 1905 and attended the school there before going to the West Christchurch High School. For some years he served on the staff of the Canterbury Education Board and studied accountancy.

From his early days he took a keen interest in church activities and youth work and became a local preacher. In 1927 he entered the Dunholme Theological College. Auckland, to be trained for the Methodist ministry. In 1929, on the opening of the Trinity Methodist Theological College, Auckland, he was chosen by fellow students as the first senior student.

Mr McDowell’s first appointment as a probationer was to a suburban church in Wellington for four years. During this time he conducted beach missions and acted as an “uncle” on the children’s radio sessions. In 1934 he went to Milton and later to Palmerston North for a brief period. He was then appointed a youth director in the newly constituted youth department of the Methodist Church. In this capacity he became one of the architects of the Methodist Christian Youth Movement. Mr McDowell returned to circuit work in 1946 and was stationed at Timaru before being transferred to Lower Hutt in 1949. There he was the superintendent minister of one of the largest circuits in New Zealand. In the twenty-seventh year of his ministry he became president of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, one of the youngest men to occupy this position. In 1956 he was made an honorary doctor of divinity by Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, at the time of the World Methodist Conference at Lake Lunaluska, North Carolina, where he represented New Zealand Methodists.