Home Apathy Hinders Missions

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31805, 9 October 1968, Page 18

Home Apathy Hinders Missions

The greatest hindrance to the work of missions overseas is the apathy of the churches at home, says Mr A. E. Norrish, international secretary of the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship with headquarters in London. “Only inspired churches can send forth inspired workers,” he said, when speaking last evening at the annual

synod of the Diocese of Christchurch, during a missionary debate. Mr Norrish, who was formerly field secretary and then general secretary of the fellowship, has had considerable experience in mission work in India and Pakistan. These two countries were areas of vast human and spiritual need, he said. “The needs of the churches there are much the same as the needs of churches in many other parts of the world, but they are a much more urgent matter because of the vast spiritual need,” said Mr Norrish. . Throughout Asia. Christian witness had to. be sown in the secular life of the churches. This could only be done through co-operation, but most churches were prepared to talk far more about it than they were prepared to “do.” “Biggest Question” The biggest question in mission work was would the churches be free enough to support necessary action when it was located outside ordered forms? said the Rev. M. Bent, an Englishman, who at present is acting as assistant general secretary to the New Zealand Anglican Board of Missions. “We speak too much about the church of Christ as a servant church, but do we act as a church given to servanthood?” he said. “Expansion is the keynote of mission work, but it is being hampered by lack of support from churches like our own.” The church in New Zealand had to look at what was being demanded of it by the churches in such areas as Polynesia, Melanesia, West Pakistan, and East Africa. It should also be asked if lay-

men in the parishes were being challenged to use their skills. Larger Income The chairman of the Diocesan Missionary Council (the Rev. P. B. Baker) said that if work in the co-ordinated missions were not to suffer grievous setbacks, it was essential that the board’s total income for general purposes be much larger this year than last. While the total response of the diocese in dollars and

e cents—greater than that of r any of the other six dioceses in New Zealand—was heartening, it did not release the diocese from its budget respone sibilities. t The inter-church aid secre i tary for the National Council r of Churches (Mr F. G. Heard) s spoke on inter-church aid and 1 the situation in Vietnam, the s Middle East, and Biafra; and i the Rev. R. B. Allen (Bishopdale) spoke of the work he f will undertake in Singapore d next year.