PROBLEMS OF CHURCH

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 126, 21 February 1941, Page 8

PROBLEMS OF CHURCH

Call To Attack In Meeting Them METHODIST CONFERENCE (By Telegraph — Press Association.) AUCKLAND, February 20. A call to the Church to "advance and attack” in meeting wartime ditli culties, with more solicitude for th. unclaimed world outside its own fold, was made by the president of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, the Rev. W. A. Burley, Christchurch, in his inaugural address to rhe annual conference tonight. "We would be foolish to discount the meaning of our declining numbers,” said tlie president. “The general decrease in many denominations of Sunday school scholars and Bibb class members—tlie church of the future —must give us food for serious concern.” True courage, he added, would face the position and seek intelligently to find the causes and then endeavour to deal with them. Acknowledging that the war had brought to the Church internal troubles and the risk of a cleavage over the rightness or otherwise of war, Mr. Burley appealed for tolerance and mutual understanding between those who held divers views. "We see the Church beset by eue mies without and difficulty within, he continued. "An attitude of wait ing will invite disaster. She will slow ly die of inanition. Probably it is such an attitude that has brought us where we are. Christianity must never be resting. It must always be on the march. The remedy is to advance ami attack."