CITY'S NEED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 40, 16 August 1937, Page 16

CITY'S NEED

"ONE CENTRAL CHURCH"

REV. A. B. KILROY'S VIEWS

"More and more I am coming to the conviction that we should have in this city one central church with not merely a fine sanctuary but also with adequate accommodation for classes and clubs and a staff of ministers and lay workers capable of meeting the real needs of a city population. There must be hundreds of people in Wellington, both young and old, longing for simple human friendliness, and through what channel can that be better mediated than through the church?" writes the Rev. A. B. Kilroy in a foreword to the annual report of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, The Terrace. "In the meantime, however, I realise that this ambition of mine is not within the realm of practical politics, but I do hope the members of this congregation will display their capacity for very genuine friendliness to the strangers within our gates," Mr. Kilroy states. "I realise how difficult is the task, as many of the people who complain about the coldness of church folk would do well to examine themselves, bearing in mind particularly that the neighbourhood of an iceberg is always to be chilly. "The task of a city minister, particularly in the capital city, grows no easier as the years go by. The responsibility of taking one's share in the administrative work of the church at large cannot well be shelved, but this duty U an impudent thief of the time that should be devoted to preparation for the pulpit and to pastoral care. Neither doe': the problem of preaching in itself grow any easier. A minister must steer between the Scylla of deluding himself believing that he is dealing faithfully with the problem of evil, when in reality he is being only a surly bear, and the Charybdis of making-his message so pleasing to his hearers that it has lost the force of prophecy. Today, just as much as in bygone days, the false prophet yields to the injunction, 'Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.' If preaching is to be merely the adding of another cushion to an armchair it will no longer be in the spirit of the prophets and the apostles. So often the demand in regard to preaching and all the other, aspects of the Church's work is that religion should be more comfortably upholstered for the old people, and more gladly decorated for the young. When all this has been said, however, it still remains true that we must meet the needs of a changing world with changing methods."