INADEQUATE SERMONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19144, 9 October 1925, Page 9

INADEQUATE SERMONS.

CHURCH BEING NEGLECTED. WARNING BY ARCHBISHOP. A. and N.Z. LONDON. Oct. 7. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Randall T. Davidson, made a momentous utterance at the Church Congress at Eastbourne. This was in the nature of a warning to the effect that the presentday sermon is out of date. The Archbishop said the churches were empty, while the golf courses were crowded and the countryside was filled with picnic parties. Complaints regarding the inadequacy of the sermons of today were rife. The fact that the sermons ware inadequate could not be disputed. Those present at every clerical meeting harped upon the sparser congregations. There were many reasons for this—bicycles, motors and charabancs contributed; also golf and Sunday newspapers. The chief cause of the empty churches, however, was the fact that the average sermon did not keep pace with educational advance. The wider interest which men and women were taking nowadays in all sorts of human knowledge, and the world's affairs, called peremtorily for something better. It was intolerable, said Dr. Davidson, that the clergy should leave the responsibility to newspapers and novelists of giving guidance and suggesting study. The average thought and the average preaching nowadays were less painstaking than they used to be. Once the preacher, because of his higher education, stood on a higher level than his hearers. That was no longer the caso. Preachers now used merely thin words in presenting the gospel message, which were often resented by the educated listener. They were faced with the paramount necessity (which rested alike on English homes, schools and colleges) of seeing that the church ministry was rightly manned.