CHURCH NOT LEADING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22816, 27 February 1936, Page 10

CHURCH NOT LEADING

TO THE EDITOR. Sin, —There appeared in the columns of the local papers last Saturday the statement by Mr J. M. Thompson, of Wellington, who recently attended the Methodist Conference at Christchurch, that " The church is not taking a lead in the restoration of the cuts which were made during the depression," I presume that

he is referring to the salaries of the ministers. I think if inquiries were made, however, it would be found that most of the circuits are having a hard enough struggle to pay present salaries to ministers and keep out of debt. It would be interesting, therefore, to know from Mr Thompson where the extra finance is to come from. Where I suggest the church should be giving a lead is in the reunion of the churches. With many of our churches not halffilled on a Sunday, church union is, I consider, one of the vital necessities of the time. There should be nothing to prevent the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches from coming together for a start, and this would do away with a lot of the overlapping that, is at present taking place. We would have a stronger church, and there would not be such a worry about the payments of ministers' salaries. I was struck by one passage in the presidential address delivered at the recent Methodist Conference, which was this, " Yet in the main it becomes the church to make humble confession. If the federation of the nations is slow, what of the reunion of the churches? Who are we, broken and divided, that we should preach fellowship ? " —I am, etc., A. Layman. Dunedin, February 25.