EVANGELISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23648, 4 November 1938, Page 8

EVANGELISM

CHURCH’S VITAL NEED CLOSER TOUCH IMPERATIVE VIEW OF PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY The vital need for a greater measure of evangelistic activity in the church was emphasised by speeches during discussion of the report of the Life and Work Committee at yesterday’s session of the Presbyterian General Assembly. It was absolutely necessary, it was stated, that the church should be in closer touch with certain sections of the community. The Group Approach “ In my opinion, evangelism is the essential function of the church,” Dr Salmond said, “and as collectivism seems to have come to stay in the modern world, we should set out to evangelise the group. Are we to go on trying to convert the individual out of relation to the group to which he belongs? It is all very well to blame the individual, but it seems to me that the church should he making a very definite attempt—and many of our ministers are—-to get in touch with groups that misunderstand and mistrust us. “ I have gone out of my way,” Dr Salmond said, "to get into touch with teachers, for whom I have a great regard. We are out of touch with large sections of the medical profession and of organised labour. The individual Christian to-day needs the support of the Christian society, and if society is to be changed it must be changed from within.” Dr Salmond suggested that the Christian churches in New Zealand needed to make a demonstration of Christian unity in the face of all the “ isms ” that were abroad, and there should be a much more planned approach to the student group, to organised labour, and to other sections of the people. He thought there was a real need to try to make a vital impact on the minds of dynamic groups in the community at a time when there was such a ferment of ideas, social and political, going on in the land. The Rev. R. S. Watson (Christchurch), convener of the Life and Work Committee, said a proposal had been made that New Zealand should participate in a world-wide preaching mission in 1940. That would come before the committee at a later StageTraining of Students “1 think the evangelistic work of the church is vitally important,” said the Rev. C. J Tocker, of St. Paul’s, Invercargill. “The work of evangelism in these times is the work of the ministry—with a difference. We have to face this question in the training of our ministry the same as anywhere else. For years we have trained students to conduct services, but that will not do. We have got to train them in the spirit, knowledge, and method to be at living grips with the souls of their people. I hope the assembly will take evangelism as its most serious problem, because there is a desperate need for evangelism in the church.” Mr Tocker supported Dr Salmond’s advocacy of getting into touch with groups, but said that was still not the beginning of the work of evangelism. It was within the bounds of the homes of the ministers’ own parishes as they now existed that the work must be done.