OTAGO EMERGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26719, 13 March 1948, Page 6

OTAGO EMERGES

A Church Grows

Next week, so the pamphlets say, the Centennial Synod of Otago and Southland is to be convened, its Moderator the minister of First Church, Dunedin. It was on January 18, 1866, that the Synod came into being, the coping-stone of an edifice which grew with amazing rapidity in the eighteen years before that date. For the first six years after the landing of the pioneer ships the Rev. Thomas Burns had oversight of a parish which extended from the middle of the South Island to the' Bluff, in most cases, needless to say, a rather telescopic oversight. As more immigrants arrived and the colony grew, Burns became conscious that more ministers were urgently needed. He had a generous parttime helper in Dr William Purdie, ship’s surgeon on the Mooltan, which arrived in Otago in 1850. Dr Purdie stayed, and took fortnightly services in Port Chalmers. Relief came in 1854, when on February 8 the Stately dropped anchor at Port Chalmers, and the Revs. William Will and William Bannerman landed in the colony. Both were soon inducted into new parishes, Mr Bannerman’s from the Bluff to Waihola, Mr Will's from Waihola to Creen Island. It is related that one stalwart on the Taieri refused to recognise Mr Will as properly inducted, as the congregation had no opportunity to choose their minister; after all, had not the Disruption from which the colony sprang been a protest against the appointment of ministers without consulting the wishes of the people!

With three parishes in existence, a Presbytery of Otago was formed, convened on June 27, 1854. Since the occasion was an important milestone in the history of the province, addresses were prepared for presentation to the Queen, the Governor, and the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. A few more parishes were formed and ministers settled in the following years, but it was the gold rush of the 'sixties which gave the Church its greatest opportunity. Seven ministers were brought out from Scotland in 1863, four more the next year. Within sixteen years of the founding of the province there were twenty-one parishes with their own ministers.

The Otago Presbytery found its domains too far-flung for efficiency, so in 1865 it divided the province into three Presbvterics, Dunedin, Clutha and Southland. (Later Oamaru, Central Otago and Mataura were added.) Controlling powers were handed over by the Otago Presbytery to the newlv-formed Synod of Otago and Southland, its first Moderator, like its Centennial Moderator, the minister of First Church, Dunedin.—G. D.