HOME MISSIONARIES

Southland Times, Issue 18938, 11 May 1923, Page 10

HOME MISSIONARIES

COMPLAINT .ABOUT STIPENDS. (Special to the Times). CHRISTCHURCH, May 9. At the meeting of the Christchurch Presbytery to-day the Rev. G. Budd, Home Missions Superintendent, who at present is on a visit to various home mission stations in Canterbury and other districts, addressed the Presbytery on home mission matters. There was an important improvement to be made, he said, and that was in the direction of guaranteeing Home Missionaries stipends. At present the method of paying stipend® was haphazard. It was little short of a scandal that in a church of the standing of the Presbyterian Church, which could raise a sum of approximately £250,000 a year, should be content to send out men into a Home Mission field and promise them a small stipend and give them no guarantee that all the stipend would be paid. Sometimes the full stipend was not paid and occasionally men and women were at their wits ends to live on the money they received. Mr Budd said he was amazed and delighted by the way many of the Home missionaries stuck to their task despite this disability. It was proposed that the minimum stipend be £3 10s a week with house, or house allowance, with a guarantee that that would be paid’. There would perhaps be bigger initial expenditure, but it wag hoped that the people of the Home Mission charges would rise *o the occasion and provide the necessary money. If the standard was not attained then the balance should be made up to the Home Missionary.