“RAMBLING PRAYERS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 842, 10 December 1929, Page 7

“RAMBLING PRAYERS”

MODERN YOUTH’S ATTITUDE FRANK CHRISTIAN CRITICS Modern girls are bored with the monotony of the Church, find prayers rambling and sermons tedious, and church architecture the reverse of bright. This was the statement made to the meeting of the Council of Christian Congregations last evening by Miss Jean JBegg, secretary of the Auckland Young Women’s Christian Association, when the attitude of the youth of today toward the Church, was under discussion. The trouble with sermons, Miss Begg said, was that ministers told young people what to do when they really wanted to know what the minister would do. She appealed to church authorities to make more use of young people in church services and to show them that they were receiving some interest and doing something worth while. It was not reasonable to expect the younger generation to retain their interest if they had to sit back and watch their elders. The request that the audience imagine that modern youth was being tried by them as a jury on a charge of lack of interest in the Church was made by Mr. Verton T. Drew, secretary of the Y'oung Men’s Christian Association. He said that the majority of young people would plead not guilty to the charge and that others would pleal guilty under extenuating circumstances. What the young men of today wanted was something that would conform to the changed conditions of the ' present time. Tie was interested in a simple religion unencumbered with doctrinal controversies. He did not like compromise and felt by stooping to all manner of means to gain his interest the Church was lowering its dignity. To look with sympathy instead of detachment at the young people and to show interest not only when they were in trouble but all the time was the subject of an appeal to the elder people by Mr. J. W. Hyland, a Bible class worker. He charged the Church with neglect of the vitality of youth work. Whatever ailed the youth of today was undoubtedly the fault of the older generation which had permitted such a state of affairs, said the Rev. E. R. Blamires, secretary of the Council of Religious Education. The spiritual welfare of the country should be assured as the physical condition had been —by attention from infancy. The Church needed a Plunket movement in its religious education to spread its influence upon the young people from their most impressionable age.