CHURCH PARLIAMENT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 81, Issue 7273, 6 November 1950, Page 4

CHURCH PARLIAMENT

PRESBYTERIAN GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADDRESS BY AUSTRALIAN MODERATOR Over 1000 people crowded St. David’s Church, Auckland, for the opening of the General Assembly of tne Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. In ‘ the characteristic rresoyterian fashion representatives, their friends, and interested folk mingled freely and without distinction at the original meeting, indicating the close relationship that exists between people, elders and ministers in the Church.

The Right Rev. J. A. Thomson was installed as the Moderator by the Very Rev. R. S. Watson, the retiring Moderator.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Thomson said that the Christian Church can go forward to the future without any fear, not because she thinks she has the solution to all the world’s problems, or that the immediate future is going to be an experience of peace and prosperity, or that it will be a time in which her authority will be recognised and her message received, but because she knows the Grace of God is operating in every historical situation.

One of the highlights of the Assembly was the reception of the Mod-erator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, the Right Rev. J. R. Blanchard, M.A.

“If anything happens to Australia, then it will be New Zealand’s turn next and that quickly,” said Mr. Blanchard. “Nowadays you are just across the creek. The withdrawals of Britain from India, and other parts of the world, suggests that she is weary of her imperial burdens, and that she cannot ensure our protection. This situation demands that we enter into partnership with the Asian peoples, and in this the Christian Church has a tnajor part to play through her missionary movement.”

Mr. Blanchard went on to say that the lack of integrity created almost insuperable problems. He claimed that only the Christian faith could supply this integrity. “There is not a man of you who does not realise that integrity is needed in the foundation of a stable state,” said Mr. Blanchard. “Otherwise you are building on sand. Will Asia fall into the hands of India or China?.China is in the hands of Communism and so India should be encouraged in the leadership of the continent.”

“Whatever we may have felt about the assassination of Ghandi, it was nothing to the shudder that went through Hindu India,” Mr. Blanchard continued. “They could not find a clue to that tragedy in their own teaching, but they found it in the Cross. We should make sure of our mission work in India and fill the villages with the Christian way of life. Through the intensification of missionary work we can strike a blow for the strategic point of Asia and for New Zealand and Australia.” Mr. Blanchard was for 12 years Minister of St. John’s Church, Wellington. He conveyed the greetings of the Presbyterian Church of Australia to the Assemblv.

The reports presented to the Assembly revealed that the Church now has the largest number of church buildings in its history, 650 in all; that the greatest growth in the Church has taken place in Sorth Auckland, and that Auckland city needs to grow four times as fast as Dunedin to have the same number of Presbyterians.

The Rev. H. W. Haigh, Chaplin to Sunnyside Mental Hospital, describing the work he was doing among mental patients, .said that there was a large number of neople in these institutions who were forgotten by theii friends. The Church was encouraging its members to take an interest in these people to seek to give them friendship and help. He spoke also ot the great difficulty of staffing the hospitals, and instanced the fact that there were only 23 doctors caring for 10,000 patients throughout New Zealand.

The Rev. Y. T. Fong wa.s among the new Ministers received and welcomed by the Moderator. Mr. Fong is of Chinese nationality, and arrived in Dunedin this year with his wife and four children from Sourabaya.

The Assembly expressed its sympathy with the Right Hon. Peter Fraser in his illness. Mr. Fraser has been visited regularlv during his illness by the Rev. W. J. Fellow, of Kelburn Presbyterian Church.