EVANGELIST COMES TO CHRISTCHURCH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18785, 14 June 1929, Page 10

EVANGELIST COMES TO CHRISTCHURCH.

WILL LEAD CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOUR CAMPAIGN.

“I'm a journalist myself and I wouldn’t like to say how many million words I’ve written,” were the words with which Miss Jennie Street greeted a “ Star ” reporter this morning. Miss Street, who has come from the Old Country to conduct a Christian Endeavour campaign in New Zealand, has been in touch with journalism most of her life. She is acting in an editorial capacity for several English periodical publications and has laid aside those duties only for the duration of her campaign in this country. Miss Street has already spoken over 200 times in the North Island. “Christian Endeavour is now a worldwide movement,” Miss Street explained. “ It claims 5,000,000 members attached to 85,000 societies. As it is a young movement, a fluid one, members constantly coming in and passing out, these figures represent actual live membership and not the sum of endless accretions. In Great Britain, where there are 190,000 members of the movement, Christian Endeavour is preparing for its jubilee, which will occur in 1931. A campaign is afoot for raising a £IO,OOO fund, and a jubilee volume of the movement’s journal will be published. Two Essential Factors. “ The movement is an organisation of young people who have hegun a decided Christian life. They meet weekly for fellowship and prayer, special consecration gatherings being held monthly. liic two essential factors are the covenant pledge and the committee system. The covenant pledge is psychologically defendable in relation to adolescence, when impulses are strong but variable. The committee system ensures personal service on the part of each member being properly directed. Members serve for a period on one committee and then transfer to another till they have had training on them all. Remarkable pieces of work have been achieved by some Christian Endeavour societies, numbers raising sums of £4O and £SO in aid of mission work and beds in hospitals. Several societies support entire hospital wards, and the junior members of the Queensland organisation have presented to Brisbane Hospital one of the most wonderful microscopes in the world. Has No Doctrine. “ Christian Endeavour has no doctrinal allegiance. Each . branch belonged to its own church and every Evangelical church has its societies. The council of the movement have no doctrinal or legal powers over their members.”

Speaking of the work of Christian Endeavour societies in this country. Miss Street said that some had church cleaning committees, some minister’s aid committees, and one Methodist society in the north had a motor lorry in which they travelled round the backblocks carrying on with the work. There were now seventv-two societies in New Zealand, and formerly the movement was very strong, but, said Miss Street, not on strict Christian Endeavour lines. Many ministers were feeling the need for the training of young people which the movement provided. Miss Street has addressed ministers’ associations, councils of Christian congregations and Presbyteries in the north, and every time she has spoken, Miss Street says, ministers have come to her and confessed that, except for having come in contact with the movement in their youth, they would not have joined the ministry. “ More of the Religious Mind.”

“ I think you want more of the religious mind in New Zealand,” concluded Miss Street. “ I think it was Dean Inge who said that the retrograde state was always irreligious and the progressive state religious. I've been over a lot of your roads. They are magnificent and the people wfio built them could do anything. New Zealanders of the present generation are living on the results of the vigorous religious life of their forbears, which tended to physical as well as spiritual well-being. But they don’t want to lose the faculty of doing the same themselves.” Miss Street will begin her campaign of public speaking to-morrow night.