BIBLE CLASSES LINK 30,000.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18897, 23 October 1929, Page 16

BIBLE CLASSES LINK 30,000.

FLOWER OF COUNTRY’S YOUTH IN MOVEMENT. The problem of work amongst the youth was one of the subjects discussed by Bishop West-Watson in his synodical address yesterday. We have heard a great deal since the war of youth movements, all over the world, and sometimes we may have been disturbed by their revolutionary tendencies,” the Bishop said. ”1 fancy that things are changing, and that many of the movers are realising that it is a more difficult matter to. run the world than they thought. In consequence, some have turned rather to the attractions of ‘this present world," some struggle on with her ideals. But, allowing for everything, it is, I think, certain that youth, inside the Church as well as outside, is claiming liberty to dream dreams and to organise and plan for itself. “Herein lies a great hope. In New Zealand the Bible Class

movement is a notable expression of this desire, and links up some 30,000 of the flower of our youth. Our Church has welcomed the movement and felt the inspiration of it, and in return the movement looks to us for help and guidance. But youth work is a specialised work, like so much of the world's work to-day. Many of us have neither the gifts nor the temperament to help as we would in it. Some of the Churches have created a special department to deal with it, and I believe that sooner or later, I hope sooner, we shall have to plan something of the sort, and have a director specially detailed to help and guide in it. After all, we clergy are most of us perforce ‘general practitioners/ and I think we should welcome the help of a specialist, who is in close touch with youth movements and their spirit and aims. I have no immediate plan to propose, but I want you to be thinking about it. I am glad to see that ‘Youth’ has now been put down as one of the subjects for Lambeth Conference, and also that it is proposed as the subject for our own Church Congress here in Christchurch.”