LOWER BIRTH RATE

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 276, 27 November 1935, Page 5

LOWER BIRTH RATE

AFFECTS SUNDAY SCHOOLS

DECLINING ATTENDANCES

By Telegraph —Copyright—Press Assn

SYDNEY, Nov. 11.

Motor-cars, beaches, the continued decrease in the birth rate and out-of-date teaching methods are factors to which New South Wales Churches attribute declining attendances in Sunday Schools. The position complained of at the Methodist annual synod is largely the same in other churches.

"My organisation has found that the greatest fall in attendances has been in Sunday Schools near beaches and in the wealthier suburbs, where many families have motor-cars.” said, Mr. C. J. R. Price, director of the Presbyterian Youth Welfare Department. “We are now successfully counteracting this in some suburbs by holding Sunday Schools in the mornings. "It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the most important factor is the decline in the State birth rate,” he added. Rev. N. C. Goss, director of the. Young People’s Department of the Congregational Union, attributed the decline principally to motor-cars "being brought out of cold storage at the return of prosperity,” and to Sunday School methods "becoming out of date when so much else had changed.”

Referring to decreased attendances in the country, Rev. F. A. Walton, director of the Church of England Board of Education, said that Sunday sports were strongly established in many towns.