PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 292, 7 April 1941, Page 5

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

MAINTENANCE, OF THE MINISTRY VISIT OF REV. T. W. ARMOUR The Rev. T. W. Armour, who as Convener of the Maintenance of the Ministry Committee is visiting the Bay of Plenty in company with Mr W. Goodfellow, Auckland, as representing the Laymen's Executive addressed a meeting at Edgecumbe on Friday night. He said that over the last ten years there had been concern in the Church about the economic position of ministers on the minimum stipend and of home missionaries, and the situation was becoming progressively worse.

The report presented to the last Assembly stirred the Church to action. It was decided that a Laymen's Executive for the whole country should be nominated and tfiose who had agreed to serve included the following; Sir Robert Anderson (Invercargill), the Hon. Adam Hamilton, M.P., Messrs J. R. Fairbafrn (Dunedin), H. P. Donald, J. L. Hay, John Mac Gibbon, Charles Ogilvie and A. C. Wells (Christchurch), Alex P. Smith (Wellington), W. B. Tennent and J. G. Young (Palmerston North) and W. Goodfellow (Auckland) . Their business was to arouse interest in the matter and to secure that the minimum stipend for this year should not be less than £330 with proportionate increase for home missionaries. ff the minimum stipends paid 30 years ago had increased in accordance Avith the rise in the cost of living they would require to be nt least £360 to-day. What suffered Avlien the economic leA'els of the ministry AA r ere allowed to fall Avas that the dignity, culture and leadership associated Avith the Presbyterian ministry began to fall and was left Avith something but' not the Presbyterian ministry to which it fell heirs. He AA-as sure that Avhen the various facts of the report Ave re brought before the Church there would be an adequate response. They had received a most gratifying reception thus far in their campaign to educate the Church in this matter.

Mr Goodfellow said the Laymen's Executive had been greatly impressed Mr Armour's thorough grasp of the economic ijosition and hisf lucid and forceful presentation if the facts in regard to the Maintenance of the Ministry and they had, therefore, as a first thing asked that he be set free from his other duties for six months in order to visit every Presbytery in New Zealand. The Executive was bent on an educational campaign and as part of this wanted to have local laymen's committees which would co-operate with the Dominion Executive. The ministers while they could plead for other causes could not, like other sections of the community, call attention to their own needs and so the laity could be oblivious to the fact that their incomes had become inadequate in view of the rising costs of living. In the cities unskilled labour was paid £5 and £7 a week and many in semi-skilled and skilled work were making £600 and £800 a year, the justification of this being the increased cost of living.

No man went into the ministry to make money but to serve the Master and it was the business of the Church to see that they were freed, as far as possible, from financial cares and worries so that their work might receive their undivided attention. The Presbyterian Church finances were in a healthy condition. Recently under the Centennial Fund they had raised £250,000 for reduction of debt and he congratulated the Bay of Plenty on its exemplary response to that appeal.

The income of the church last vear had been £300,000 and the amount required for stipend last year was less than £100, 000 so that with the proper distribution of Christian liberality they should be able to maintain the ministry on levels of efficiency. The Laymen's Executive was convinced that if the members of the Church failed to

provide an adequate maintenance

for their ministers and home missionaries they would gradually undermine the very foundations of their Church which was to-day the most active and virile Christian Church in New Zealand.