Christian Vocation In The Community: Presbyterian Moderator’s Stirring Call

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 94, 31 October 1947, Page 4

Christian Vocation In The Community: Presbyterian Moderator’s Stirring Call

Christchurch, Oct. 29

“It is obvious that there is at present a great lack of a sense of vocation in the community,” stated the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly (the Right Revi J. Douglas Smith) on the occasion of his installation at St. Paul’s Church, Christchurch, on Tuesday night. “During the war, with the threat of defeat and ail that might follow from it, there was achieved a remarkable unity of effort. Since the end of hostilities, however, there have been marked evidences of disunity, and a resumption in an intensified way of the struggle between the divergent interests of communities.

“Class strife accompanied by numerous strikes has been a particular feature of the Western world. Complaints are numerous that work is of poor quality, slacking is habitual, output per worker is going down while prices are going up. This is said to be particularly so in the disagreeable occupations, like the heavy industries, of which coal-min-ing and the iron and steel trades are the chief. Numbers of competent observers have been showing great concern over the standards of work in democratic countries. Mr Middleton Murray says that unless democracy can impose a sanction for slacking, its economy must run down.

Satisfaction In Work

“The craftsman gets a vast satisfaction out of a fine piece of work capably executed,” said Mr Smith, referring to the issue of vocation in the wider community: “The farmer can feel satisfaction that the product of his labour is going to feed a hungry world. Such satisfaction may be considerably more influential than is generally supposed. “A large part of the trouble about vocation in* the community is that very considerable areas of work are so far removed from these satisfactions. Dull mechanical work, the same little thing over and over on bits of jobs without the opportunity of making the whole —work done in company with questionable practices—work in an atmosphere of conflict, master against servant—dirty, disgusting but socially necessary work—these illustrate the point. If men can be educated to realise how their work fits in with and enriches the whole, this may provide a sufficient incentive for good work.” Qualifications For Ministry

Commenting on the vocation of the ministry, Mr Smith went on to say, “Ministers, like the prophets, are ‘the called of God’, and their call consists not only in a sense of personal devotion and resolve to offer themselves, but in the Church, through its appointed officers, being gqided ,to confirm the personal call, and ultimately in a congregation being guided to. choose the man whom they believe God has sent them. It is not an illusion that we are cherishing in believing in a Godguided Church. “It is not without significance that our Church has set up a Maintenance of the Ministry Committee. It might be thought that the task of such a committee is that of raising funds for the payment of adequate stipends to ministers.

“This is part of its task, but another part which has much deeper significance is that of upholding the status of the ministry in the eyes of the people by emphasising the necessity for men of the highest quality in character and gifts being encouraged to go forward to the ministry. This latter task is one which must on no account be pushed into the background by the former. “This brings us to the other side of vocation in the Church, that which concerns those who are called laymen in contrast to ministers. The Christian vocational witness is not being adequately given, not perhaps because members are unwilling to give it, but because often they are perplexed. They do not see clearly how to act for the best. They understand the basic virtues like truth-telling, keeping .promises, being honest, kind and so on, but when it comes to giving a distinctive Christian witness in the complicated civilisation in which they are caught up, that is not so straightforward.

“What of a Christian in business surrounded by practices which produce slumps and booms, the building up of huge debts with a load of compound interest, and markets in essential commodities open to speculation? What of a Christian public man faced with the issues of freedom of enterprise against control in the interests of the 'community?' What of a Christian employer faced with a disruption of the old incentives to work S-and called on to .replace them with new ones? What of a Christian member of a trade union faced with the demand for party loyalty in a strike which imperils the welfare of the community? “To reaffirm our belief in the reality of God’s guidance and to accept a vocation before Him—this is

my call to the Church.. -May I in my final word remind you that the issue of our vocation will not be determined merely in the realm of the seen. All our striving has a goal which lies beyond in the unseen, but as we serve our vocation here, as shall it be with us in the hereafter.”