SERVICES HELD IN SCHOOL GROUNDS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31080, 8 June 1966, Page 8

SERVICES HELD IN SCHOOL GROUNDS

Rettgtoua children’s meetings were conducted in school grounds sit Henderson by students of the New Zealand Bdble Training Institute at the invitation of the schools, the principal of the institute, the Rev. D. Stewart, said in Christchurch yesterday.

Held after school, these meetings give the 145 students at the interdenominational institute practical experience during their two-year course. The students also give religious instruction in schools, visit homes on pastoral visits, invite parents to send their children to Sunday school and conduct open-air evangelical meetings in Auckland suburbs on Friday evenings.

Students from the institute took 40 classes of religious instruction in schools a week and were unable to fulfill any more of the many requests from hard-pressed local ministers, said Mr. Stewart. Begun in 1923, the institute aimed to provide training of lay workers for help in different churches and homes and especially in overseas missions, Mr Stewart said. Forty-four per cent of the institute’s graduates became missionaries. All major Protestant denominations were represented. A close study of the Bible was emphasised by the institute, Mr Stewart said. Because of Its interdenominational nature, the institute did not seek to give only one interpretation of controversial passages, but presented several. It also asked its students to be true to the beliefs

of their particular denominations but not to try to influence others.

Mr Stewart said that most church members needed something to stir them up to study the Bible. Most of them had contact with the Bible only through what they heard from their ministers on Sunday. If they studied it themselves they would get much more out of it. Some people said one could find anything one wanted in the Bible: this was because of misuse, Mr Stewart said. To understand it, one needed a scholarly approach to the language and a knowledge of the background and setting of the writings.

Many of the difficulties which arose from divergent interpretations would disappear if people approached the reading of scripture in a reverent, scholarly manner, tak ing into account background and context