Fourth Generation Baptist Minister

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 22

Fourth Generation Baptist Minister

The Rev. John North, the fourth generation of a family engaged in full-time service of the Baptist Church for nearly a century, has been appointed minister of the Bryndwr Baptist Church, Christchurch.

His father, the Rev. L. A. North, is general secretary of the Baptist Union of New Zealand, and was earlier minister of the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church in Christchurch. His grandfather, Dr. Charles North, was the first Baptist medical missionary to go from New Zealand to India. His great-grandfather, the Rev. Alfred North, was one of the earliest ministers of the Hanover Street Baptist Church, Dunedin. The Rev. John North took a master of arts degree at Victoria University of Wellington and then trained in the Baptist Theological College in Auckland from 1960 to 1962. He held an interim pastorate at the Papanui North Baptist Church in 1963.

Since 1964 he has been studying at the Ruschlikon Baptist Theological Seminary in Switzerland where he was recently awarded the degree of bachelor of divinity. During long vacations, Mr North has visited practically every country in Europe, preached in several, attended a conference on East-West tensions in Prague, represented the National Council of Churches at a conference

in Budapest, and recently represented his seminary at a youth conference in Moscow. Mr North is now returning to New Zealand through Bible lands of the Middle East and India, where he has two sisters on the New Zealand Baptist mission field. In May he married a Swiss hospital technician who is an accomplished linguist and a keen church worker. Mr and Mrs North are expected in Christchurch late in August. The Bryndwr Baptist Church has been developing rapidly and, being near to the new University of Canterbury at Ham, expects to extend its work among students.