METHODIST CONFERENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 22 February 1929, Page 3

METHODIST CONFERENCE

PRESIDENT’S SPEECH

(By Telegraph—Press Association)

AUCKLAND, February 21

Tlie annual conference of the New Zealand Methodist Church opened tonight. The new President, Rev. J. F. Goldie, of Solomon Islands Mission, delivered the inaugural address. He said that, on coining hack after many years 111 the mission field, he could not help being struck by the feeling of instability and of insecurity in tlie affairs of the church. Some people seemed to think religion was a. spent force whilst even in the pulpit there was sometimes a lack of confidence.

In spite of the prayers off tlie Christian people who were disgusted with the materialism of the age, if could not be said that the post-war world was a better place in which to live. Never before had the world been such a place of unrest. In addition i seemed as though the frenzied, search for pleasure and prosperity was the realm of life, and that the world had lost its balance. People were impati?n Lof taking a serious view of life. Accusers of the Church declared that i had not a message adequate to modern needs, and that religion was a spent force. Was the Church honestly prepared to assert there was no truth in the charge? The remedy did not lie in a multiplicity of new societies, and sects, but in an infusion of new blood into the Church itself. He concluded with a. call to self sacrifice. Rev. T. P. Hughson (Taranaki) was appointed , vice-president of the conference, while tlie election of president for 1930 resulted in the allotment of Rev. A. N. Scotter, of Christchurch, Resident Conference Secretary.