WINDOW ON THE CHURCHES

Taupo Times, Volume 20, Issue 5, 21 January 1971, Page 4

WINDOW ON THE CHURCHES

Have you bought yourself a copy of the complete New English Bible? In our holiday bach we were catching up on back numbers of a weekly news magazine and discovered ^ an article by Dean Martin Sullivan on this completed translation. He admires it on two counts, as an invaluable "by-your-elbow" model for the family room, and also as one to be successfully read in public. ^

He also points out that the translators have carefully avoided apeing any of the earlier more familiar English translations. The resultant freshness certainly stings the mind and stirs up a new appreciation of what the biblical writers are saying. The "Acts of the Apostles" volume in the New Testament is probably most notorious amongst the churchified because they had it served up in great puzzling chunks during Sunday Sghool or Bible class sessions. But it is doubtful if it ever fails to reward the reader with a more adult and experienced mind. This is the more true for those who pick up their New English Bible. It is an exciting book of action. But it does end in a strange and dramatic way. Paul is under house arrest in Rome waiting for his trial. He is visited by large crowds of people. To them all he talks about Jesus. Most of the Jews reject his words and ideas and so he turns to the foreigners. For two years he teaches in this way "with a welcome for all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the facts about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and with out hindrance." And so the book ends. At first it seems an unsatisfying ending with many questions unanswered. But the author's task was to show how christianity got from Jerusalem to Rome. This was achieved, not as anyone else would have imagined but in the way that God wanted. So it is with the christian scene today. All the prevailing blue-prints for the Church and its future must be flexible and sensitive to the lead that God gives. Otherwise we can create structures that imprison man and halt God s work as well.

" Along this line of thinking - the new Auckland Lynnfield parish is worth looking at. While the printed "Plan for * Union" is being studied, amended and argued over, one Anglican priest, Canon Mangatitoki Cameron has ^ been appointed as the sole ^ 'minister of all Presby terians ' and Methodists as well as Anglicans in this area. It may not be the sort of thing to happen in other places, but something like it could always grow. It is worth . being sensitive about.