WORLD PROBLEMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1943, Page 3

WORLD PROBLEMS

NEED OF NEW SPIRITUAL DYNAMIC DECLARED BY PRESBYTERIAN .MODERATOR. FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH DEFINED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, November 3. ' “Plans for peace and justice and goodwill between sections of the community and between nations, which today flit like fireflies before the eyes of mankind and fill us with new hope, will come to nothing unless we become better men and women—unless there is a new spiritual dynamic which will cause men and women to have a more earnest and unselfish purpose in life —a dynamic which will enable them to refuse to be discouraged or dismayed by the difficulties which after the war will pile up like range after iiange of apparently unscalable mountains,” said the new Moderator, the Rt. Rev. D. C. Herron, in his inaugural address' to the Presbyterian General Assembly. He added that it was the function of the Church to be the channel of that spiritual dynamic, which could come from God alone, and in the Church the key man was the minister. After some extended references to the Campaign for Christian Order, regarding which he said that a certain amount of interest undoubtedly had been aroused, but that the mass of the people —those outside the church —had remained largely indifferent, Mr Herron continued: —“What we are most in need of in the Church today is new life—and first of all, a new note of Divine authority in preaching. Simply put, that statement means that the influence of our diluted form of Christianity today is ineffective —it lacks driving and transforming power. The Church has accepted and largely followed the form of civilisation of our day instead of prophesying to it, and men have ceased to expect a .courageous lead from it. Does not much of our preaching lack that element of Divine authority? WHIRL OF ACTIVITIES. “Many ministers lose spiritual power because their life has to be lived too much on the surface of things. They have insufficient undisturbed time for prayer and meditation. I do not say that every minister has the gift for meditation and creative thought, but many who have had it, through the circumstances of their work, have lost it. In New Zealand we do not give men in our ministry the unhurried time to brood over the ways of God till the fire burning in their souis constrains them to reach for their pen. The abler men are not long out of college before they are hurried into important and exacting charges where life becomes a whirl of activities. . . . ‘ The change which I have suggested would, mean the acceptance of limitations both on the part of the congregations and of the ministers —but limitations in the interest of efficiency, of power. The day of unrestricted individualism is passing, and we in the Church, both as ministers and congregations, should recognise that it is so. “There is a multitude of voices pouring forth a spate of gratuitous advice as to how the Church can be revitalised and made more effective. Perhaps mine is just one more tributary added to that turbulent stream. But I speak what I feel. To me, the most urgent need of the Church today is ministers whose words carry in them a Divine authority. A PROPHETIC MINISTRY. “Tremendously important though plans for reconstruction may be, they arc not at this hour, and never have been, the primary concern of the pulpit. It is not the function of the Christian Church to supply the blue print of a new civilisation. But it is the function of the Church to create the creators of a mew civilisation. Ours will not be a prophetic ministry unless those who hear us preach, like <the men in Elijah’s day, feel the constraint cf God upon them —unless men from the Church in the ranks of economists, political and social workers, feel compelled to dedicate their expert knowledge and first-hand experience to the task of finding solutions for the pressing problems of humanity. While our preaching must be in close touch v.’ith actual conditions in the world and in the community in which the hearers are living, the need of our day in the pulpit above all else is men with an overaweing sense of the active . presence of the living God in the life of the world.”