Page:History of Knox Church Dunedin.djvu/209



OUR Office-bearers have much pleasure in presenting the following Report for the year ending September 30th, 1891. The quarterly statements published during the year have been so full and comprehensive, that they are thus enabled to make the present report shorter and more summarised than would otherwise have been the case.

The past twelvemonth has been, under God's blessing, a period of quiet, steady work. There has been a small but gratifying increase of young members to the congregation, and the various agencies in operation have been all sustained in a more or less vigorous state.

During the year the ministers have officiated at 120 marriages, 63 baptisms, and 80 funerals; 69 members have been added to the fellowship of the church for the first time, and 50 have joined the congregation by certificate from other churches. From this large addition to the strength of the members, your office-bearers would look for good results; and they hope that all the church organisations may be by this means increased in vigour and efficiency.

The recorded disjunctions have been 71—viz., 57 by certificate, and 14 by death. There is, however, a good deal of laxity in "lifting their lines" by members who leave for other parts, so that the real loss to the membership is larger than appears by the foregoing figures. The removals by death include members of both the Church Courts, and also such old members as Mrs. Margaret Miller, of Melrose; Mrs. Janet Miller, of South Dunedin; and Mrs. Robert Paisley, of Grange street. The first and last of these were original members of the congregation—a band whose numbers are being rapidly diminished.

The attendances at the quarterly communions have been:—December, 673; March, 690; June, 701; and September, 729.

One of the most important undertakings in connection with the year's work has been the starting of a Sabbath evening service in the class-room of the Old Church. The prevalence, in the more thickly populated parts of the town, of a large class which has fallen away from Church ordinances, has been too long a familiar fact. Various attempts to attach those in our own