The History of the Church Army

1882 - Birth of the Church Army
More than a hundred years ago an Anglican priest by the name of Wilson Carlile took a group of Christian people to share their faith in Jesus Christ with those living in the slums of London. Members of the group were untrained and inexperienced but with Wilson's encouragement they began to speak publicly in the streets about their faith and to demonstrate their faith by their actions. Wilson called the group the Church Army.
Wilson's Army grew rapidly and within four years there were more than 6,000 people in the ranks. During one year alone, in 1886, about 40,000 meetings were held and 3 million people heard the gospel of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
The Church Army of ordinary men and women, with the love of God in their hearts, spread rapidly into the slums of Victorian England. They went amongst alcoholics and prostitutes, into the nation's prisons, out into the countryside amongst the hop pickers and holiday makers, through both city and rural communities and onto the war fronts, as a branch of the Anglican Church.

Because most of the people they sought to reach were very disadvantaged socially, economincally and politically, the Church Army became almost immediately became a pioneer in social care and social action. They evangelised as much by what they did as by what they said. Lives and conditions were changed.
So was the church changed. Wilson Carlile insisted on training people for this ministry. The idea of men who weren't priests preaching the gospel in the Church of England of the late 19th century was a radical one. That ordinary lower class men should do so was extreme. But that women should do this was revolutionary! The Church Army provided a way for the ministry of ordinary people in the church to develop and one of the few opportunities for women to minister.

1929 - New Zealand's first taste of the Church Army

The 1920s in New Zealand were years of building and progress. Public Works Camps were established throughout the country to provide temporary accomodation for those employed in road and railway construction. Often whole families would end up living in these camps for months at a time. The Bishop of Waiapu, keen to reach these families who lived outside the boundaries of the established churches, wrote to England to ask for a Church Army member to be sent for this work.
Captain Bell was sent, and he established his headquarters at Tuai near Lake Waikaremoana. The following year he was joined by Captain Squires and another centre was opened at Waikokopu between Wairoa and Gosborne.
In 1932 earthquakes shattered the East Coast devastating Napier.
Within a day Captain Squires was on the scene and he immediately set up an emergency night shelter using borrowed tents and a soup kitchen. In the weeks that followed he arranged relief depots and recreation tents for the camps of men who formed the rescue teams, demolition gangs, and evetually the labourers who rebuilt the town.
And so the Church Army was introsduced to New Zealand through ordinary men who evangelised and cared for the needy. Archbishop Averill and others were so impressed they made arrangements for a team from the Church Army in England to visit New Zealand and conduct missions throughout the land.
1933 - The Column comes


Captain Stanley Banyard came out in April 1933 and made preliminary arrangements for the "Column", as it was called, of 8 men and 2 women, who arrived in Auckland on 5th July 1933. Archbishop Averill welcomed them and commissioned them in St Mary's Cathedral in Parnell.

Immediately they left for Christchurch and began their missions amongst the communities of Hokitika, Ross and Kumara. The team spilt up so that every district and church was covered and over the next two years they visited every church in New Zealand but four. By the next year the ten Church Army pioneers were averaging 200 home visits and 80 church services each week between them. Each one was sharing their faith with between 2,000 and 4,000 people every week.

1935 - A new Church Army is born
The national meeting of leaders of the Anglican church, known as the General Synod, met in Napier in 1934. After expressing its warm appreciation of the work done by the Church Army, and the hope that it might "become an integral part of our church life and work" the Synod requested the establishment of Church Army "centres in New Zealand for Social and Evangelistic work".
On Monday 4th November 1935 Captain Stanley Banyard formed the New Zealand Church Army. A lay ministry reaching out with the proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and demonstrating the loving care of the King Jesus Christ, was effectively established within the life and work of the NZ Anglican Church.

For further information:
phone (09) 630 2282

email:office@ca-nz.org

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