ANGRY CONGREGATIONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3840, 4 September 1928, Page 1

ANGRY CONGREGATIONS.

PREACHERS AND SERMONS

TEXTS CAUSE TROUBLE. CASES OF WALKING OUT. PARSON’S UNPOPULAR WIFE. A short time ago, when the vicar of a church at Darwen announced as his text: . “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” some 300 members of his congregation walked out. This was no isolated ease. Other congragations have objected to texts, and, on occasion, to hymns. The somewhat eccentric viear—now dead —of a Dorsetshire parish tv as at variance with his flock, and for two Sundays, morning and evening, he preached from the text, taken from I. Coi’inthians, xi., “WLat shall I say to you?” He said so much that his congregation agreed that when he mounted the pulpit on the next Sunday morning they would walk out as,he announced his text. They assumed it would be the same, and they had had more than enough of it. Whether the vicar had heard about the plot is not known, but his text was: “Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity,” and well, the exit was not quite the success hoped for. The ultimate effect was good, however, for the local squire, blessed with a sense of humour, arranged a parochial meeting, and harmony was restored. In another parish, the vicar, although a very poor preacher, persisted in discoursing for fifty minutes or an hour. As a petition for shorter sermons had no effect, the congregation walked out during the siinging of the hymn before the sermon. To counter that, the vicar preached at the commencement of the service, but, after one experience, the people waited outside until he had finished, and then entered. Ultimately the bishop intervened, with the result that the vicar, going to the other extreme, cut his sermons down to a bare three minutes! ‘ That brought no protest. Everybody seemed more than satisfied.

Another parson, in charge of a north-country parish, never used the pulpit,- hut walked up and down the central aisle as he preached. As his style was fierce and denunciatory, and he had a big, booming voice, his congregation did not appreciate his nearness, and most of them, walked out regularly. That continued until he went to another parish. Bad health affects one’s outlook on life, but that scarcely justified a Norfolk rector in having, Sunday after Sunday, such lugubrious hymns as “Brief life is here our portion,” “Days and moments quickly flying,” and others of the same type. As he was deaf to requests to be more cheerful in his selection, his congregation walked out every time they were asked to sing one of the gloomy hymns. It was only when the choir and organist followed suit that he gave

way. Some parsons’ wives are helpful in the parish, and popular; others are not. In one country parish, whenever the rector’s wife entered the church the entire congregation walked out. That continued for months, until an exchange of livings ended the trouble. Most “walkings-out” are arranged, but one that was not happened at a seaside town when the parson took as his text “O ye fools!” and became personal. In five minutes the church was empty.