HIS LIFE WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 800, 22 October 1929, Page 1

HIS LIFE WORK

ASSISTANT CITY MISSIONER LEAVING FOR AUSTRALIA REV. C. CHANDLER’S NEW POSITION After completing two years in Auckland as assistant City Missioner, in collaboration with the Rev. Jasper Calder, the Rev. Charles Chandler will leave New Zealand shortly for Australia, where he was formerly stationed. During his two years in Auckland he has made many friends. His breezy contributions to The Sun have been widely read. A limited edition of these religio-philosophical “sermonettes” will be printed before Mr. Chandler leaves Auckland. Mr. Chandler has crowded much experience into his 35 years of life. In addition to his Church work he has done much free-lance journalism and has, in addition, been the writer of some acceptable verses. It may be said that his career has been meteoric. From the position of junior office boy in the employ of the London ’’Daily Mirror” to that of a clerk in Holy Orders, he has traversed a wide field of adventure. In three States of Australia. for example, he carried his swag for hundreds of miles and also worked as a rouseabout on one of the largest sheep-stations in Queensland. After about a decade of such experience, Mr. Chandler was admitted to the Moore Theological College, Sydney, where he became senior student, leader of the debating team and college representative on the inter-col-legiate council within the University of Sydney. He was also editor of the college journal and a prize reader. On gaining his theological degree from the Australia College of Theology he became associated with the Rev. R. B. S. Howard, of Sydney, a well-known temperance worker. In December, 1927, Mr. Chandler was chosen by the Rev. Jasper Calder as the City Missioner’s first ordained assistant. In that capacity he has carried the Mission’s banner, as it were, throughout the whole of the Auckland Province and even as far south as Taranaki. By means of lectures he has distributed a wide influence on behalf of the Mission within fortyeight centres other than Auckland. The financial results of these efforts have been considerable. EVANGELISING LABOUR Mr. Chandler will proceed to Sydney to begin there what he believes will prove to be his life work—the evangelisation of the Labour movement in New South Wales. He has prepared the ground there with a long series of special articles for a prominent radical paper in Sydney for the past two years. Thus already he has secured a large following of industrialists and he hopes to do good work among them. Mr. Chandler is of the opinion that the Church has failed to make genuine contact with the great mass of working people, who largely comprise the non-Churchgoing populace. Their problems have not been understood and in a large measure the Church has ignored the tremendous religious force that lies behind and beneath what appears to be an incoherent mass struggling for power.