CHANGES RESENTED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 897, 14 February 1930, Page 14

CHANGES RESENTED

ALTERED CHURCH SERVICES

NEW VICAR’S INNOVATIONS

Prom Our Oicn Correspondent HAMILTON. Thursday

Resentment at certain alterations in the services at St. Andrew’s Church, Cambridge, is felt by many parishioners, from what could be gathered by a Sun man in a conversation today with a leading churchman of the district. This man said that since the induction of Archdeacon Gordon Bell, formerly of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Auckland, as vicar, there had been one or two drastic changes which had injured the feelings of parishioners of many years’ standing.

It appears that for years, under the successive regimes of Archdeacon Willis, and the Revs. Mortimer-Jones, Walter Averill and E. L. Harvie, whom he described as “low-church men.” the congregation at St. Andrew’s has lived and worked for the good of the Church in peace and harmony. Cambridge Anglicans had heard of the popularity of Archdeacon Bell and were anxious to have him as vicar. Many of them, especially some of the older members of the congregation, were now a little disappointed to find that the ""services they loved so well were being distorted beyond all recognition. The churchman concerned expressed the hope that no breach would result and that all parishioners would endeavour to support the new vicar despite any slight differences of opinion. Evidence that the new vicar himself is not wholly ignorant of the murmurs of discontent is given by his reported remarks at a welcome social accorded him by the church people of the district last Tuesday evening.

After Mr. J. Cowley, people's warden, had appealed to them to put their shoulder to the wheel and help even if they could not see eye to eye in all things with the vicar, the archdeacon asked for the people’s loyalty and support not for himself but for Him for whom the speaker was an agent, and not to “shoot too hard” at him if they did not see eye to eye in all things.