St James and Jensen

Have been reading the April magazine from my previous parish.
A new rector  has just been appointed to St James, King Street.
Rev Andrew Semple is currently Dean of Bathurst.  He grew up in Sydney and was active in youth ministry in North West Sydney, a hot bed of evangelicalism. He was later involved in church work in the Diocese of Armidale, the other, less extreme, evangelical diocese in NSW.

However he studied at St Mark's Canberra and was ordained in the Diocese of Grafton.  I am not so happy that he seems to have spent much of his ministry as an Army chaplain but that is showing my prejudices.

His appointment had to be approved by Peter Jensen and in replying to a letter of thanks from the parish nominators, Jensen mentions that his parents met at St James, King Street.

Elsewhere in the magazine there is an historical article regarding a previous Rector and it mentions that in 1937  "Micklem’s resignation from St James’ led to a crisis over the appointment of a successor. Archbishop Mowll required the incoming Rector, the Rev. E.J. Davidson to make substantial changes to the liturgy including the replacement of the 11am Sung Eucharist or ‘High Mass’ with the service of Morning Prayer. This led to an exodus of parishioners to Christ Church St. Laurence. It was not until 1984 that Fr. Hughes, soon after his induction, restored most of the liturgical practices abandoned at St James’ in 1937."

Phew, that explains it, it would be a shock to find that Peter and Phillip Jensen were conceived as a result of a meeting in an Anglo-catholic environment.