Cambridge’s Seventh Day Adventist church members will mark their 50th anniversary on August 3. Harvey Gangadeen, pastor for the Cambridge, Tīrau and Matamata churches recounts the church’s history.
Seventh Day Adventist Church
The story of Cambridge Church began circa 1890 amidst great tragedy but ultimately divine deliverance and providence.
Mr Anderson and his 21-year-old son Otto left Norway for Australia and new beginnings. Otto’s mother had died when he was an infant and that was not the only loss Otto would endure. Mr Andersen senior died enroute of cholera.
Perhaps fearing he had contracted the disease, Otto was inhumanely placed in a lifeboat and towed all the way to Sydney, braving the weather and rough seas for a significant part of the journey.
After tragedy and trying circumstances, skies brightened when he met his wife Ada. The young couple, eking out a life together, moved to Townsville and then to New Zealand in 1902.
Seventh Day Adventist Church
Eventually they settled in Cambridge and Otto, a Christian, began holding house meetings which were attended by a few notable families such as the Bartletts and the Richards.
They were soon joined by the Lewins, who had come from England in 1898. Having converted to Adventism, they moved to Cambridge in 1903 as they wished their sons to attend New Zealand Missionary College on All Saints Road, not too far away.
By 1908, the seed germinated and roots sprung watered by grace and providence. Four years later, when the college closed down, Mr Richards, whose family lived on site, procured a traction engine and hauled the small children’s school from the college site to Bracken Street onto land owned by Otto Anderson.
Faith and faithfulness saw numbers grow through both biological and missional growth.
The children of the initial members grew up, married and had children of their own and soon the numbers militated against continued worship at Bracken Street. Of necessity, a larger building, fitting of their numbers and needs was required. Once more, 59 years later, divine guidance and providence led to the procurement a parcel of land on the corner of Browning and Shakespeare Street.
A casual viewer would have seen just a paddock with a huge sink in the middle, overgrown with tough grass and mudholes left by animals. But to this group of worshippers it was a vision to behold.
It was to be the site of a church complex to host a dedicated sanctuary, separate Church Hall and ample space for God to continue to reach this area where the church was to be planted.
Seventh Day Adventist Church
