The President’s
Newsletter
No. 2
This is an
occasional newsletter that I may write and distribute from time to time during
my Presidency of the Western Union of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches
I hope to
circulate it to church secretaries and to members of WU Council.
I hope
that church committees will consider some of my ideas
and act
upon them as appropriate.
Executive Summary:
The
topics marked * may require action by your congregation’s committee.
Contents:
0. News item re our former WU Secretary,
Anne Ashley.
1. Current outline programme for Rev
Maria Pap’s visit.
* Appeal for more weekday congregational
events for Rev Maria Pap
* Appeal for more accommodation offers
* Appeal for more information on Local
Radio stations, and local Newspapers
* 2. Worship Studies Course: Appeal for more participants
* 3. GA participation and expenses: Making use of Gift Aid.
4. Burial Grounds
5. Other news
0. News item re Anne Ashley.
I
would like to extend the sympathy and best wishes of the Western Union Council
to our former Secretary, Anne Ashley, upon the death of her daughter, Lynn Lynn
Sheila Evans, of Plymouth
1. Outline Programme for Rev Maria Pap’s Visit
Wed 16th July Due
to arrive at Luton Airport 7.45 am
Sat
19th July noon-4pm (Offered) Western Union Welcome event
at Sidmouth
Sun 20th July 11 am
Service at Taunton
Sun 27th July 11 am
Service at Plymouth
Sun
3rd Aug 10.30
am Service at Trowbridge
6 pm Service at Unitarian Meeting Bristol
Mon 4th Aug to Fri 8th
Aug: daughter Abigail attending “Five
Days Ago” at Hucklow
Sun 10th Aug 11 am Service at Bridport.
Here are some edited
comments taken from an Email that Maria sent to me
which
shows that some serious thinking is going into the preparation for this visit:
- the
role of women ( ministers and laics) in the Church is a good topic - especially
as I was one of the first women to be ordained
- a talk
about the structure of the Church and the decision making is another good
topic
- I would
suggest as another topic the history of the relationship between our Churches -
it is important to learn not just about our church and faith but about our
ongoing relationship- its history and perhaps its future
- for the
presentations and discussion the topics you suggested are worthwhile- we could
add our forms of worship, our organizations ( Youth group, Women `s
Association, Ministers`s Association, our high-schools etc.) and the presence
of HUC in the ICUU and IARF
My
concern is the topics for the services -
the History of the HUC could be just one address-. One should be about
our theology- our form of Christianity and its place in the Christian world,
one about our Unitarian message and one about the present of our denomination
and expectations for the future. We have
just published a booklet with prayers and sermons- Words of worship from the Transylvanian
Unitarians.
If you
think about publishing the addresses in a booklet then I have to prepare them
in advance- which would be a good thing.
* Non-Sunday Events for Rev Maria Pap
I
would like to appeal to all our congregations to consider whether they have any
weekday events or activities, or perhaps specially arranged meetings, to which
they might invite Rev Maria Pap. If you
consider arranging some special event, either for fund raising, or to attract the
general public in your area to your church, or just for your members, then I am
sure that Maria will be able to offer to present an illustrated talk about both
the scenic and the Unitarian attractions of Transylvania. At present only Sidmouth has offered some
non-Sunday events with two suggestions in addition to offering to host the WU
Welcoming event.
* More
Accommodation offers, please
I would like to appeal for more
offers of hospitality and accommodation for Rev Maria Pap and her husband and
17-year old daughter, Abigail. If
necessary, the offer could be for Laszlo and Maria to stay at one location and
their daughter in some other reasonably nearby location. Preferably the offers might be for 2 or 3
nights. We need offers to fill 28 nights
in all. At present we have offers for
about 10 nights apart from the accommodation that my wife and I can offer,
which, as a fall back, can be available throughout their visit, and we hope
they will spend at least a few nights with us.
Offers of accommodation need not be
tied to the Church Services I have listed.
If the offers are flexible enough, they might conveniently fill some gap
between two other offers and still produce a reasonable tour for Maria and her
family. Also they would like to visit
and be shown all our churches, not just the ones that she is taking services
in.
* More information needed about local radio stations and
newspapers.
In
order to give the visit as much publicity as possible, we are interested in
trying to arrange interviews on local radio, preferably in the week before her
service in that area, and the same with publicity in local newspapers. We need more local knowledge about these
matters. If there someone in your
congregation, or maybe your congregation’s publicity officer, who listens to
the local radio, can they suggest the best programme slots that might agree to
interview Maria, or provide ‘What’s On’ publicity about local events? There is a local BBC Radio Station in every
county, and probably also some independent local radio stations, but it is not
so easy to discover how best to get them to mention our activities. We also need names, addresses or email
addresses, for local newspapers in order that we can send them ‘Press Releases’
about Maria’a activities in good time to get them put in the appropriate edition
of each paper. Ideas for other publicity
techniques and opportunities are welcome.
2. Worship Studies Course: More participants, please!
At Western Union request for more training courses to be
presented in the West Country, rather than far away, the Worship Studies Course
has beeen arranged to be held at the Unitarian Chapel in Bridgwater. The three parts of it take place on Saturdays
15th March, 26th April and 24th May. Full details are on the Flyer and Application
Form attached to this Newsletter. The
total cost is £39 per person. The
organizers of the course would like to have at least 12 participants. At the last count they are still below this
number. Is your congregation sending at
least one person on this course?
Applications, please, if possible by 28th February. This date is so that the organizers can
arrange to have the right number of sets of course materials available for each
participant. If you miss this deadline,
they might be able to squeeze in an extra participant of two, but they would
prefer to know sooner.
3. GA Participation and
Expenses: Make use of Gift Aid.
I believe some congregations feel the cost of sending a
delegate to the GA meetings is rather high at £378 for full participation, and
so, perhaps, offer to fund only a part of this, and ask if the participant can
fund the rest. If such participants are
paying tax at the basic rate (20%) or even the higher rate, then a good way to
do this is to donate your part of the cost to your church under Gift Aid, and
then get the church to pay the whole fee.
In this way your contribution costs you 20% less. The same can be done for travel expenses to
and from the GA. If you donate a
suitable sum to the church and the church pays your travel expenses, then effectively
they can cost you 20% less. The same
is also true for claiming travel expenses, as a church representative, when
attending WU Council Meetings. Rather
than not claim them, why not claim them and donate a suitable sum under Gift
Aid to the WU?
These remarks are not aimed at those
who need to claim travel expenses for attending the GA or WU Council Meetings,
but at those who do not claim such expenses, who, if they did claim expenses
and then donated 80% or more of the expenses to their church or the WU under
Gift Aid, would benefit both themselves and their church or the WU.
4. Burial Grounds
I heard recently on the radio that a
Trust has acquired the Dissenters Burial Ground in Exeter, which is in a very
poor state, and is hoping to restore it.
This sounds to be the sort of activity which some of our Unitarian
members in Exeter would be playing an active role in, if we had any Unitarian
members in Exeter. As most of you know
our Unitarian Chapel in Exeter closed about 20 years ago and is now a
pub/restaurant. I believe that between
us, we know of two or three individual Unitarians in Exeter, but at present
none with the energy and enthusiasm to restart a Fellowship there. A pity, because I think Exeter, with its
University, is a place where I would like there to be an active Unitarian
group.
As some of you know, there is
another Burial Ground at Gulliford (half-way between Exeter and Exmouth) which
is apparently also theoretically controlled and run by a small trust, which I
believe may have been in continuous existence since about 1895.
When I find enough time and energy,
I am trying to gather more details about these trusts. These two burial grounds (there may even be
others) are curious relics of our past, which clearly some people (although
they may not be Unitarians) consider important enough to try to preserve
them. Although the WU has decided it
wants to spend its available money and resources on the future and not the
past, I think we should be aware of these burial grounds and of the work of the
Trusts that are attempting to look after them.
5. Other News
We are pleased to a new fellowship has been established at
Glastonbury, and that there is a new Facebook Page which has some activity on
it. Anthony Loveys would like to start a
new fellowship in Cornwall, and would be pleased to hear of further people with
Unitarian connections who now live in Cornwall.
This Newsletter is
written by and distributed at the request of the President of the Western Union
of Unitarian and Free Christian churches who is:
Martin Fieldhouse, Pyrenmount, Parsons Way, Winscombe
BS25 1 BU
His supporting committee
(for the Transylvanian Link Visit) consists of
Philip Colfox email: Philip@colfox.eu
and Anthony Loveys email: Anthony_loveys@yahoo.co.uk
This is an occasional newsletter that I may write and distribute from time to time during my Presidency of the
I hope to circulate it to church secretaries and to members
of WU Council.
I hope that church committees will consider some of my ideas
and act upon them as appropriate.
This newsletter considers three topics
1. Organising and making the most of the Transylvanian Link
Project in July/August 2014.
2. Writing up our history for the last 50 years
3. Considering our ideas for the future of Unitarian
ministry in the WU area.
The Transylvanian Link Project.
Most of
you will already know that the WU is inviting Rev Maria Pap, with her husband
and daughter, to visit us for 4 weeks in July and early August 2014.
Now is
the time to plan this visit in detail. I
would like each of our 13 congregations to discuss what part they wish to play
in this visit, and how they are going to make the most of it.
It
needs imagination to plan to make the most of this visit. So, for a moment, suppose we are enjoying a
visit by one of the most important people in the world. We want to tell as many people as possible
about her. We want to entertain her
well, parade her around like royalty, give everyone the opportunity to meet her
in person, and the see and hear her in action – whether preaching a sermon,
leading a discussion, giving presentations about her church and her country,
enjoying a communal picnic or lunch, being interviewed on the local radio,
etc.
In
return, we hope we shall know more about the Hungarian
Unitarian Church Transylvania ),
which, although now part of Romania ,
was formerly part of Hungary . Hence some people there still speak
Hungarian. The Hungarian
Unitarian Church British
Unitarian Church Western
Union in a later year will be interested in taking a holiday there
to see the scenery and to visit some of the historic Unitarian churches there.
So I
suggest that soon after her arrival, we plan a big Western Union
party to welcome her and her family, and to enable her to meet some of the
people she will be seeing and, perhaps, staying with later in her visit.
She
will have 4 weekends here. That gives
her the opportunity to preach and take morning service in 4 of our
churches. Possibly in one or two cases she
may be able to combine this with an afternoon or evening service elsewhere. It is likely that the 4 Sundays will be the
2nd, 3rd and 4th Sundays in July 2014 and the 1st Sunday in August. We need invitations for her to take a service
at your church, with preferred Sunday and, if possible with a second or third
choice. It is suggested that in some
cases ‘neighbouring churches’ might club together to hold a service at just one
church with everyone from ‘neighbouring churches’ making an effort to attend
that service.
For
churches where she doesn’t take a service (and even for some where she does)
can some alternative activities be offered? This might take the form of a coffee morning,
a lunch, an afternoon meeting, or an evening meeting which she addresses and
presents an illustrated talk about the Hungarian Unitarian Churches (‘HUC’), or
about Transylvania as a place to visit, or perhaps a
discussion meeting to discuss the differences in theology and practice between
the HUC and the WU churches. I expect
she may wish to see and photograph every Unitarian place of worship, whether
she takes a service there or not.
Meetings might or might not be combined with a meal. Social evenings, barbecues, outings might
also be a possibility. Can you arrange
an interview on the local radio station?
Meetings which she addresses might also be organised as fund-raising
events – well advertised, bring your friends, a small admission charge, or
perhaps just a request for donations.
Personally
I tentatively think of the WU in 4 areas – Plymouth
and Torquay; Bridgwater, Taunton
and Cullompton; Bridport, Crewkerne and
Sidmouth; Bristol ,
Bath and Trowbridge. (Circencester gets left out –
apologies!) There are, of course, other
ways of grouping churches. Perhaps
Cullompton and Crewkerne would like to swap places?
I think
perhaps Plymouth/Torquay might think in terms of the 2nd or 3rd Sunday of her visit, rather than the 1st or
the last. Otherwise we can be flexible,
but we need to determine the main parameters – that is, the places for the 4
Sunday morning services as soon as practical so that the rest of her programme
and the hospitality can be organised.
In
terms of national publicity, it would be an idea to organise articles plus
adverts in the Inquirer and the Unitarian about April of next year (before the
GA swamps them) saying where she will be taking services (and perhaps other
events) and inviting any Unitarians holidaying in the West Country at that time
to plan to attend. We might also try to
arrange that at least one of her services is video-recorded for distribution
over the internet and on our websites.
Private
Hospitality. A key requirement is
private hospitality. We need offers to
put her up for 2 to 4 nights in conjunction with the services she is taking and
other events she is attending. Putting
up 3 people – a married couple and their 17 year-old daughter, may be bit
difficult in some cases. So it might be
possible to split with the married couple staying at one house and the daughter
elsewhere, not too far away. The
daughter, Abigail, speaks good English.
The night before she takes a service, Rev Pap needs to be staying if
possible with someone who will be going to the service. After an evening event, they should be
staying a further night at the place where they stayed the previous night. In order to organise and finance this visit
well, we are very dependent our being able to offer her private hospitality
virtually every night. So we need 8 or
more offers!
Finance. We want to keep the costs to churches as low
as possible. As already stated, offers
of private hospitality will be important to keep other costs as low as
possible. Rev Pap will be not be paid
any fee as such for her overall visit.
She will be making the visit in her holidays. However, she is entitled by EU law to work in
the UK during
her visit as a self-employed minister.
So this means she can be paid the normal fee for a minister taking one
of our services – namely £45 plus travel expenses. I expect her to be paid this £45 fee,
preferably in cash against a receipt, for each service she takes. I think it would be appropriate to offer her
a similar fee if she gives an illustrated talk.
This will enable her to earn perhaps £300 to £400 (in total) during her
visit to help to fund the personal expenses of her and her family. This is only a modest amount, little more
than pocket money! I originally hoped we
might be able to offer her at least twice as much. As for the travel expenses, we hope that
where she takes a service travel expenses of £45 or more might be offered and
paid into the funds covering her visit.
The
main other expenses will be the airfares, the hire of a car for 4 weeks, fuel
for the car, insurance and one night at Luton airport prior to her departure
early the following morning. She has to be at the airport at about 6.30 am to catch the early morning flight. I am hoping these expenses will be covered
mainly by two or three grants from trust funds.
We have offers of two grants so far, but more (or donations) would be
welcome. I am also relying on some
contribution to the car fuel costs from the travel expenses mentioned in the
previous paragraph.
There
are direct daily flights from Kolozsvar (Cluj) to Luton
by a company called Wizz Air. Tickets
tend to have the lowest prices on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
So our
main idea is that Rev Pap and her family will fly in perhaps on Wed 9th July 2014 and will fly back
exactly 28 days later.
The
flights arrive in Luton at 7.45
am each day and the return flight leaves at 8.30 am each day. With
such an early morning flight, they will need to stay in Luton ,
probably at an airport hotel, in order to leave early the following
morning. Also, either at the beginning or
end of their trip Rev Pap would quite like to stay a night or two in Oxford (where
she studied for a time in the 1990s) in order to show Oxford to her husband and
daughter.
Action:
Please see that the Officers of your congregation (and where practical the
whole committee) consider what your congregation can offer to arrange or
organise to enhance this visit, and whether any offers for private hospitality
might be forthcoming. Then report back
ideas, suggestions, and offers to me or a member of our small organising
committee so that the main programme can be planned.
Writing up our history for the last 50 years
In
1835, Jerome Murch, then minister at our Trim Street Chapel Bath, published a
volume with a title "A History of the Presbyterian & General Baptist
Churches in the West of England". Basically one chapter was devoted to each
church and covered its history from its formation until about 1835. This is a very useful reference book. There are still a few copies in private
circulation, and several copies in Dr Williams Library in London .
I think
it is about time that we considered compiling a more recent history of our
congregations in the Western Union . A start would be for each congregation,
which does not already have their more recent history written up, to consider
whether any member might write a substantial essay (of say 12 to 20 pages or
so) about the history of their congregation in the last 50 years or so –
perhaps even since 1945. Much of this
may be within the memory of the oldest members of the congregation, with
further details in committee or AGM minutes and perhaps in materials collected
by some member or members of the congregation.
One of
our members in Bridgwater recently died, who was baptised in our church over 80
years ago and attended much of the time since.
It is a pity we did not quiz her in more detail about events she
remembered from many years back.
This
history idea does not have the urgency of the other items in this newsletter,
but I thought it would be a good idea to mention it, in the hope that in due
course this seed of an idea will bear fruit.
Considering our ideas for the future of Unitarian ministry
in the WU area
This is
an important topic. We would like as
many members of the WU as possible to come to Cullompton on 7th December 2013 (shortly!) to
discuss this matter from 1.30 pm to 3.30 pm .
This discussion will follow the WU Council meeting which will be held in
Cullompton at our Unitarian Chapel there in Pound
Square in the morning. This is then followed (at approx. 12.45
-1.30) by a ‘bring your own’ picnic lunch.
Drinks (Tea, Coffee, etc) will be provided.
Returning
to discussing the topic: We know that Bristol, Plymouth, Bridport are all
considering whether they can afford a part-time, or even a full-time,
professional minister, and might like financial or other support from WU funds
or from other trust funds. Also it would
seem that other congregations or individuals have, or may have, ideas about how
ministry might be afforded or funded by having perhaps a District Minister
rather than one tied to one or more congregations.
I hope
that, at this meeting, all views can be aired in a friendly manner so that as
many as possible can know about and understand each others’ points of
view. Possibly some good ideas will
emerge which might attract general support.
I am
sure it will be an important meeting. So
please make every effort to ensure that as many as possible attend it -
principally to listen to the various points of view, but, where
appropriate, also to put your own idea or point of view.
Email: pyrenmount@btopenworld.com
