From the Minister

     June2025                                                           

Dear Friends,

I am not a fan of admin, as many of you may have realised!  I would much rather be out and about than stuck at my desk dealing with paperwork, yet a certain amount of admin is necessary and even has a pastoral role.

It is worth noting that this was true even in the very early church, right back before Pentecost.  The book of Acts details a number of administrative actions, from the electing of a new disciple in Acts 1 to the appointing of deacons to manage pastoral affairs and distribute funds to those in need.  Those with the administrative roles enable the apostles to carry out their evangelistic work and support the very practical needs of the faithful.  Without this very mundane practical side of God’s work, the early church would not have thrived.

Not much has changed, admin is still an essential part of the church’s ministry, enabling congregations to function within the laws of the land, maximising the resources given by God and enabling us to form and maintain safe and respectful communities that value the dignity of all.  We give thanks to all those who deal with these day to day matters; finance, property, safeguarding and so on, for these are missional activities.

We are going to be asking you all to help with a certain amount of paperwork in the next month, as it is time that we updated our roll of contacts in accordance with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).  These regulations are there to ensure that personal information held by the church is used correctly and not passed on without consent.  In order to update our list we will be asking for up to date contacts and giving you options on how far these details are shared with others in the church.  We will also be asking each individual to give us details of someone they would wish to be contacted in case of emergency as, on a couple of occasions recently we have needed to pass messages to friends or family if someone is taken ill at church.  If you give an emergency contact, please make sure that they too are happy for the church to hold their details.

No one is really fond of forms, but hopefully these forms will enable us to care for one another within the church community, appropriately and with respect.  Please do fill in the form so that we can respect your preferences, mindful that the scriptures invite us to ‘watch over each other in love’ or perhaps in more modern terms we might say ‘teamwork makes the dream work’!

God bless.

Ruth.