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HotlineWelcome to the 2004 edition of Assembly Hotline. You'll find here a record of the main events and some of the background to the meeting of General Assembly at the University of Glamorgan from July 3rd - 6th, 2004. Select the day's business you would
like Saturday afternoonAny Answers?Any Answers? was the theme of a challenging address by incoming Moderator of General Assembly, the Revd Sheila Maxey. We all seek answers to life's deepest questions but it more often seems that God is more interested in honest questions. And though questioning can be unnerving because it opens us to the possibility of answers which change our point of view or our life, God sustains in our pilgrimage towards deeper truth. Read a fuller summary here.
Saturday eveningA year remembered
Though one retired minister had begged him not to use a phrase often employed by retiring Moderators, after sober consideration he felt he had to say that he found the Church in good heart. The full text of Alasdair's reflection can be found here. Finance
He also sounded a warning note over the balance of the Church’s investments. Though the absolute level of assets might seem not to have changed over time, that disguised the fact that a far higher proportion of the Church’s investments were now in the form of retired ministers’ houses, which produced no income for the Church. Pilot fun
In a special surprise, Pilots shields from Pilots@Legoland were presented to each Synod, with one also going to the Congregational Federation, co-sponsors of Pilots. Hungerford revisitedAssembly gave its backing to a resolution calling on the BBC to think again over a programme recalling the tragic events in the Berkshire town of Hungerford in 1987, when Michael Ryan ran amok with an assault rifle. The resolution, which reflects the unanimous view of the local churches, was strongly backed by former Hungerford minister David Bunney who told Assembly that people did not want to share their streets with ghoulish tourists encouraged by the programme to come and look around the scenes of the tragedy. Colin Ferguson, introducing the resolution, said there were still streets certain people would not walk down because the memories were too painful - local people, he said, were horrified at the prospect of the programme being aired and re-opening old wounds. |
HighlightsSearch HotlineModerator's AddressRead the address, Any Questions?, given by the Revd Sheila Maxey to Assembly on Saturday July 3rd Catch the VisionRead David Cornick's speech Photo diarySidelights on Assembly in pictures Have Your SayJoin in the discussion about this year's General Assembly ProfileThe new Moderator |
The
Revd Alasdair Pratt reflected on his year as Moderator and the sense of
information overload it had left him. He had slept, he said, in countless
beds and preached 40 or 50 times ‘on the road’. Among the sixteen districts
he had visited he had found immense variety. He had visited Guyana and Cuba
and been shown over the nation’s latest warship. He had even managed an
impromptu lift in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s car.
Despite
an apparently healthy outturn last year, the Treasurer expressed his concern
at an apparently increasing tendency for giving to the Ministry and Mission
Fund not to meet the targets agreed when the budget was set. This year only
5 synods have so far met their targets – the deficit at present was £250,000
compared to the budget. He pointed out that the vast majority of our money
was spent on ministry and training for ministry. If cuts needed to be made,
that was the only place where they would be meaningful. He warned that we
could not rely indefinitely on legacies and profit of the sale of houses to
cover deficits.