Secretary's Letter

This will be the last “Secretary’s Letter” I shall be writing for the Newsletter as George and I will be moving to Stone in Staffordshire on 17^th September.

As you can imagine it is with mixed feelings that I am writing this,having been Secretary for almost eleven years. Many things have happened during those eleven years,including two ministerial vacancies. It has been a privilege to be Secretary and in the main I have enjoyed the job which has been very interesting. I have attended countless interesting (and some not so interesting) meetings, joined many discussions, written many letters and now emails and composed countless sets of agendas and minutes, (some of which have caused amusement to the Elders when a spelling or grammar mistake has been overlooked!)

My only regret is that during my time as Secretary we have not been able to solve the question of joining with Ewell or drawlng up a “Scheme of Union” and as time passes by it will become increasingly more difficult with the resources and manpower available. This question will be up to you all,to decide the future of the United Reformed Church in Epsom.

I am delighted to inform you that Valerie Wood has offered to become a Serving Elder again and we will hopefully vote her back onto the Eldership at the next Church Meeting Wednesday 15^th September.

There is not one person to take over the Secretary’s job so the Elders have divided the tasks between themselves and the one volunteer from the Members. Below is the list so far:

Pulpit Supply, Email, postal and telephone contact person - Rosemary Holmes. Rosemary’s contact details now appear in the inside front cover of this NewsLetter;

Elders’ Duty and Communion rotas - Kathleen Hodgson;

Elders’ Agendas and monthly meeting minutes - Valerie Wood;

Weekly notices (on screen) - Alan Wood;

Weekly notices read each Sunday - Pamela Galliers;

Christian Aid contact person - Gwyneth Smith;

Christmas, Easter, Harvest arrangements etc - Church Life Committee;

Pulpit Supply meetings - Rosemary Holmes and Gwyneth Smith;

Churches Agency for Safeguarding checks - Pamela Galliers;

Obtaining forms for the above - Rosemary Holmes;

The Agenda for the bi-monthly Church Meeting will be prepared by the Elders at their meeting prior to the Church Meeting.

All the relevant paper-work for the above jobs I have put in the filing cabinet in the Vestry along with the minutes from Church and Elders’ Meetings and relevant correspondence over the past eleven years.

I hope everything will be in order and not cause too many problems.

We will look forward to receiving the Newsletter each month to keep up with the news!

P.S. from the Editor:

I notice that nobody has volunteered to continue with the very important ‘Secretary’s Letter’ for the NewsLetter, the subject of Sheila’s first paragraph. I trust that the Elders will be able to come up with a rota of people willing to keep this very important ‘link’ job going.

I realize that I was singularly unsuccessful in getting people to write something as a replacement for the Minister’s Letter when Pat left: I hope that we have better luck this time!