A Message from Barry Cocks Church Secretary Hello and welcome to this December/January issue of the Messenger. Well I’ve got some good news and some sad news for you this edition, so I didn’t know where to start, but as I sit writing this in early November, and I mentioned fireworks last issue, I can’t help but notice them whizzing and banging around me for what seems like every hour of the day, our dog hasn’t been for his nightly stroll around the garden for ages! When I told you to look out for fireworks I didn’t mean like this. But I do think we are having fireworks in our Church, it seems, at the moment, every time we meet I get the feeling that great things are happening, we seem to be getting an extra blessing from our visiting preachers as well as our own preaching team and the fellowship and support from everyone in the Church is amazing, thanks to you all and keep it up. Some sad news now, I’m sorry to tell you that Sheila our administrator is leaving us to work at Warwick University. Sheila will be greatly missed by all of us, as although her workload has increased since Lawrence left, she still had time to remind, cajole, organise and finally tell me off if I am late with my agenda’s, minutes or article’s, but I’m sure you will join me in wishing her well in her new job. Sheila will be leaving in the New Year so we will be advertising the post shortly. There is still no news on a Moderator for us. The last list proved to be negative again, so at the moment, I’ve decided not to pursue any more enquiries before the New Year. We are being supported by all the ministers in the South Coventry area and our own officers at HEBA have been really supportive and are available to talk things over with us all if needed. The meetings to discuss the merits of our next minister were very successful and not surprisingly the results showed that we require two people and one of them needs to be superman (sorry or superwoman). Seriously though many thanks to Alan Schofield who chaired the meetings, collated all the information and presented it to the Church meeting where all the members present agreed it was an accurate account of our discussions. Alan is now finishing off the Church Profile; this will be presented to a special Church meeting for ratification, before being sent to the settlement team at our regional office. It is their job then to try and match our requirements to prospective applicants. If an applicant is interested in finding out more about our Church and the position here, we receive a copy of his/her details and he/she gets ours, and so it proceeds, with us getting possibly 4 or 6 sets of details at a time, until we feel confident to invite candidates for interview and then finally, after much prayer, to invite one person to meet the whole Church over a weekend and preach, with a view to being called to our Church, after that a special Church meeting has to be convened to make a decision on that person. Obviously this process could go on for some time as profile’s go back and forth so I would ask you to continue with your prayerful support. And so to Christmas, just to let you know we will be having most of our usual Christmas services this year and I would like to invite you to join us here to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. To finish I would like to wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year God bless you all. Barry