Twenty-five years ago I was still working full time and was fairly busy on the home front. My mother had recently passed away following a long illness, and we still had the two boys at home, always hungry and wanting clean shirts! I had to spend a lot of time preparing lessons and marking, so regular church attendance was quite difficult.
I became actively involved with church activities when we were raising funds for our present building and as I had always been involved in the Sunday School Anniversaries I eventually took over as choir mistress. We had always invited other singers to join us on Anniversary Day and as some of them were members of Trinity church who were to join us at Wednesfield when the new church was built and we decided to have a choir and so Friday night became 'Choir Practice Night'. We produced some quite creditable performances with works such as 'Greater than Gold', and 'A Grain of Mustard Seed'. Dare I say that the male choir members were far more trouble than any of the children? Nevertheless we had great fun.
Other than occasionally playing the organ I took no other active part in church activities and didn't have much idea about the actual management of church affairs. I retired in 1989 and in 1990 I was approached by Rev. Roland Bamford and asked if I would consider taking on the office of Church Council Secretary. I was not at all sure that I was fitted for this position, but was assured by Roland that if could write a letter I could write a set of minutes; nothing said about having to sort out what was said at the meeting, what of importance had to be minuted, and what letters would have to be written etc., A very persuasive man was Roland! I finally agreed to try it out for a year. 1990-2008. Work it out for yourselves!
I worked with four Ministers in that time; Roland, Cohn Barrett, Chris Giles and Lawrence Wallace, all quite different in their approach to meetings.
I've advanced from using a cheap typewriter to a word processor and eventually a computer, and I've made mistakes on all of them! Now I'm waiting for someone to take pity on and aging lady and take over the reins. Perhaps for a year?
Enid