St Peter’s Church, Shipley.

Minutes of the Annual Parochial Church Meeting held on 10th April 2016

Vestry Meeting

1. Apologies for absence: There were 93 people present at the meeting. Apologies were recorded in writing at the meeting.

3. Minutes of the Vestry Meeting of 2015: The minutes were proposed by Jo Baxter and seconded by Martin Forbes and accepted as a true record, with no votes against and a number of abstentions. There were no matters arising.

4. Election of Churchwardens: John had received two nominations for Karen Parkinson, proposed by Bill Shepherd and seconded by Stewart Ross and Keith Brown proposed by Andrea Peace and seconded by Viv Brealey. As there were no other nominations, Karen and Keith were elected churchwardens for 2016-17.

5. Votes of thanks: John expressed thanks to Karen for being prepared to continue as warden for a further year. This would be her sixth year in the post, meaning that next year, she would not be able to stand again. Working with Karen had been a great experience and John appreciated the prayerful way in which she conducts the job and the congregation had been superbly well served over these years and he was glad this would continue for another year.

Martin Forbes would be stepping down in due course, when Keith was formally admitted to being churchwarden by the Archdeacon in a few weeks’ time. It had been a great pleasure to work with Martin and the very sensible approach he had brought to staff meeting had been appreciated by everyone. The past year had been a difficult one for Martin at work and he would continue to pray for and support the church. Karen and Martin were presented with gifts.

Martin said it had been an honour and a privilege serving the congregation and working with the staff team. He had been deeply touched by the amount of prayer, love and support which had been shown to him and his family. He was stepping down largely because his work life had changed over the past year but was grateful for the support he had been shown.

Karen said she had been planning to stand down this year but as Martin needed to stand down it wasn’t an ideal situation to have two new wardens starting together and so she felt it was better to continue. It had been a pleasure and a privilege to work alongside Martin and she was looking forward to working with Keith in the future and handing things over to him. She thanked John as it was a pleasure working alongside him and the deputy wardens’ team.

John said Keith’s appointment to the role was very welcome - he was already chairman of the bowls club and had done some great work in getting the men’s work going in the church already.

John asked the deputy wardens present to stand and they were thanked for all they do for St Peter’s. He also thanked Martin Fawley and Ian Walker for their work as Sacristans through the year.

The Vestry Meeting was closed at 11.06am.

Annual Parochial Church Meeting

This followed on from the Vestry Meeting. The apologies and those present were the same.

1. Minutes of APCM 2015: The Minutes of the meeting in 2015 had been made available in advance and were accepted as a correct record, proposed by Carol Brown and seconded by Jo Baxter. There were 8 abstentions, no votes against and no matters arising.

2. Annual Parish Report of PCC business 2015 and Accounts: This document had been available in advance of the meeting.

2.1. Treasurer’s Report and Accounts:

Mike Moss reported that the accounts were presented in the format required by the Charities Commission which was very difficult to understand. However, they showed that the church had gone down in total funds by around £7,000 over the past year. We still had somewhere in the region of £30,000 in the youth work fund and received around £1,000 per month towards that as well, so we had a couple of years funding left in the bank.

We had not paid the share in total - over £137,000 –of which we had contributed just over £100,000. The diocese had changed the system for allocating share payments over the last couple of years which was part of the reason for why we hadn’t paid in full, as we had not received the reduction in Share total against the costs of employing a Local Outreach Co-ordinator which we would have done under the previous system. However, the diocese was very appreciative of the work Angus was doing and what we as a church were doing to support that. Angus’s work was furthering mission work in the diocese to a greater extent than what we weren’t paying as a church against the share.

Geoff Carter asked about the change in name from West Yorkshire and the Dales to Leeds as the diocese. John said that two years ago the dioceses of Wakefield, Ripon and Bradford merged and the new diocese was called West Yorkshire and the Dales and three systems of doing things had to be merged into one. It was believed that mission would be assisted and helped ultimately by doing that but there was a lot of detail to sort out in the meantime. The three cathedrals all stay but the Bishop of Leeds is the senior bishop of the whole diocese. It had recently been decided that West Yorkshire and the Dales was too awkward in business terms and it would be much easier for the whole thing to be called the Diocese of Leeds. The process of merging was still going on and would go on for a while. The process of merging the share was part of the problem but we had had positive feedback that the diocese were prepared to treat the deficit as a kind of gift because of the work Angus and others were doing.

Matt Porritt asked why the maintenance costs had gone up by £10,000 in the past year. Mike said that we had had a Gift Day in 2014 and had raised considerable funds to pay for work which needed to be done on the church but we had had a number of issues in addition over the past year, including replacing the tower roof, repairs to the heating system, other roof repairs and a gas leak. This was all work which had to be done urgently, the church was over a hundred years old now and there were ongoing repairs required to the outside particularly. John said this was work that had to be done and through the generosity of the church, bills and been paid and the recommendations from the 2014 quinquennial inspection were being progressed.

The following motion was put to the vote, proposed by Peter Dyer, seconded by Cynthia Hargreaves: “That the Annual Report of PCC business and the statement of financial activities for St Peter’s Shipley be accepted.” It was carried with 1 abstention and no votes against.

John said the accounts were difficult to understand and a more understandable summary version would be produced for people. We needed to be very grateful to Mike for his work in getting the accounts in order and doing this online as well. Mike with help from Angus and others did a fantastic job in getting the accounts straight and reporting regularly to the PCC. John thanked others who were also involved in supporting finances.

2.2 Appointment of independent examiner for 2016 accounts: As a registered charity our accounts have to be examined by independent accountants. For the past few years, we had appointed Hart Wright Accounting, who had been very helpful and John would like to propose that we reappoint Hart Wright Accounting as our independent examiners for 2016. The rules about pensions have been changing this year and, as an employer, we have had to implement all of the new rules. That has all been done and Hart Wright Accounting had helped us to do that and had taken on the administration of payroll for the church as well, which had taken a burden away from us, and this was being administered properly by a firm who know what they are doing. Jo Baxter asked if there was a Conflict of Interest between the same firm doing both the auditing and the payroll. Mike said this had been checked with the legal governing bodies and was acceptable as the two functions were performed entirely separately. Angus McNab proposed and Elaine Wontner-Smith seconded the motion and it was passed overwhelmingly with no abstentions.

3. Reports:

3.1 Electoral Roll: Roll secretary Christine Duval reported to the meeting that the number on roll the list of names and addresses of people attending the church was now 252 (up 9 from 243 in the previous year). The breakdown was males 81; females 171, with 114 members not resident in the parish and 138 resident.

Reports 3.2-3.8 were included in writing in the APCM Booklet and circulated before the meeting

3.2 Fabric report: Karen said she was pleased that the building had held up very well in the storms we had had during the winter. There had been some leaks in reception which had been fixed and in the church, due to pigeons nesting in the gutters. The two major works in the past year had been the installation of warm air curtains at the main doors, which had helped in terms of keeping the church warmer and counteracting some of the cold air that comes in when the doors open. The other major job had been work on the tower, where dry rot had to be treated and the roof completely replaced. This wasn’t quite as big a job as it might have been because routine work was being done as a result of the quinquennial inspection which meant it had been spotted early. Karen said in the coming year, work was planned to refurbish the toilets and replace all the lighting in the lounge and to do some electrical works identified in the last electrical inspection. Some of these were remedial works which may prove to be very expensive. Maintaining the building does prove to be quite expensive. Karen said she could not thank Guy Barford enough for all the work he did in the church in dealing with boilers and heating and also thanked Nathan Jones for the work he did, particularly spotting work that needed doing and dealing with it, including the gas leak we had earlier in the year. She mentioned that succession planning was important and we needed to think and pray about who might take over from Guy in the future.

John echoed Karen’s thanks to Guy Barford as we did not know what we would do without his work in the church.

3.3 Deanery and Diocesan Synod Reports &

3.4 Shipley Christians Together Report

These reports had been circulated on line in advance. John asked for any questions in relation to these reports.

Mike Moss said people often asked what the purpose of the Deanery Synod was but in the past two years Airedale Deanery Synod had pushed motions through right up to the national General Synod, one about the bedroom tax, which Angus had been heavily involved in. That was followed by another motion about benefit cuts and the way things were being done which again went all the way to general synod and it was unprecedented that it got through with no votes against. This has resulted in an independent judicial investigation. This illustrated there was a point in having deaneries as they could be incredibly powerful.

Cynthia Hargreaves said that she and Anne Mainman, who were the Shipley Christians Together representatives, were not getting any younger and it would be wonderful if we could get some younger people interested in SCT because it was so important that we could meet with and work with other Christians in other parts of Shipley.

3.5 Local Outreach Co-ordinator report:

This report was circulated ahead of time. Angus McNab said he would like to thank Mike and John for their votes of thanks and appreciation for the impact of the work he had been doing.

Angus said God was continuing to create and to do new things and to redeem not just people but cultures and organisations. God continued to remember - bringing people back into community - re-membering. We had seen some of these things going on through some of the work he was involved with. He wanted to give thanks to God for the privilege of doing the work he was doing, seeing the impact of what God was doing through Angus and a variety of other people in Shipley and beyond. God was the source of every good thing, every good idea and every good creation. God takes the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the powerful. All the things Angus had been involved with were working with teams of people, too many to name, and many members of other churches, but he wanted to thank everyone for all they did and all the support they gave to him; the staff team; his wife Carol and Keith for regularly meeting with and praying for him. SCT was exciting now, there was a real sense of God on the move, doing a new thing and it was really exciting to be involved with that. We are stronger together, not just within the community of our congregation but the Christians within Shipley. This was God’s way of doing community development; the kingdom is inside out. How things change are when we recognise that God is calling us to do something and then we bring that out of ourselves and that has a massive impact. Angus often describes his role as being a catalyst - chemical catalysts don’t change when they start reactions happening. Angus saw himself more as a midwife now - helping people to bring their passion from the inside out and he had been affected by that himself and his own thinking and passions had built up and been fanned into flame. He thanked peole for that and for the privilege of being able to do his job. Finally, Angus’s job was about working with everybody, supporting people who wanted to serve this parish, Shipley and areas beyond.

Gina asked Angus if he was still in contact with the Cyraenians in Bradford. Angus said he was in offering them additional food from the canteen. Gina said she had been involved with the Cyraenians over 40 years ago and she was very pleased that this work was still going on.