ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING SPRING 2025
This will be an ordinary AGM, election of officers, etc. Booklets will not be distributed until 2028. This sounds a long way ahead, but it's only the year after next!
We shall begin to collect the subs for the years 2028-9-30 at the end of this year. We hope to keep the subs at £60, a one-off payment for the three years. This is a very good deal, so we hope that your church will rejoin when they are asked.
It's important that we keep our contact list up to date. If there is any change, please let us know. We don't want to bother your busy vicar, if you are lucky enough to have one!
Annual General Meeting and Brochure Collection Spring 2025
You have just received, or may receive in the next few weeks, the new “Guide to Shropshire’s Churches”, which we think is a great production and one we can be proud of. We have printed 30,000 copies which we need to share with anyone and everyone. This will hopefully attract even more visitors to our churches. Ensure that you always have some available in your building, and ask us if you need more. Is there anywhere else in your area which would welcome copies, the village shop and garage, WI meeting and Mother’s Union meetings, on every other seat at a church concert etc.? Do not be shy in asking, as we have found that people like its excellent front cover and its very professional look.
Can you let the executive group that keeps SCTG working have another named contact for your church (and others in your group too) It would help us to be more efficient, and we have no intention of sending you emails more than a couple of times a year. It would also help the distribution of the Newsletters which we produce 3 or 4 times a year. Email: sctgoffice@gmail.com
We would love another couple of people to join the executive group. We have a reasonable spread across the county, except in the North East. But we will welcome any willing person. Email: sctgoffice@gmail.com
What are you doing for your visitors? If you go to the website and choose Resources you will find ideas and suggestions on how to make your building as welcoming as possible. www.discovershropshirechurches.co.uk/resources
Coach trips and Church Trails
SCTG is running a coach trip in May..It was initiated by the local history group of Shrewsbury U3A (University of 3rd Age). Your executive has organised a day visiting 4 member churches, called “Opening up Shropshire’s Anglo-Saxon Past”. There may be a small number of seats left on 2nd May.
We would like to organise some other days out visiting our churches, but we need to know if your church/es would welcome this. Please contact sctgoffice@gmail.com if your church would like to be involved in the future. We would also like to know if enough of you are interested in booking a seat on an SCTG coach trip?
Church Trails can be developed via co-ordination between members and your executive. The idea is to guide visitors around a number of buildings in a given area. Visitors may be from outside Shropshire or from another part of the county with an urge to explore.
NEWSLETTER WINTER 2024/5
OUR FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS
SCTG is in a very healthy position. We are always careful with you subscriptions which are the backbone of the group, but we have been fortunate to have received some money from the end of the HLF project. This means we will be able to keep the cost of membership down three years from now and probably the one after. Our problem is us, the executive group that keeps SCTG up and running. We need new blood. The current 6 people that make up the group have a cumulative age of over nearly 400 years and without Richard, our youngest member, our average age would be 78. We cannot live forever and some might like to stand down, but we need new members to keep going.
The job is not difficult and the work is shared. We have a reliable treasurer, a great Chair and a secretary who is always full of ideas, but we need to move on. We need two or three people to join us. We meet 5 or 6 times a year, often at Shrewsbury Cathedral. We do move around if it suits us. We are all scattered across the County. We meet for lunch before our meetings so it is social as well as businesslike. If we cannot attract anyone then this could be the last brochure you pick up and that would be very sad. But we are putting this to you now, being realistic about the situation if no-one comes forward. As it says at the beginning, the future of SCTG is in your hands.