Monthly Message (July 2009) - URC General Assembly

Dear Friends,

In last month’s newsletter I told you that I’d be attending the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church. Well with less than two weeks to go I’ve started looking through the book of reports to see what the assembly will be discussing. I thought you might like to know a little about the issues your Church will be giving attention to when the General Assembly meets in Loughborough from the 2nd to the 5th of July this year.

There is a lot of ‘house keeping’ stuff! Structures, procedures, changes to sets of rules and guidelines …. These pages are usually best turned over quickly!

Then there are the more interesting bits … the areas in which the United Reformed Church makes decisions together about taking a stand and speaking up on the issues of social concern and justice. This year Assembly will be thinking about issues of immigration in the UK – particularly the way our government/ society often holds children who arrive in the UK as asylum seekers or refugees in detention centers. There will be discussions about climate change, ethical investment, safeguarding children and how the United Reformed Church will prepare for and take part in the Olympics 2012!

One of the big discussions will be on the subject of the nearly 20 year boycott of the global food company Nestle. In the early 1990s it was discovered that Nestle had a practice of promoting its dried baby milk formula amongst the poorer countries – giving samples and creating advertising campaigns that taught that powdered milk would bring health and growth to infants… and was better for children than natural breast milk. In communities where money is short and water for making the formula is often not clean, the health and life of infants was often put at risk. The URC, then, decided to join the Baby Milk Action Campaign and encouraged its members to boycott Nestle products. The issue now, after many years of working on this with the company, is whether it is time to recognize that they have changed some of their practices, are now not significantly different from other large companies, and lift the boycott.

And then there will be discussions about the shape and priorities of the United Reformed Church. For years we have recognized that along with other Christian churches in the UK the URC has experienced a decline in numbers. This year the Assembly will hear of 2 new churches … and 34 that have closed in the last two years. But rather than becoming despondent about these figures the Assembly will be discussing ways of encouraging health and growth in our churches. ‘Mission’ – renewing our sense of purpose – will be firmly on the agenda with questions about how we become a Church that reaches out to the world of the 21st Century society we live in. You will remember that we looked at the ‘Vision 2010’ statements of mission and purpose for the URC over the next ten years at a Church Meeting last year. ‘Vision 2020’, having been discussed throughout the URC, will be put to Assembly, and hopefully, will become the priorities and encouragement that renew the church for the future.

The URC is a church that believes in facing up to issues with honest discussion in which all its people have a voice … let’s hope and pray that this General Assembly is faithful, wise and creative, finding positive encouragement for us all.

Yours,

Tracey.