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A proposal for a new governance structure, on the insistence of the Charity Commissioners, will come to the Ecumenical Committee in January for a United Reformed Church response.

Member churches are  expected to affirm their membership by contributing a total of £800,000pa to a fund to support work in churches outside the CWM family:  but generous grants, with clear criteria and careful monitoring, to member churches and to the CWM regions are also available.

Window on the World 2002 will pick up the current CWM theme Who do you say that I am?  Musa Dube from South Africa will be the keynote speaker and the worship will be led by an aboriginal group from Yushan Theological College, Taiwan.

In January Revd Dr Des van der Water from the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa  will succeed Dr Preman Niles as General Secretary.

Also in January Ms Francis Brienen will succeed Muriel Garrow as the new full-time Mission Enabler for the European Region.

After decades of partnership through a chaplain (now called the Ghanaian minister for London) with the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, a group of United Reformed Church ministers is going to Ghana to learn more about the culture of many of their members and elders.   The possibility of the two Twi-speaking London congregations of the PCG entering into some kind of relationship with the URC is also being pursued.

New ways of building relations with Korean Presbyterians in the UK are being explored, building on good work already begun in Kingston URC, and in full consultation with our partners, the Presbyterian Church of Korea and the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea.

Because the United Reformed Church now has two Urdu-speaking Pakistani congregations, a visit to the Church of Pakistan and the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan is planned.

The process of reception and response:

All members of Mission Council and all Ecumenical Officers will receive copies.  Comments, individual or group, should be with the Ecumenical Relations Office by 31 December.

The report of the Formal Conversations between the Church of England and the Methodist Church will be published on 12 December and all members of the Ecumenical Committee and the Doctrine, Prayer and Worship Committee will receive copies.

The Ecumenical Committee, at its meeting in January, will consider whether to recommend to Assembly a preliminary response to both reports, given that the United Reformed Church cannot be formally asked for a response to the report of the Formal Conversations until Methodist Conference and the General Synod have received it in June/July. 

The Middle East: a statement of support addressed to the Church Leaders in Jerusalem will be brought to Mission Council:  the committee will also explore the possibility of partnership with the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

The Presbyterian Church of Myanmar:  a group to oversee the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar’s CWM funds has been set up, with Tony Burnham as a new member:  he and Philip Woods will visit Myanmar in December to continue  the United Reformed Church’s solidarity with this isolated and oppressed CWM member church.

The International Ministerial Council of Great Britain:  this council of black-led churches in the UK (and mainland Europe) is suffering painful division. 

The United Reformed Church has been asked to take one of the two ecumenical places on its executive and Revd John Danso has agreed to do so.

Methodist and United Reformed churches in north Edinburgh are looking at closer relations.  The draft plan for Methodist/United Reformed joint life in Pembrokeshire is being offered as one model.

An advice leaflet on how the United Reformed Church at local and district level can more clearly acknowledge the fact that ministers from other churches serving in LEPs (which include the United Reformed Church) are regarded as ministers of the United Reformed Church is to be drafted for the January meeting.

The General Assembly accepted, with some amendment, the Three Ecumenical Principles for a Missionary Church.  They are now to be produced in a glossy, illustrated leaflet for wide distribution.

The Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba, the Church of Christ in Malawi and our two Ghanaian partner churches are, in different ways, being brought into the Belonging to the World Church programme.

Wilma Frew, John Young, Lorraine Downer, Jackie Yeomans, Kathleen Ziffo, Phil Ferdinand, Ray Adams, Nikki Andrews, together with the General Secretary, the Convenor of the Ecumenical Committee and the Secretaries for Church and Society and Ecumenical Relations will represent the United Reformed Church at CTBI Assembly 2002.

The United Reformed Church representatives on the Churches Commission on Mission Area Forums are: Wal Warmington- Africa Forum: Jean Degenhardt – Asia Forum: Tim Clarke – Middle East Forum

The United Reformed Church representatives at the Identity and Partnership consultation with the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Presbyterian Church of Wales are David Cornick, John Bradbury, Helen Mee, Kristin Ofstad, George Morton, Elizabeth Nash and Sheila Maxey

Irene Brunskill will represent the United Reformed Church on the Friends of the Church in India

Martyn Coe will represent the United Reformed Church on the Iona Community Board

Greg Thompson and Jackie Marsh will formally represent us at the Kirchentag 2002

Fleur Houston was elected to the Executive Committee of the Leuenberg Fellowship at the Belfast Assembly in June.

John Rees (Convenor), Mary Buchanan, Darnett Whitby-Reid, Phillip Jones, Elizabeth Nash, Bryan Shirley, Cecil White, John Smith (Scotland), Stuart Jackson (Wales).

Representing other committees:

Carole Ellefsen-Jones, Alistair Ellefsen-Jones, Hugh Graham, Suzanne Hamnett, Rosemary Johnston, Raymond Singh, John Crocker (Convenor of the International Exchange Sub-Committee).

Representing other churches:

Colin McClure (Presbyterian Church in Ireland), Colin Buchanan – alternate Elizabeth Fisher (Church of England), Peter Sulston (Methodist Church)