Mexborough and Swinton Times January 24, 1936

Church Meeting
Conisborough Vicar on Trying Year

The annual parochial Church meeting was held on Monday night in the Church Hall, the Vicar, the Rev W.J.T. Pascoe presiding.

The Vicar said:

“The review of the work of the Church in Conisborough for the year 1935 has to cover the work of three churches with their subsidiary organisations. These organisations entail a great deal of work, undertaken by a large number of voluntary workers, in addition to the permanent staff. For that work we all owe them lasting gratitude and here express our appreciation.

There are 548 in this Sunday school with 35 teachers; another 52 in the Fellowship; the Girls Friendly Society has a junior and a senior Department, here and at St Andrew’s; the boys have clubs specially organised by Mr Croft here and by Mr Davies at St Andrew’s. The Church House Club provides for men; the Guild, the Mother’s Union and the St Andrew’s union cater for 160 mothers. We must not be blind to the fact that the number of Churchgoing people consists of the faithful few.

“During this Jubilee year we have experienced an unprecedented year of distress, occasion by the industrial difficulties, to colliery area, but aggravated here by the closing down of the Parkgate seam of the Cadeby Colliery. This has affected as all, but quickly St Andrew’s Mission, which is serving Conanby and serves those who were mainly employed in that seam. It has led to a rapid movement of families; of impoverished homes; of discouraged and disheartened wage earners; of an ever-growing list of those whose incomes are all dependent upon, or augmented by public funds such as the “door” or the P.A.C.relief.

This has naturally led to a decrease in our income both at the Parish Church and at St Andrew’s. But it has had a far more serious effect in the decrease in the number of communicants. There we are fallen from our record in 1934 of 4,765, to 4,314 in 1935. Of this decreased 338 is at St Andrew’s and 113 at the Parish Church. These figures are of our spiritual vitality; a congregation of earnest communicants is the ideal of the body of the Church.

“To belong to the Club or the Operatic Society, or to be a devoted patron of whist drives and dances and to occasionally visit the church to worship, is to put the whole thing the wrong way round. Our social recreation is a valuable adjunct to church life, but it must not exclude, the life of worship and sacrament and spiritual recreation, it should proceed from it, and our attitude should be, that for the congregation of the faithful, they need in these days of crowded district, opportunities for mutual intercourse and social development.

“The weather as much to answer for in regard to our attendances and our financial contributions to walk the church expenses, which like the poor, are always with us.”

The vicar then appealed for regular contributions, so that the Church could do it for work, for he concluded, “You value that which you pay for.”