The United Reformed Church Mission Council is meeting at The Hayes, Swanwick, Derbyshire, from 16 to 18 November. 

Mission Council is the executive body of the General Assembly and meets twice a year to reflect on and make decisions about the day-to-day life of the Church. 

Items on the agenda for this meeting include: the Children’s and Youth Work Review; Safeguarding's Past Case Review; a proposal for a new model of non-stipendiary ministry; carrying forward the legacy of Windermere’s work; financial planning for the next three years; how can we listen better to our elders and ministers; and a review of Greenbelt.

The Revd Stuart Turner CF, Army Chaplain to the Defence School of Communications and Information Systems at Blandford Garrison, reflects on the centenary of the death of the Revd Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC, who died of wounds in France on 18 October 1918, less than a month before the armistice.

He says: ‘Although the Revd Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC became one of the most highly-decorated non-combatants of the Great War, this former school master was described by one of his pupils as, “the last person you would expect to win a VC”.  In 1914, Hardy was a quiet, unassuming 51-year-old vicar from the Cumbrian fells.  He applied to serve as a chaplain but was rejected several times due to his considerable age.  Hardy was eventually accepted into service after the war took its toll on the younger generation of chaplains, especially during the slaughter of the Battle of the Somme.  

Wounded. In the Head

My grandfather was
an Ernest.
My grandma said they wouldn’t let him home;
he stayed in hospital one whole
un-whole
year after the War was done.
Wounded. In his head.