New Britain herald., 1916-03-11
Pasf0r Cook Wants Church
 70 Hape 1000 Nembershib
Pleased With Past Year He Tells Trinity Methodist Con- gregaton at Annual Meeting-Successful Year
 n all Departments Shown By Reports.

The annual congregation meetins of Trinity Methodist Episcopa church was held last night and tho largest attendance ever gathered or a like occasion was present. The frs year of the pastorate of Rev. WarreT F. Cook came to a close, the most successful the church has ever known. church supper was serv- ed by the Ladies' Aid society at 6:3O o'clock, after which the assembly ad- journed to the main auditorium, where the meeting was held.
 In order to relieve the monotony Of the various reports, selections were interspersed during the program. The new quartet, composed of Miss Anna Clark, soprano, formerly of the Bris- tol Baptist church choir; Mrs. Dud- ley T. Holmes, alto; Kenneth Rob- erts of Hartford, bass, and R. Morse, tenor. rendered selections. Walter Occupin favored with cello solo and Miss Jennie Swanson gave readings.
 Pastors Report.
 In his report, Rev. Warren F. Cook, the pastor said that while the church had gained in membership during the past year, nevertheless he thought the membership should be
 
 present there are approximately TOO. The report follows:
 Tt is @ very easy matter in an annual report to dash off phrases about the best year we have ever had, and it would especially be persump- tuous for me to do it in this case, but l can say quite truthfully and heartily that this has been the most pleasant year, and in some re- spects the most gratifying of my ministerial experience. I like New Britain. I like Trinity Methodist Episcopal church. I could take the entire time of this report to give you my reasons for such a statement Let me simply say this, the general spirit of unity among all the people the demand for wise progress among of1i- cials and parishioners alike; and desire to lay emphasis upon the es- sentia1s of church life are foremost among the reasons for the feeling of satisfaction that we have for the years work.
 Tn reviewing the past eleven months there is much that I can omit because of the more detailed re- ports of others given here tonight I l shall, therefore, give more time to | consideration of lines of work for 1 our coming year (assumming that the bishop will not divorce us in April.) As to the past eleven months:
 Increase in Membership.
 First, our membership. It is well known that we have had to l spend considerable time putting our records into shape and it is impos- sible to say at this time just exactly i what our total membership is but we have recently found a record which | will enable us within the next month to be able to perfect our official church records. We have received during the year thirty-three new members by letter from other churches 19 by confession of faith and Is by preparatory membership a total of CT new members. We have lost four by death and three by let ter, making a net gain of 60 per cent, The total membership reported at the conference last April was 660. This would give us a total member ship today of 720. This number will be increased before conference, but the revision of the membership rolls. which I have spoken of before will probably cut down the total, although we are not able to say how much. The conference minutes have never before shown our mem mbership to have reached TOO but I see no req son why in the next two or three years the membership should not reach 1000. Let us be satisfied with nothing less. There have been twen- ty baptisms during the last eleven months, nine adults and II children, and thSre have been fourteen we'd dings. |.
 Do a not yet covered each family of the church in our visitations We had expected to do this before the first of the year but our own sickness pre- vented that and since that time the general sickness in the community has made it necessary to give prac- tically all of our visiting time to sick calls. We expect, however, to visit the remaining families of the constituency before conference time Surplus Left.
 "The matter of finances for the past year has been well covered by the treasurer and financial secretary's re- port We might just note however, that we faced this conference year with a S1,100 deficit. During the year we have paid that deficit and are : closing this year with a deficit of only S47O with sufficient amount of subscriptions still unpaid to very much more than cover this amount.
 "Our total benevolences for this year will show an increase of at least thirty per cent. over what we gave last year.
 The work of the various societies and organizations of the church have been well covered by the report Of s their respective presidents, and I need not tell you what we have been at tempting to do with our regular