Welcoming our new President
At our Annual Meetings this month we were delighted to welcome Vince McCully as this year’s President of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.
The Presidential team travel the length and breadth of the UK (in person and via Zoom!), connecting with our congregations and sharing their vision for the future. They also represents us at official events like Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph and on official bodies. The President and Vice President are elected annually, serving a 12 month term.
Vince has been a Unitarian since attending a service in 1996, at Rivington Chapel in Lancashire, and instantly finding a strong spiritual bond with the faith. Vince, brought up as Roman Catholic, spent six years as a seminarian, however, in search of answers he left there to study comparative religion and politics at Manchester University.
These days Vince divides his time between being the Lay Person in Charge at Rivington chapel, treasurer of the Manchester District Association, taking services around the north-west of England, being a parish councillor, and running an electronics company he formed in 1989.
There’s not much time for his hobbies, what with organizing the annual village festival and helping with the triennial Rivington Pilgrimage to Civil and Religious Liberties, but when he does it’s over to repairing tools and furniture.
Vince says: “I am deeply honoured by being appointed as GA President for 2023-2024 and hope to fulfil this role in a way that fully reflects the freedoms tolerance and inclusivity I find to be the back-bone of our faith. I earnestly want Unitarianism to be fully accessible to all on their faith journey. As it says on the President’s jewel: “Freedom, Tolerance, Reason”.