I WRITE to protest at last week's letter from Sue Needham and Norma Heath.

At St John's annual district meeting, these two were only nominated as St John's churchwardens after the chairman, Rev Charles Raven, had blatantly interfered with the democratic process of the elections.

Without any authority under the rules, Mr Raven declared his strong support for Sue Needham and his strong opposition to the other two candidates, Peter Salmon and Christine Dutton.

He urged people to vote for Sue Needham and Norma Heath and continue St John's stand against the Bishop and Diocese of Worcester.

Such intervention was irregular, unfair and manipulative.

Even then Sue Needham and Norma Heath were only nominated by a very small majority.

Mr Raven and his supporters then lost a nomination for a Deanery Synod place and four elected places on St John's District Church Council to opponents of Mr Raven.

This meant that Mr Raven had lost overall control of St John's District Church Council.

Since then he has refused to call DCC meetings and members have had to call meetings themselves.

At the subsequent annual meeting of parishioners for the West Kidderminster team ministry, where churchwardens are formally elected by members of the churches electoral rolls and members of the civil Register of Electors, Christine Dutton and Peter Salmon stood again as candidates for churchwardens of St John's.

Of the 171 people present, eight were the parochial clergy, 128 were from St John's district, while 40 came from Holy Innocents and St Peter's.

So it is totally untrue to say that members from the other churches in the team ministry imposed unwanted churchwardens on St John's Church.

In fact there were 95 members of St John's electoral roll present and just 33 from the civil Register of Electors for St John's, who had every right to attend and vote for churchwardens.

The overall voting figures were: 124 for Christine Dutton, 123 for Peter Salmon, 43 for Norma Heath and 42 for Sue Needham.

So assuming that all 95 members of the St John's electoral roll voted, Peter Salmon and Christine Dutton won the election among members of St John's electoral roll by a larger majority than Sue Needham and Norma Heath had won the nomination elections at St John's annual district church meeting.

Finally, Sue Needham and Norma Heath state that many people at St John's Church are now giving not to the DCC but to the Forerunner Trust, of which they are trustees.

The Forerunner Trust was established to help the DCC of St John's Church finance the mission and ministry of St John's Church.

No-one outside the Forerunner Trust knows how much they have collected to date. But they have only given £3,250 to St John's DCC.

So just what are they doing with all the money they are collecting?

REV HAROLD GODDARD

Team rector, Kidderminster West Team Ministry,

Sutton Park Road

Kidderminster