| Description | A list of the ministers of the New Meeting House, later Church of the Messiah, can be found in documents UC 2/3/1/2/2/7/2 - 3. The church appears to have been served by two ministers for much of its history, and were called 'Co-Pastors' up until 1867. In some cases certain ministers were referred to as Junior Ministers or Assistant Ministers, although the documents also suggest that no strict hierarchical differentiation necessarily existed between the two: 'Either of these may be referred to as the Junior Minister' (see UC 2/3/1/2/2/7/3).
The surviving records comprise mainly bundles of correspondence written by or addressed to the minister. There are also a number of bundles of correspondence addressed to the Reverend Maginnis, but relate to his other role as Chairman of the Monthly Meeting of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Warwickshire and the Neighbouring Counties, and have therefore been catalogued as part of the relevant records series (see UC 2/13/2/1/10 - 15).
There are also a number of early copies of handwritten sermons, some of which date back to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It is unclear whether all of them were written by ministers who preached at the New Meeting House and Church of the Messiah, as several were preached elsewhere at other congregations in the West Midlands and other parts of the country. Some may have been read at the Dudley Double Lecture (see UC 2/13/1) or the Monthly Meeting of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Warwickshire and the Neighbouring Counties, but have been catalogued here (see UC 2/3/1/2 below) in the absence of any other contextual information (see UC 2/13/2). |