Annual Meeting

Saturday, July 20, 2024, 1:00 pm until 3:00 pm

Tha Annual Meeting is open to life time members and members who have paid their membership dues by June 30, 2024.

We will have lunch available at 12 noon and ready to call meeting to order at 1pm.

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The following letter from VP David James is a result of the July 20th Annual Meeting.

July 25, 2024

Dear Member of the TNSA Extended Spiritual Family:

After a roller coaster year beginning at the July 2023 Annual Meeting and Election of Officers, which ended with only five of eight Board of Directors positions filled, then surged to full complement by late fall, only to slide like the outgoing tide to three board members left by this year’s annual meeting July 20th.

Five members and three board members of The National Spiritual Alliance of the United States of America, Inc. -- which at one time had approximately 250 Spiritualist organizations and churches from throughout the nation as affiliated members -- adopted the following resolution with six affirmative votes and two abstentions: “That TNSA effectively closes November 1st, 2024, to have the water shut off, pipes drained, propane shut off, to allow the Board of Directors to research options to reopen as a Church, a Community Center, or other alternative in the spring of 2025” (or as soon thereafter as is possible should the membership vote to reopen).

Modern Spiritualism began in the late-1840s and defines itself as a philosophy, a religion and a science. It arrived in Lake Pleasant in 1874 with formation of the Massachusetts Spiritualists’ and Liberalists’ Association which incorporated in 1879 as the New England Spiritualist Campmeeting Association.

TNSA split with NESCA in 1913, primarily concerning dispute about reincarnation. TNSA believed in it and NESCA did not. NESCA disbanded in 1976, leaving TNSA -- now in its 111th year -- as the sole Spiritualist flag-bearer.

But an organization with its own building -- Spiritualist or otherwise --

is not just a religious and/or spiritual entity with its cosmic and one-worldistic principles and practices. It also has nitty-gritty earth-bound responsibilities of sibling members to sibling members -- inside and out -- toilet scrubbing, floor mopping, cobweb delinting, gardening, lawn mowing, leaf raking, snow shoveling. Declining membership, declining attendance, declining service to spiritual siblings and declining distribution of workload have lead to the necessity to shut down -- or go broke -- to hibernate for a time, to research options for a viable future and execute it/them, or -- failing that -- to recommend permanent closure, a final “real end.” Although it breaks my heart to announce impending closure 11/1, I have faith in an ultimate spirit of triumph ... a rise -- a rebirth -- from current TNSA ashes--

David James, Vice President and Acting CEO