As part of our talk on generosity last Sunday, Sami has asked me to give a short update on where we are financially as a church.
We've also produced a leaflet which can be found here:
At the end of last year we had a call to give and we were overwhelmed by your response, so many ways in the last year we have seen God provide for us as a church and we trust this situation to him again now.
Our Situation
Our current situation is that our regular monthly giving is £1,500 below where it should be. So if that carries on for the rest of the year then we would be around £18,000 below our budget. This would also see our gift aid drop below budget and so in total we would be around £21,500 below budget on income.
This is due to two factors, the first is that a few people have moved away and so stopped their giving, but also because this year we needed to see an increase in congregational giving to meet our budgeted commitments. You may remember last year I mentioned that some of the time limited funding from the resourcing church program towards staff roles is tapering off.
We have seen a few one-off grants and other income in the first few months of the year help to make up for some of the loss to date, and we praise God for that, but we won’t have that going forward.
Income
I think it is helpful to see how our monthly income is made up. On average it currently takes around £16,350 to run the church per month. Of that around £8,300, just over half, is made up from regular monthly giving which is where we see the shortfall. The other large parts of our income come from:
One off donations: £1300 per month (this is averaged across the year and often doesn’t work out to a monthly amount)
Gift Aid: £2,000 per month
Room Hire: £1,400 per month
Resource Church: £2,900 per month
Other: £400 per month
How
You might think that that is a large amount to realise per month, but if we break it down this could look like:
£23 extra per existing regular donor per month or
6 new regular givers giving £250 or
It could look like a combination of those things or
An infinite amount of other ways!
I put those amounts there as illustrations, in reality we are all different and so it will be different for each of us, we will give according to what God has given each of us.
Expenditure
You may also be asking what we spend our money on, you can find a copy of our annual accounts for 2021 here this gives more detail on how we spend our money. In the leaflet linked above you will also find a chart with a basic breakdown of budgeted expenditure for 2022.
How should I respond?
Firstly pray! Prayer should always be at the heart of everything we do, this situation needs to become a ‘Prayer Project’ for us.
As I mentioned before we are so grateful to all those that responded last time, and if you did you may or may not be able to respond this time. Perhaps if you weren’t able to respond before you can now or you may have recently joined and would like to start to give?
Respond online here or by completing the form in church and posting it in the box at the giving station.
In response you may also have questions, do feel free to send me an email or speak to me on Sundays.
Ways to Give
In terms of the practicalities of how to give, the best way for us is for you to give through a regular planned giving scheme such as standing order to the bank or the PGS. More information can be found in the leaflet you received or on our website: www.sjbchurch.co.uk/giving
댓글