Dear Everyday Church family,

Welcome to the third finance update of 2021. Our goal in these updates is to keep us focused on our three key values on finance:

• Transparency
• Accountability
• Generosity

The aim of values, is that over time, and through consistent expression through real action, these values become our default culture. We are getting there in terms of our church culture and hope that you are seeing a similar culture develop in the handling of your personal finances.

In the spirit of transparency and accountability, here are some figures for the first half of 2021:

2021 Half-year Update

	Jan to June – Budget	Jan to June – Actual
Income	£575,122	£571,300
Expenditure	£601,582	£545,196
Surplus/Deficit	-£26,730	£26,104

As you can see our income in the first half of the year has been slightly lower than we predicted, but we have also managed to keep our costs below budget. Hence, at the halfway point of the year, we have a slight surplus overall against a budgeted deficit. Thank you for continuing to be generous in your giving. We recognise that all of us are working out our personal finances in an uncertain world. It is so helpful to remember the promises of God in this season. God is faithful and is our provider. It is from this foundation of faithfulness and provision that we are encouraged to keep being generous and keep our financial giving at the heart of our worship. 

Gift Aid

When preaching on finances in my previous church I once told the congregation that I was about to put a picture on the big screen of our most generous giver! You could feel the tension in the room as people pretended not to care, and then the picture was revealed. It was a photo of Gordon Brown, who was at the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What was going on? Well, I was simply trying to remind people of the power of the Gift Aid scheme for UK tax payers. Now of course I know that our current chancellor, The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP, does not contribute our Gift Aid payments out of his own personal finance. But, the reality is that Gift Aid on your generous giving contributes thousands of pounds for the Kingdom of God.

I do not know who gives what at Everyday Church, only the people on our finance team who need to know that information, have that information. But the team have made me aware that we have numbers of regular and generous givers who are not currently signed up for Gift Aid. If that is you, please sign up to the scheme. It will cost you nothing but a bit of your time, you are not committing yourself to a certain level of giving, but it does mean that we are able to claim an additional 25% from the UK government on any money you are giving currently or will give in the future.

To get more information and to sign up simply email finance@everyday.org.uk and one of the team will get back to you.

May Special Offering Update

For our Special Offering in May, many of us took up the challenge to partner with Wycliffe Bible Translators to make the Bible available in a new language. They had asked us if we would like to play a part in a specific project to make the Old Testament available to a people group in West Africa. For security reasons, Wycliffe have code named this group the “Flame” people. They represent a large people group of about 500,000.

The New Testament has been completed in the “Flame” language, and as a result, there are some “Flame” believers who are beginning to gather as churches for discipleship together. The translation of the Old Testament into “Flame” has just begun. It’s going to be vital for all of the obvious reasons (how do you learn to worship without the Psalms? How do you understand God’s purposes without the history of Israel? How do you learn wisdom without Proverbs? How can you be discipled on just the New Testament, since all Scripture is God-breathed and necessary to equip the servant of God for every good work?). But it is also going to be particularly vital for reaching a poor, agricultural Muslim community, where the creation story, the story of Abraham, the story of God calling a poor, agricultural nation to follow him, etc, will build great bridges to the “Flame” people group.

I am pleased to announce that so far, and including GIFT AID, we have raised just under £35,000. We will be sending this money to Wycliffe in the next few weeks and I know they will want to express their thanks in due course. However, at this point can I say a big THANK YOU to all of you for contributing.

Blessings

Simon Elliott

Executive Pastor

Ps. If you meant to contribute to the Special Offering and have just realised you didn’t get round to it, you can still play your part. Simply contact the Finance Team on finance@everyday.org.uk and they will help.