Dear Everyday Church family,
Welcome to the third finance update of 2022. Remember our goal in these updates is to give information, but also to remind us of our church values when it comes to our finances:
- Transparency
- Accountability
- Generosity
The aim of these 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.
Challenging Times
We are all so aware that we are facing another challenging season. Even a superficial glance at our newspaper headlines over the last 2 weeks tells us that rising fuel bills, inflation and instability in the world is going to put pressure on our personal and church finances. So how are our church finances? The simple table below gives an overview of the first 8 months of this year.
| Budget | Actual | |
| Income | £ 779,000 | £ 709,000 |
| Expenditure | £ 823,000 | £ 720,00 |
| Surplus/Deficit | -£ 44,000 | -£ 11,000 |
Generally, negative numbers in a budget are never good news. You will see from the budget column that we were predicting that we would see a deficit in 2022. We are very fortunate that because of historic generosity and by the grace of God, we do have some cash reserves that can offer us a level of financial insulation. However, we are also aware that we have some large capital expenditure ahead of us.
We are hugely blessed by the buildings we use. We all know that the church is not the building, it is the community. But we also learn that buildings can serve the church community. Our buildings serve us and our wider communities. We might not be gathering on a Sunday in our Kingston building, but it is still serving the Kingdom through providing space for Kingdom initiatives like Foodbank. Together our buildings provide safe places for the church to gather and provide nearly £180,000 a year into the church budget through external hires. However, these buildings need to be maintained and we will need to spend about £150,000 on major repairs across our buildings over the next 12 months.
We are aware that these essential capital expenditures and the season we are in will put pressure on our finances.
What can we do?
Clearly this is a challenging time for many people and it is easy to feel helpless in this season. However, we have more influence than we think. Here are four things we can all do:
- Pray – God is a God of provision, and he is our heavenly Father. Whenever we get fearful about our finances we try to get before God and be honest about our emotions. As we fix our eyes on him, we discover the security and provision of grace that we need for another day.
- Plan – We are meant to rule over our money, not the other way round. As I am sure many of you are doing in this season, we are reviewing our finances and making sure we have a plan for the future. (If you find finances a bit of a mystery all the major banks are offering help online and you can also chat to a trusted friend and get their advice or sign up for one of our CAP courses).
- Play our part – as a church we want to honour our staff team and the organisations we give away to every year. To keep our commitments, we need to all play our part. Having prayed and planned, seek to be as generous in your giving as you can. Just like the boy who brought his packed lunch to Jesus. We may think that our contribution is small, but generosity is about our attitude more than it is about the amount we are able to give.
- Praise – In scripture and throughout church history the people of God have discovered that when they are generous God does immeasurably more than they could ask or imagine. That has been our experience as a family. It is so good to praise God and thank him for his faithfulness and provision.
And Finally …
If you are struggling, please do not struggle alone. Talk to someone. We have established our Church Family Fund to help support anyone within the church who is facing particular hardship in this season. If you need help, please ask. Contact your Life Group Leader or one of your Venue Leadership Team.
Watch our Finance Update from Simon below…