CHURCH FINANCES

With all that we seek to do and with basic upkeep and administration of the church, hall and our community's activities, we spend roughly £60,000 a year and that money has to come from somewhere.  We are fortunate in that we do not have an old church with all sorts of historic features or archaeological issues to look after - the building is only just over 80 years old – but we have to maintain it and have had to do various repairs over the years.

We currently raise about half our income through weekly giving to the church collection and from the gift-aid tax rebate that we can claim on donations that are declared by tax-payers. We have a weekly-envelope system for regular givers and encourage the use of standing-orders to keep bank charges down.  We also use gift-aid envelopes for those who visit the church occasionally or for one-off visits to special services.

We raise money from letting the church hall (this contributes about £3-4,000 once the hall costs themselves are covered), from fund-raising events such as our two Fayres and from the fees charged for funerals or weddings once a share of those charges has been paid on to the Diocese.

Our biggest annual cost is our 'Parish share' which is a payment to the Diocese for our vicar's salary and as a contribution to the Church's wider work. This is currently about £34,000 a year. We spend approximately £5,000 on maintaining, lighting and heating for the church and £3,500 for like costs in the hall. The vicar's expenses and our organists cost another £3,500.  Our insurance premium is over £3,300 and administration/bank charges cost us in the region of £2,000 and more. We contribute over £5,000 as our share of the cluster's youth worker's costs.

Our church community supports two main charities as part of our witness.  We raise money for a charity project in Malawi as detailed elsewhere on our web-site and typically contribute over £3,000 a year to their work.  We also promote support for the Children’s Society: our annual Christingle service in the run-up to Christmas gives its collection wholly to the Society and individual collection boxes are also given out to those who wish to participate.

If you are able to offer a donation towards the church's work, please contact Edwina (the vicar) or Tim Dawe (the church's treasurer) in the first instance, c/o the vicarage.