Grace Church Family News 20 Nov 24
On 20th November we held our Family Meeting to communicate to church members the things that have been going on and the things that are planned for the future of Grace Church. It was great to welcome about 50 to 60 of you there last night, but we are conscious that some of you were not able to make it, and so I am writing this blog so that we can communicate with those who were not there.
We concentrated on certain aspects of church life, but that is not to say these are the only important areas. We really value everything that all of our members do across Grace Church.
New Members
Not all of our new members were able to be with us last night. I am pleased to report that we welcomed in to membership the following:
· Adam & Kelly Gerken
· James & Sarah Kirby
· Richard & Shana Mann
Vision Update
David McNee let us know that he, together with the Elders are looking at our church vision. Ultimately our vision is Jesus. He is at the centre of all we do and is at the heart of all that Grace Church do, and it will always be that way.
Leadership Update
Dave McNee let us know that the SLT that had been formed to support the Elders during the transition period was now disbanded. The leaders are grateful for the four men who supported the elders through this time, namely James Haslam, Brian Kimberley, Boni Hima and David Hazelton. The three elders are meeting together regularly to lead the church and two men are invited to join those elders’ meetings with a view to exploring eldership for the future. These two are Boni Hima and David Hazelton.
Office Update
We are grateful to Rosie Gillard and her team who have agreed to put their skills to good use in re-decorating and furnishing the meeting room in the office. This room has got a bit tired and so a re-vamp will give it a fresh lease of life.
We are also pleased to announce that Kate Cornish has agreed to be our Social Media Manager on a voluntary basis. Kate will seek to make Grace Church more visible in this area. James Kirby has been doing some graphic design for us, also on a voluntary basis. If anyone else feels that they have some skills that would benefit the church and you are willing to offer these on a volunteer basis, we would love to hear from you. Speak to Sia Hima or David McNee.
Commission Update
David McNee informed us that Commission is going through a transition phase. Guy Miller has stepped back from the overall leadership of Commission and Vinu Paul, who is based in India, has taken over this role. Vinu is meeting regularly with Commission leaders to work out how he can lead our movement going forward.
Finance Update
Steve Mathews gave us a very clear picture of where we are with our finances. The key points are given in brief below. If you would like more information, copies of our annual accounts are available from Steve and from Sia.
Income 2024: total £280k (incl special offering for future £35k)
Total income : general fund £220k
Spending: £250k
Biggest increase in staff costs (Dave McN part year and RD full year – whereas 2023 was part year)
Special offering
We have done as we outlined we would
Future 2025: Increase expenditure to £300k – effectively £60k increase
Biggest increase salaries £35k – full year DMcN plus other increases and incl Parish Nursing
If giving doesn’t increase, we will run a Deficit of £5k per month
Funds now
General description of the funds held
Appears lots of money but all there for a purpose
Sustainability fund of £70k to ensure good running of cashflows, and responsibility in project completion and long term commitments such as staff.
Focus on ‘to be used in the future’ reducing at around £5k pm so around 17 months worth
Parish Nursing
Achieved 2 x aims
No external funding but large gift £25k – to pray and plan
Giving Update
Dave McNee followed Steve’s helpful overview of Grace Church’s finances by letting us know that there is a letter on its way to all members. In the letter we ask Grace Church to consider their giving. These three areas are:
· If you don’t give regularly to Grace Church, consider starting to give regularly.
· If you don’t give in proportion to your income to begin to give in proportion to your salary.
· If you do give regularly but you haven’t reviewed the amount you give recently, have a look to see if your income has increased since you last reviewed your giving.
Kids
Rosie Gillard updated us on how Sunday Club is going. She compared it to when we first came out of lockdown and were short of team to run it. Rosie and Laura Hazelton have shaped Sunday Club really well and recruited team and put some structure in that works well. Rosie let us know that from January Laura and Rosie have decided it is time to hand over the leading of this work. David McNee told us how the leadership structure going forward would need to be different so there wasn’t such a strain on so few. The plan is for a team with different members taking different roles. If you feel you have the skills and the time to be part of this team, either have a chat with Rosie Gillard or speak to David McNee.
Youth
Rosie gave us an encouraging review of Youth. There are 40 to 45 young people on the books with a usual attendance of about 30 teenagers. Newday was a great time away for this group and Rosie has loved seeing them engaging with God. A lot of them are really engaging with God through prayer and reading their Bibles which is wonderful to see.
There are a mixture of activities through the month from gatherings at St Francis youth centre, to small group gatherings and times on Sundays during the preach twice a month. They have recently split the Sunday Group by ages and this has allowed them to go deeper in the content of those sessions.
Young Adults Update
Hugo Griffin let us know that we are forming a new group for young adults to help them connect with their age group. This will be for people in their twenties and thirties. This will be for those who are coming week by week, but also for those who are studying away from Salisbury and only around during the university holidays. The group will be called Connect. Hugo is working with a team, namely, Florencia, Sarah Kirby, Rosie Donahue, and Evie Owen to develop this new group.
Christmas Update
This year our Carol Service on 15th December will be at 4 pm in the afternoon. We hope this will make it more accessible for those we want to invite to join us. All the events leading up to this are aimed to reach out into the community around us. We will have Carols at the Club, which is at South Wilts Sports Club on 4th December, and Carols at the Pub which will be at the Bell & Crown on 12th December. There will be a Bemerton Heath Community event on 14th December. Be thinking about who you can invite to these different events.
Ghana Update
David Maskell is part of the Commission Ghana Team and meets regularly with Eustace and Theresa on Zoom to see how they are doing. David was able to report that the family are doing well and are very grateful for all the support they receive from Grace Church. The church is also going well. Eustace has begun the radio broadcasts again where he preaches on air, and they are developing other leaders around Eustace. The building work to the church building has been completed with the only outstanding item the earthworks to tidy up the area in front of the building. A contract has been let for this but the contractor is being slow in starting this work. The pig farm that they run is doing better and they currently have 56 piglets to look after. Thir next plan is to start a restaurant selling pork based dishes to maximise their profit from the pig production.
Building Update
David Maskell reported that we continue to look for a suitable building for Grace Church. We have looked at options where we could use the building 7 days a week but also ones that would not accommodate our Sunday meetings, but would provide space for our activities on all of the other days of the week. Our preference would be for a building that could be used 7 days a week for a congregation substantially bigger than our current one. Since we came out of lockdown, our attendance has continued to grow. From Feb 2022 to now our attendance has doubled and we are regularly seeing between 200 and 220 people each Sunday. The current venue can hold a maximum of 320 people with every seat occupied.
To provide the sort of facilities we want for a 7 day a week venue would need about 1,500 m2 of internal space. We would then need to consider car parking and outside space. If we found a town centre building, we would expect the parking to be in public car parks.
David talked about a number of sites we had looked and then gave a couple of financial examples for different sized buildings.
Example 1 – Matalan
The Matalan site on the south of the city has been up for sale recently. It is currently under offer. It would have provided more than our requirement in inside and outside space. It was up for sale for £3.5M. with alterations and refurb we could easily add £0.5M to this, bringing the project total to £4M.
We can borrow money from a bank up to 60% of the value of a project, so we would have to borrow £2.4M and we would have to have a deposit of £1.6M.
If we had a loan of £2.4M, with an interest rate of 4.6% over 15 years, our monthly repayment would be £18,607 per month. Our current total income per month is £17,000, so this would require us to double our giving.
At the moment our deposit is £200,000. So this project is out of our reach at the moment. We would need to substantially increase our deposit and see our giving double.
Example 2 – Blue Boar Row
David then looked at a smaller a project, a building in Blue Boar Row near the market square. The building is on for £950,000 plus VAT which would take these costs to £1,140,000. We would need a deposit of £456,000 and then we would need to borrow £684,000. Repayments on this loan would be £5,300 over 15 years at the same interest rate.
If we went for this 6 day a week venue, it would tie up our finances for 15 years, maybe preventing us going for the 7 day a week venue when one became available.
A third option would be for us to find a cheaper 6 day a week venue. If this could be cheap enough to be a cash purchase this would not delay us when it came to buying a 7 day a week venue. If we went this route it would have to be big enough that we could use it for all of our mid week activities and have room to also develop some new ministries.
Which ever type of building project we go for it is clear that we have to increase the level of our building fund to be available as a deposit, and we need to see our general giving increase significantly.
Prayer
The meeting ended with prayer.
David Maskell