The Church is always asking for money!

How many times have we heard this? In any one weekly bulletin there are always several requests for the reader to consider giving in one form or another. This does irritate some people. Yet what is the answer?

Roughly speaking our church needs £70,000 to keep going! Of this £50,000 goes straight to the Diocese by way of Fairer Shares (Quota). As we all know this goes to pay for our Priest, his housing, his pension and other employment costs (£40,000), Diocesan back up services (£6,000) and support of national and other local churches.

Income from our regular givers is £28,000 plus about £8,000 gift aid refund from the Government = £36,000. Other voluntary donations on the plate amount to about £4,000 a year. We give nothing to charity from our weekly donations relying on our weekly retiring collections to cover this. As you can see the deficit is £30,000!

If anyone who believes we keep asking for too much too often would like to propose how we fill this gap, we would all love to hear from them.

There is one church within our deanery who do not have to rely on extraneous giving. Their weekly offerings more than cover all their needs plus a great many other charitable givings. Their average weekly giving per head is in the region of £19 a week!! Our average weekly giving is £6!! Hence the need, like young Oliver, for us to keep asking for more!!

Tony Rice-Oxley