the stewardship magazine | Spring 2019
Pastor Agu on radical generosity Mike Pilavachi on endings (and beginnings)
DOING SOMETHING DIF ERENT Rebecca Branch on rewriting history Vlad Kriukov on reimagining reality
transforming generosity
Dressed like idiots in the city... don't let it be in vain PLS DONATE!
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We’re Stewardship. We’ve been helping the UK Christian community to give and to receive since 1906, when we started out as stewards of church properties around the country. We love making giving easy and each year help over 25,000 individuals to give around £72 million to our database of over 19,000 charitable causes. By offering practical, tailored support, we are committed to strengthening the work of churches and Christian charities.
And we also inspire greater generosity from this community, thanks to our wealth of resources, courses and campaigns for individuals and churches alike, including the award-winning 40acts. For more than a century we have been driven by our desire to give the wider world the opportunity to encounter Jesus through the generosity of His people and the transformational work of the causes they support. We are Stewardship, and this is what we are about.
Contact us 1 Lamb’s Passage London EC1Y 8AB Tel: 020 8502 5600 Email: enquiries@stewardship.org.uk Web: stewardship.org.uk You can contact the editor by emailing editor@stewardship.org.uk Editor: Craig Borlase Design: adeptdesign.co.uk Stewardship is the operating name of Stewardship Services (UKET) Limited, a registered charity in England and Wales no. 234714 and a company limited by guarantee no. 90305
Editorial I still have a cookbook that I was given as a teenager about 40 years ago. It amuses me that there is a small chapter at the end of the book which contains a couple of recipes for vegetarians. How things have changed over the decades. We certainly do things differently than in the 1970s – our world is faster and more complex, with so many choices to make every day from what to eat and drink to how we access our 24/7 news. In this season of Lent and Easter I am reminded not only of the change that comes when spring bursts into life, but also how God did something amazing and surprising through his Son Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s fitting that this edition of Share gives an insight into how people from
a variety of locations in the UK – from the East End of London (page 8) to Inverness (page 6) – have embraced challenges and decided how to do things in a different way. Mike Pilavachi describes how it feels to finish something after more than twenty years and how to end it well (page 18). And for those of you who were unable to attend our fundraising conference in November, we have included Pastor Agu’s brilliant twelve ideas on inspiring radical generosity (page 16). I hope you enjoy reading these articles, and may God richly bless you this Easter season. Frances Miles Chief Relationship Officer
Like what you read? Use your Stewardship account to lend your support.
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FEATURES
NEWS IN BRIEF
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MOBILE-OPTIMISED GIVING ROLLOUT
News in brief
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Stewardship in action: The Junction Church
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Doing something different… with justice
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Doing something different… with tech
Our new mobile-optimised Giving Account has been a hit with many of our clients. “It looks amazing – totally classy, sleek and smooth. The change in terminology was helpful and the login was a breeze,” says one satisfied customer. Another told us, “It’s so much quicker to make a gift. The design is sharp and clear so giving is easier.” So far, over £40,000 has been donated to charities using our new-look Stewardship Giving Account. 91% of the early adopters of the account told us they prefer the overall look and feel of the new-look account and we’ll keep on making improvements to give our users the very best possible experience.
3,866
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Pastor Agu on radical generosity
GIVER USERS INVITED
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DONATIONS OF OVER
£40,000
Mike Pilavachi on the end of Soul Survivor
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91%
Legal and financial
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Consultancy helpline
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Why I give: Robin Peake
PREFER THE NEW-LOOK ACCOUNT
FULL HOUSE AT FUNDRAISING CONFERENCE Stewardship’s third Fundraising Conference on 20th November last year was a sell-out, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from delegates. “The conference opened up my mind and instead of working with a textbook or screen I loved coming along and meeting people. It unwrapped a vision for me, unlocked ideas and showed me the potential for what the church and I can do,” commented one delegate. “A tremendously collaborative atmosphere. Seeing both funders and recipients of donations is very important to get the message across that there are ethical ways of presenting and advancing your mission and we can all help to achieve that,” said another.
Speakers included Pastor Agu from Jesus House (you can read more about what he had to say on pages 16-17), Carol Akiwumi of Fundraising Training Limited and John Kirkby, Founder of CAP, while our new Charity Funders’ panel and Church Funders’ panel initiatives were hugely popular. Representatives from grant-making trusts such as the Jerusalem Trust, the Joseph Rank Trust, ChurchCare, the Laing Family Trusts and National Churches Trust spoke to packed halls then hosted lively question and answer sessions. Next year’s conference will be on a much bigger scale with lots of new ideas, so watch this space for more news.
40ACTS Our award-winning Lent campaign 40acts is in full swing, with over 100,000 of you joining us so far. This year you can take part in yet another way, via the free Bible app YouVersion. Subscribe via this link for daily updates straight to your phone. youversion.com/the-bible-app To subscribe to 40acts via Stewardship, visit 40acts.org.uk 5
STEWARDSHIP IN ACTION
THE JUNCTION CHURCH
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ate Morris, Pastor of The Junction Church in Inverness, is reminiscing. “As I look back over the last seven years, I can’t quite believe that with God’s help, a congregation of 20 achieved the impossible. It’s amazing!” The impossible goal Kate’s talking about is the raising of £400,000 by the aforementioned 20 adults. Let’s go back to 2003 when she and her husband, Owen, moved to Inverness to launch the church. “We used to meet in a hotel. We prayed for years for the right building – nothing came up. 2010 became our year of sacrificial
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giving, with the congregation getting behind the vision, giving to the building fund. We bid on the hall of a redundant church, arranged our mortgage through a high street bank, then watched as it all fell through.” Although discouraged, they didn’t give up. With the hall gone, for the first time they considered the church building itself, an Inverness landmark, its soaring tower appearing on many images of the city. After more prayer, they decided to try to raise the £400,000 needed to buy the church building and get it fit for purpose. This, remember, with a congregation of only 20.
By the end of 2010, Junction had committed to buying the building. They had a huge sum to raise for a structure which had been neglected and fallen into disrepair. A new upper floor, children’s hall, kitchen and toilets were planned. Over the following years, a combination of sacrificial giving, interest-free loans and help from connected churches in Aberdeen and Thurso raised much of the amount needed, but there was still a significant shortfall. The church then approached Stewardship for a mortgage for £140,000, and were delighted when they agreed. “Stewardship want to back churches and facilitate vision. They totally got what we were doing. With a mixture of their expertise and the overwhelming generosity of the congregation, we were on our way.” With the funds in place, Junction began their Herculean task, keeping their vision for the community in mind as they worked. “We’ve always focused particularly on children, young people and families, running an Alpha marriage course, youth and children’s groups. We finally moved into the ground floor last January, with no carpet or heating system. Everything was covered in concrete dust and we started making the first of a million cups of tea as we contemplated the enormity of the next task of cleaning and painting we’d set ourselves,” Kate remembers. “We’ve carpeted now, but it’s a bit chilly without heating!”
building to engage with our community, offering parenting seminars, toddler groups and opportunities to build families up.” Kate is clear that the church’s vision is to be inclusive and welcoming. “Our welcome team view all our visitors as VIPs. We want them to feel loved and part of our family.” After seven years of hard graft, the team aren’t resting on their laurels. “Our ultimate goal is to raise another £200,000 for a 300-seater auditorium upstairs. We’re not finished yet.” Check out their progress at: thejunction.church If you’re interested in how Stewardship can help your church please visit stewardship.org.uk/mortgages
Junction’s location by the river and its landmark building status is hugely beneficial. “People walk in off the street to have a look. Our youth group has grown from a handful to almost 20, we’ve got new faces in the congregation, a 9-13s group and children’s church on Sundays. We want to use our 7
DOING SOMETHING DIF ERENT…
Annie Chapman
WITH JUSTICE Mary Jane Kelly 8
Rewriting history
Rebecca Branch
O
n a rainy day in East London, the Reverend Laura Jørgensen, vicar of St Botolph Without Aldgate, gazed out of her window onto the churchyard which was full of people pointing and staring. A familiar emotion stirred in her. She called it ‘Ripper Rage’. Her churchyard is one of the main attractions on the many Jack the Ripper tours conducted in East London. Like Revd Laura, Rebecca Branch (manager of Beyond the Streets project Door of Hope) was also fed up with the salacious retelling of a tale of murder and sadism. “I’d leave work and see Ripper tours bringing thousands of people into the area, spreading an untrue narrative about women who sell sex. At Door of Hope, we work all day, every day with women in the area who aren’t seeing their stories being represented. The tours visit the murder sites, going into great detail about the biological aspects of the killings and portraying the perpetrator as an ingenious killer who outsmarted the police. This does his victims a huge disservice, creating a toxic legacy out of his crimes.”
At Door of Hope, we work all day, every day with women in the area who aren’t seeing their stories being represented.
Two years on, there’s a new kind of tour in the East End. Revd Laura has joined forces with Rebecca, and a local historian to create A Hidden History of Women in the East End, a completely different kind of experience for those who want to know more about the real lives of women involved in prostitution.
Reverend Laura Jørgensen
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We try to demonstrate connections between the experiences of women who sold sex in the past and those who do it here today. What this highlights is how little change we’ve seen for women. Frustrated with the way the Ripper tours were exploiting the suffering of female victims, Rebecca, along with local researcher, Tess Horvath, wrote the content of the tour to focus on women. The difference is that unlike the traditional tours, this one goes to the places in Whitechapel where the five women lived, unpacks what was going on in their lives and tells the stories of some of the women Door of Hope work with now. “We try to demonstrate connections between the experiences of women who sold sex in the past and those who do it here today. What this highlights is how little change we’ve seen for women. Around 130 years on from the murders, women continue to sell what’s often referred to as ‘survival sex’ in our city.”
Rebecca’s tour is very different to the usual Ripper experience. “We never refer to ‘Jack the Ripper’. We call the perpetrator an unidentified murderer. Our focus is the women – we put a spotlight on their strength in times of great struggle.” In addition to offering a different kind of historical tour in the East End, Beyond the Streets work hard to deliver cutting-edge services to women, which means keeping up with technology to support women. “Prostitution is going off the streets and moving online, putting a lot of vulnerable women out of reach of traditional support services like ours. We train people to go online and help, and that’s something that UK church projects really need to think about. Recently, at Stewardship’s office we hosted a training day on ‘net reach’ for UK church projects responding to sexual exploitation – equipping them to respond to the digital changes in their context. If we in the UK church are really serious about helping and supporting women who sell sex, we have to start doing things differently.”
We train people to go online and help, and that’s something that UK church projects really need to think about.
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Rebecca is clear about what her ideal outcome of the Hidden History tour would be. “I’d love to see increased empathy, understanding and compassion for women who sell sex. There’s so much stigma around it which isolates women from community and support, making life even harder for them. I want people to leave our tour with a deep understanding of the vulnerabilities women in street-based prostitution face – childhood sexual exploitation, family breakdown, poverty and homelessness – and the strength women demonstrate in working to overcome them. It took an enormous amount of strength for women in sex work to survive in Victorian London. Looking at their lives and those of women who sell sex in London now, I have huge respect for their endurance of whatever life throws at them.” Reactions have been positive. Bex Keer, who went on the tour in October last year, wrote
to express her thanks. “I really appreciated how you explored the women’s lives and not their murders, and how you talked about the unidentified murderer. The history of their lives alongside the history of campaigning and the issues today was very well woven together.” Door of Hope is a project of Beyond the Streets, a national charity which partners with women on their journey out of sexual exploitation. You can find out more and book tickets at beyondthestreets.org.uk
Beyond the Streets 20111039
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DOING SOMETHING DIF ERENT…
REIMAGINING REALITY 12
Back in the old days, you’d have a kick around with the kids in the park and ask them to come along to a youth group. Now you’ve got to engage digitally.
Vlad Kriukov
en Jones, founder and CEO of charity Missional Generation has been doing his homework. “Generation Z can spend around 10 hours a day on media platforms.* Back in the old days, you’d have a kick around with the kids in the park and ask them along to youth group. In the last few years, everything’s changed. Now, you’ve got to engage digitally if you’re going to be relevant to a new generation. We're teaching youth leaders how to harness smartphones as a new form of detached youth work.” Having realised that in order to be relevant to a new generation of young people, the way he did youth ministry was going to have to change, Ben started thinking about how this could happen.
“My first step was to connect with a guy called Andy, a Christian game developer. We started building some apps, but when I met his 17-year-old son, a wannabe YouTuber called Vlad, I knew I’d found the answer of how to connect to a new generation." Vlad came up with the idea for a digital and immersive Augmented Reality app. “By using their smartphones, young people can engage in the epic battle between David and Goliath, using flicking, just like they do in Pokémon Go. It’s fun, but it also gives them a chance to use their skills to help overcome personal, local and global Goliaths in the world.” (You can find out more about Vlad by scanning the photo of him on page 15.)
*marketingtechnews.net/news/2018/feb/09/gen-z-engaging-10-hours-online-content-day
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VR and AR apps are attractive and inexpensive youth work resources. “Nearly every young person has a smartphone so the technology is there, ready and waiting. All our apps are free via the App Store. You can get a Missional Generation VR headset for just £5. The apps bring Bible stories to life for young people, using an immersive digital medium. They can watch the story of the Resurrection and bring the Advent story alive on a table in front of them using their 12 Revelations of Christmas Augmented Reality app. We offer training and help leaders explore the ways they can use the technology in their youth groups.” With Vlad’s input, Ben knew he’d found the answer to his question. “I saw some young people using Vlad’s app in a car park in Leeds and talking about it. That’s when you know you’ve reached the target audience.”
JARGON BUSTING Augmented Reality (AR) is a way of blending interactive digital elements into real-world environments. Pokémon Go and Google Sky Map are both AR apps.
Virtual Reality (VR) describes a three-dimensional, computer-generated environment which users can explore and interact with. The Matrix, basically.
Generation Z Born between the mid-90s and the early 2000s, they’re diverse, tech-savvy and according to some observers, more religious than their Millennial cousins.
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Remarkable stats have come from Missional Generation’s visits to local schools. “We interviewed 176 young people after they’d seen the story of the Resurrection in Virtual
Reality in a prayer space. We asked them if they’d go to a local church with immersive and interactive teaching. 126 said they would! We need to open up conversations about the use of technology. You could say that VR and AR are gimmicks, but so is using real donkeys in nativities. The church hasn’t kept up with technology and that’s where it’s vital for us to do things differently.” Ben and Andy were nominated for Best Use of Digital Media in Youth Work 2018 at the Premier Digital Awards. Vlad thought he’d be using YouTube to share his faith, but instead has found himself becoming a digital
evangelist for his generation. With immersive and digital technology speaking the language young people understand, it’s time for youth work to reach out through a different platform. To learn more, visit: missionalgen.co.uk/vr Meet Vlad here: vimeo.com/301813824
Missional Generation 20153614
TEST AUGMENTED REALITY FOR YOURSELF Download the MG AR app from the Apple or GooglePlay store, scan the page below and watch Vlad’s story come to life.
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NOT BUSINESS.
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F
or almost three decades Soul Survivor’s summer events have provided young Christians with the space and the opportunity to meet with God. This summer will be the last time. But for Mike Pilavachi, the end of this iconic event looks a lot like the beginning of something new‌
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SHARE: What about handing over to someone else, like your co-hosts, Andy Croft or Ali MacInnes? Wasn’t that an option?
MIKE: I assumed that it would be Andy. But he came to me and said, “I want you to know that when you stop I’ll stop. God only told me to support you, he never told me about leading Soul Survivor.” And then Ali MacInnes came, not knowing that Andy had been to see me, and she said the same thing too.
SHARE: A lot of people were surprised when you announced that Soul Survivor’s events would be ending in the summer of 2019. Can you explain why you took such a brave decision?
MIKE: I don’t know if it was particularly brave, but it became obvious. I’ve been feeling my age – I’m diabetic, got a bit of a heart thing and my arteries are not great. And the way I lead the events, it’s all in. I watch others when they’re leading events and they appear to just sail through, but not me. If there’s a big queue at the gate or there are not enough toilets, I stress. And I just want to be obedient, to not get in the way of what the Lord’s doing. So when we reach the end of twenty-six days of events, I think, “God’s done it! He’s met with people. I can’t screw it up any more!” All of that takes a lot out of you. And that’s the honest truth. 20
We knew we needed to find someone, for the sake of the kids, so we kept looking. But the Lord told me, “Whoever told you the young people were your responsibility? They’re mine. I’ll look after them.” People started to remind me of the fact that I used to talk about how we’d end one day. Someone found a recording of me saying: “I hope that one day the Lord tells us to stop and that we stop. The Lord never said I will build my Soul Survivor. He said I will build my Church. We’re here for a season to serve the Church, and I hope we stop. Then it will be someone else’s turn to serve the Church.” That’s when I started wondering, are you saying we’re to stop, Lord? I think you are. And then, before we announced anything, I had people coming up with prophetic words. In New Zealand someone said, “You’re a trapeze artist – you need to let go of the one trapeze before you can grab hold of the next one.” Someone else said, “I think the Lord’s telling you to lay something down, and that when you do He’ll show you what’s next.”
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SHARE: Now you know that you’re ending, do you look at the summer events in a different light?
MIKE: It hit me that everything I’ve tried to do is to create a sense of family and make it safe. That’s why I do the teasing and it’s why I take kids’ chocolate. It’s a way of making relationship and showing that it’s a safe space. It’s not as if the Holy Spirit only ever considers coming down once we pray “come Holy Spirit”. We’re not asking a reluctant God to move, it’s our openness that counts. And in this culture, openness only happens when people know it’s safe. When we know that we will be loved whatever comes up, when we know we’ve got people around us. That’s why I want to spend my last days encouraging the Church to do church as family not as business.
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SHARE: Church as family, not business – can you expand?
MIKE: When people started to hear that I was planning to step down, someone told me that I needed to scour the earth and find the best youth leader there is and get them. But that’s not how we do it at Soul Survivor. We don’t scour the earth for the best. We’re values based. We do it as family. SHARE: You’ve seen that in action before, haven’t you?
MIKE: Everything we are we got from David Pytches at St Andrew’s, Chorleywood [where Mike was youth leader]. I arrived there broken. I was a basket case. They took me in and to this day I don’t know why. Mary [David’s wife] prayed with me and for the first three years I was waiting for David to become my dad and give me a spiritual slap. He never did. He gave me such freedom and love, and there were so many other people at the heart of the church. It was family.
SHARE: Do you think that for some, church as business seems easier than navigating the relationships when you decide to do church as family?
MIKE: Oh yes. But what it means is that nobody goes deep. I’ve been to too many leaders’ meetings where megachurch leaders lay out their five principles and four steps to becoming just like them. And it’s like, yeah, you can draw a crowd and get them to do things but it won’t go deep and there will be such turnover. John Wimber said, “People go to church for many reasons but they stay for only one: relationship.” I think that’s one of the wisest things he ever said.
I heard another leader tell people to “Go and find the best, buy the best, hitch yourself to a rising star”. But how can a vicar with twenty-seven people in their congregation go and buy the best? Some of us have got to raise the best. In a business you hire and fire employees, but in a family you raise sons and daughters. If your six-year-old doesn’t load the dishwasher well, you don’t sit them down and say, “I’m going to have to give you your notice, we’re hiring the kid from over the street.” You crouch down next to them and do it with them for as long as it takes. You make sure they know that you love them no matter what. You grow them to be the best.
SHARE: So how do you create the kind of environment that allows church to be family?
MIKE: For people to get rooted and healed, discipleship has to be about more than teaching people how to have a quiet time. It’s about helping people not to cut themselves or treat their bodies badly. It’s about showing them how not to feel completely isolated and alone. That’s part of discipleship in today’s culture. I’m an evangelical, and I think it totally involves reading the word, praying, worshipping – all the spiritual disciplines – but doing it in covenant relationships, where people are secure and safe. That’s why the bigger questions people ask when they come to our churches are not about our doctrine of the cross, but could I belong here? Would I be accepted? They look at our relationships with each other to see if they would. So we want to have the highest biblical standards of morality but we also want to have utter, complete and total mercy and grace for everyone who doesn’t meet those standards. And I want a church that’s full of mercy because I’m going to need that mercy one day. Jesus managed to have the highest standards of morality but loved everyone who fell short of them. The only people he struggled with were the people who were judgmental. Mercy triumphs over judgement. That’s the vision of what the Church has to be. And because people look at success and want to copy it we want to model how to really grow a church. We want to see large churches that are founded on family principles rather than business principles. My friend who pastors Harvest Church in Port Elizabeth, which is a church of 2,000, said to me, “Mike, there hasn’t yet been a church that’s grown large that’s been built on family principles. That’s our challenge.” 23
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SHARE: Soul Survivor grew pretty big, yet you kept this sense of family about it. What about churches? Is it possible to grow a big church without becoming like a business?
MIKE: There are lots of small Anglican communities all over the country who have a lovely sense of community but there’s no passion to reach out, no mission, no growth. We want to grow big churches but maintain family and community. How do we do that?
It’s not that we’re not into structure – in a big family you have washing up rotas. But the structure serves the family, not the other way round. Our challenge is finding ways of modelling growth in a church and still maintaining that it’s ok not to be ok, that you will be noticed, you will be loved, that you do belong. SHARE: You’ve seen a lot of growth at Soul Survivor Watford. Any tips?
MIKE: You can tell it’s a church after my own heart because it’s built around food. We eat together all the time. Every Sunday between the 4:30pm and the 7pm services there’s a really good home cooked meal for £3. Once a month we have lunch after the morning service, and once a month before the morning service we serve the deluxe bacon butty. It all builds community. When we shared our new building appeal with the church we hosted twelve meals so that everyone in the church could come, eat, hear the vision, give feedback and share their concerns. Ninety-five per cent of them decided to back us by giving sacrificially, raising £2 million.
SHARE: Is this building project part of what you think God has in store for you – the ‘next trapeze’?
MIKE: Yes. We want to serve young leaders in the church and help them grow church families. We’re trying to feel our way but have just started talking about it. Our first priority as a church leadership is Watford – it always will be – but we can also serve the wider Church. We want to serve leaders and build resources that help leaders and encourage them in their loneliness – there are too many stories of church leaders who are utterly lonely and it’s wrong.
SHARE: And finally, any plans next summer?
MIKE: I’m thrilled that there are people who are going to take up the baton – just like the Lord said there would be. I’m looking forward to visiting the new events that will be starting next year and seeing God at work. But I’m also looking forward to having time to cut the lawn and tend my vines. I’m going to miss the kids, but I won’t miss the burden. Saying yes to God like this is not as brave or as difficult as you think.
Follow what happens next at stewardship.org.uk/soulsurvivor 25
ON THE
RIGHT PATH In recent months Stewardship has joined forces with Generosity Path to provide safe spaces for Christian givers to review and share their experiences of giving. Generosity Path helps instigate conversations amongst friends, around the transforming power of living a generous life. We asked Lucy McDonald, Generosity Path’s Global Operations Coordinator, to give us a flavour of what to expect on a retreat.
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Our 24-hour retreats (called ‘Journeys of Generosity’) have brought together thousands of givers in more than 50 countries and over 20 languages across the globe, in safe and inspiring environments to talk about money and possessions. Often hosted in somebody’s home or a nearby hotel or retreat centre, each retreat is led by a trained facilitator for groups of between 10 and 20 people. Being privately funded, we create safe spaces for those entrusted with wealth to share freely without concern that anyone will appeal for funds or promote particular causes.
The following are some questions that we, and people who we have connected with, have spent time reflecting on. We offer these for you to contemplate, and pray through, on your own or with your spouse.* In what ways do I act like a manager of what God’s given me, and in what ways do I act like I’m the owner? If I really acknowledged His ownership, what would change? What is it about the thought of sacrificial generosity makes me anxious? Why is that? What fears does that reveal? If I trust God with my salvation, why do I struggle to trust Him with the small matter of providing for me? Is Christ’s undying love my true treasure, or do I actually treasure other things more? How does my money indicate what my true treasure is? To what extent are things like my reputation, comfort for my family, and recognition my true treasure? If my ultimate treasure is in heaven and not in comforts on earth, what could I give up here to store up there? How much money do I need? Will my answer always be ‘more’? What would it feel like to set a finish line for myself, and give away everything beyond that? What things or experiences have I decided are non-negotiable? The place I live? The car I drive?
Lucy McDonald
Why do I believe I am trustworthy to make financial decisions entirely on my own? Have I found myself biased by greed, comfort, or culture in making financial decisions? What would be the benefits of sharing my financial and giving goals with a mature Christian in my community? Who would that be? How has having money caused me to feel in control of my life? Is this control an idol for me? What would change if I received Christ’s invitation to a new level of surrender, trusting him with full control of my life and future? If an outsider were to look at how I use my time, my energy and my resources, what would they learn about my priorities? When have I regretted giving? How can I better communicate with – and pray with – my spouse so we can walk together down this exhilarating road of giving, leading each other but not leaving each other behind? What am I doing to train my children to be generous givers – and not just donors but disciples?
To find out more about attending a Journey of Generosity, hosted by Stewardship, please email info@generositypath.org.
*Questions adapted from reflection questions by Tim Keller and Randy Alcorn.
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Ask Steve
Professional advice for churches and charities
Q: As a church we employ a number of staff. What should we be looking at to make sure that we’re a good employer? At their best, churches are relational places, but relational in the context of employment should not mean ‘casual’. As employers, the minimum standard we must attain is compliance with the law, but if we invest in and support our staff then we can see them, and our church, flourish as we help them to be the best they can be. What might this investment and support look like? c Decent up-to-date contracts and job descriptions.
This will help to prevent misunderstanding of what is required and expected;
c Documented staff appraisals (at least annually),
agreeing positive and negative aspects of the working relationship (employer and employee), areas for improvement, and goals for the coming period;
c An agreed growth and development plan
including training opportunities;
c A clear, well understood process for
informally discussing issues and concerns. Airing and discussing issues informally often stops them festering;
c Pay at levels which are not designed to keep
staff just above the poverty line;
c If difficult issues arise, clearly document
discussions and agreed outcomes. This means you will not be seeking to reconstruct records from memory.
‘Casual’ normally proves all well and good until something goes wrong. Adopting well thought through staff practices should help your staff to flourish and avoid those nasty HR problems.
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Q: Our charity is currently structured as a charitable company. Should we consider converting to become a CIO? CIOs (Charitable Incorporated Organisations) are a recent addition to the structures available to charities. They have proved popular with new charity formations and unincorporated trusts wishing to provide an additional layer of protection for their trustees. A straightforward conversion from a charitable company to a CIO has long been available in Scotland, and is now available in England and Wales. CIOs are similar to charitable companies in that they are recognised in law as entities in their own right. The advantage they have is that because CIOs are not companies, they are not required to comply with the Companies Acts or to file accounts with Companies House. To date, this advantage does not appear to be persuasive enough to encourage many charitable companies to convert. Conversion might become more attractive should you want to change your governing document/Company Articles of Association, particularly in the event that you wish to widen the provisions allowing benefits and payments to charity trustees. Application for conversion can be via an online application form and guidance is provided by Gov.uk (search for “Change your charity structure”). If you are considering this please contact our charity formation team and we’d be happy to advise and help support you in this. Subscribe to Stewardship’s consultancy helpline service, visit stewardship.org.uk/consultancy Subscriptions for churches and charities start from as little as £50 per year. If you have a question you would like addressed in a future edition of Share, please write to us at editor@stewardship.org.uk
Q: Our chair of trustees doesn’t want to say much in our trustees' report as it’s only for regulators. What is your advice? The Trustees’ Annual Report (TAR) serves two purposes for churches or other registered charities. It forms part of the annual report and accounts; and it is a window for communication between the church and the outside world. The Charity Commission recently reported that many charity TARs failed to tell their story well. The TAR is an important element of your church’s communication. People new to the area, local media carrying out research and others making general enquires may all read your report which is available via the Charity Commission website. So, what would we suggest? c Don’t write the report for church “insiders”.
There are many better opportunities to communicate with your church congregation; c Write in a way that expresses the excitement felt in being part of the church; c Write for people that do not understand church. Use everyday language, tangible examples, and positive outcomes; c Don’t feel the report has to cover every single aspect of church life – perhaps major on a different aspect each year. Churches are an integral part of the rich mosaic of community life and in addition to the messages of salvation and transformation have much to say about parenting, lifestyle, mental health, care and lots more and yet so often we fail to effectively communicate and convey this. Think creatively about your next TAR and see what you can do when telling your part of God’s story.
Stephen Mathews Stephen heads up the Stewardship consultancy helpline team, a specialist service offering expert knowledge to churches and charities.
Visit stewardship.org.uk/briefing for links to all the briefing papers mentioned 29
Robin is the Senior Fundraising Executive with the fostering and adoption charity Home for Good, and a Trustee for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Robin is also on the leadership team of a church on a council estate in Oxford where he lives with his wife and two children. What were you taught about generosity when you were a child? That it’s a normal part of being a Christian. All seven of us went to church with our own little envelopes to put into the collection plate. I went to summer camps where we were taught to tithe the pocket money we’d brought with us into the offering. It was a very dutiful approach which drilled into me that giving to God was what we did as Christians. It meant I started tithing when I got my first job aged 14.
WHY I
GIVE Robin Peake
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Who has made the biggest influence on your giving? Rick and Kay Warren (he’s the author of The Purpose Driven Life) made a pledge to increase the percentage of money they gave away each year. Last I heard he was giving away 90% of his income (a reverse tither!). John Wesley’s example stands out too. I’ve heard that as a young man he worked out he needed £28 to live, and so earning £30 that year, he gave away £2. As he became successful, his income grew one year to £1,400 but still he only spent £40 on himself, giving the rest away. That’s a challenge in a culture where pay rises tend to increase our standard of living, not our level of giving.
What do you know now about giving that you didn’t know ten years ago? I’ve learnt that generosity, like evangelism and hospitality, is a spiritual gift. Those of us who’ve been given it have a responsibility to live it out and call it out in others. And I’ve learnt that giving is not only our money. Will we give a place at our table to someone who isn’t able to return the favour? Will we give a house key to someone who might need it?
What’s the hardest thing? Giving can be a lonely endeavour. People will ask me how things are with my family and my work, and my close friends will challenge me on prayer, Bible reading and service, but no one asks me about my giving. I want to have those conversations with people who love to give.
And the easiest? My wife and I only make one hard decision a year on our giving – what percentage we’ll give away. After that, the money goes out of our bank at the start of each month into our Stewardship Account, and then what doesn’t go out in our regular giving is left for us to give spontaneously as we feel led. Making one decision, sticking to it, and giving at the start of every month means we don’t get fatigued by flipping a coin each month to decide how much we’ll give.
What biblical passages inspire generosity in you the most? 1 Chronicles 29 – the story of probably the biggest gift day in history (the equivalent of £300m in today’s money raised to build the temple). David’s prayer teaches that everything belongs to God and reminds us that God is generous to us. By setting a (not very British) example of giving publicly and then asking those he leads to “make an offering and dedicate yourself to the Lord today”, the text challenges church leaders and fundraisers alike.
What’s the best example you’ve seen of generosity in action? I know a young couple who have chosen to adopt rather than have birth children. I know a family who’ve bought a 9-bedroom house so that they can foster sibling groups. I’ve seen loads in my role with Home for Good, with people giving sacrificially of their money and their lives to make a difference for vulnerable children.
homeforgood.org.uk
I’ve learnt that generosity, like evangelism and hospitality, is a spiritual gift. Those of us who’ve been given it have a responsibility to live it out and call it out in others. 31
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