Stewardship: Share Magazine Issue 34 - Agents of Change

the stewardship magazine | issue 34

AGENTS OF

CHANGE FOUR PIONEERS TACKLING THE BIG ISSUES IN JESUS’ NAME

Plus: How to make a difference without burning out Generosity in The Jungle: One reader’s experience of Calais

transforming generosity

Attention Charities and Churches:

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No specialist knowledge needed to set up and all giving is processed by our quick and efficient Giving Services Team.

www.give.net Or contact Stewardship’s Giving Services Team on 020 8502 8560 to find out more.

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 £60million 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 In an article about Christians living countercultural lives, Gabe Lyons (founder of Q Ideas, a learning community that mobilises Christians to advance the common good in society) had this to say about the desire for relevance: “In an effort to appeal to outsiders, some Christians simply copy culture. They become a [photocopy] of what they perceive as hip in hopes that people will perceive them – and their organisations, ministries, and churches – as ‘cool’ and give them a chance.

Unfortunately, this pursuit of pop-culture removes the church from its historically prophetic position in society. Relating to the world by following the world is a recipe for disaster.”

Our desire to belong, to be accepted, is a well recognised human trait. Most of us want to belong. But not all. Some of us challenge the status quo and embrace the prophetic position Christians have historically held in society. Often we begin by being criticised by both the culture and the church.

When I first met Peter Harris I had given conservation and creation care very little thought. He challenged me to view the world (as well as the people) around me through the lens of the gospel. While Peter is widely admired by many today, it wasn’t always so. Those who challenge our comfortable positions are often misunderstood and resented. At first.

Natalie is asking difficult questions about how the church responds to domestic violence, human trafficking, child exploitation and gender equality. Some of these issues are embraced by many, whilst

others cause uncomfortable moments and uneasy conversations.

I’m certain Messy Church is, well, too messy for some. But Jesus was messy. He often met people in the messy places of their lives, the places culture avoided. Messy Church, with Jesus at its core, has now established itself as a legitimate and impactful expression of community.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Ian to confront the impact of pornography in his family, the church and in society. The uncomfortable reality is that pornography has tainted marriages and relationships, our youth groups as well as our pulpits. I’m convinced that in years to come Ian, and those like him, will be thanked for helping usher in a culture where issues such as pornography are openly discussed with grace and without stigma.

Sex, sexuality, gender and gender roles are topics many in the church fear. I’m grateful for those with the prophetic fortitude to address these issues not from a desire to be relevant, but a desire to be biblically sound.

If relating to the world, by following the world, is a recipe for disaster, we need to embrace those willing to challenge our comfortable positions.

Michael O’Neill, CEO Stewardship

Like what you read?

Use your Stewardship account to lend your support

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News in brief Black Friday Cyber Monday #givingtuesday Preparations are underway for Giving Tuesday (givingtuesday.org.uk) – the antidote to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday pre-Christmas sales frenzy that has been a rising phenomenon in the UK. Stewardship has been a founding partner of the UK’s Giving Tuesday since it launched two years ago.

Giving Tuesday UK 2015 donations grew by

35%

and it was described as

‘ the biggest ever day of grassroots giving’.

This year’s Giving Tuesday is on November 29th and we are encouraging churches to celebrate giving and the work of charities and community groups in their towns and cities.

For ideas and more information on how you can get involved, visit stewardship.org.uk/givingtuesday

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Prison Hope 2017 HOPE is joining together with prison ministries, chaplains and churches to create Prison Hope 2017 – a year of mission in every prison. Prison Hope 2017 has a vision for churches to engage with and pray for their local prisons, planning a range of events throughout the year. The initiative launches this October and starts with Prisons Week, which promotes seven days of focussed prayer for prisoners, their families, victims of offenders and all those who work with them.

Find resources to share in your church at prisonhope.org.uk

Features 6

Stewardship in action: New beginnings

10

Change: Meet four people making a difference

24

Generosity in The Jungle

28

Legal and financial

30

Consultancy helpline

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At Share magazine, we love telling the stories of Stewardship’s clients and those who they help and support. This time round, we’re giving you some tales from the engine room, focusing on the work of Stewardship teams and how they make giving easy, inspire greater generosity and strengthen Christian causes.

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Barrie Thompson is one of the managers on the Giving Services Team, which administers giving on behalf of 25,000 account holders, 19,000 recipients, as well as Stewardship’s giving platform, give.net. “One of the most inspiring parts about working at Stewardship is seeing how charities are developing and changing lives.

We work with the South African based charity Morning Star Children’s Centre, and over the last twelve months we’ve provided grant payments totalling just over £50,000 from our account holders. The charity’s founder recently visited us and spoke to the staff about the charity’s work.

It’s a huge encouragement to us to hear of how the work we do allows those God calls to get on and flourish in their ministry for His Kingdom and His glory.”

Over on the award-winning Payroll Bureau, which provides payroll services for over 500 churches and Christian charities, Senior Payroll Administrator Mark Partridge has a smaller team but is equally inspired. “We try to offer our clients more than a normal payroll bureau, going the extra mile and giving them help and support wherever they need it. We don’t simply accept and process their instructions, we double check everything and make sure they’re aware of all compliance and legal issues too.”

Mark and his team spend a lot of their time untangling financial messes. “Some of our clients come to us in a real state – they’ve lost their treasurer or are in a muddle financially.

We walk them through what they need to do to regain control of their finances which is hugely rewarding.”

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Naomi Harrison spent nearly two years working in the mortgages section at Stewardship. “I find it so exciting to be part of the journey our clients are on – I see it from a missional perspective.” We are seeing a steady stream of mortgage applications from north of the border, leading to many inspirational stories.

“For example, we recently helped Culloden-Balloch Baptist Church in Inverness with an almost £1 million loan to help expand their ministries into the community. And we build great relationship with our applicants. One church was so thankful for our help, they have come back twice for further funding since the original loan.”

The mortgage team offers a unique service as Naomi explains. “We are on the journey with our clients all the way through, hand holding where necessary and advising them throughout the entire process. Our clients really appreciate it. Our professional team has pro-actively identified significant Stamp Duty and VAT savings on project costs for applicants. Father’s House Sabbath Congregation, a small church in Flint, Wales, were in need of a loan. From the outset, we walked them through the process, even helping them to put accounts together to support their application. And when things got seriously held up between solicitors, we identified the problem, alerted the church and helped get things moving again, rather than stepping back once our work was done as other mortgage providers may have done.

That’s the difference between us and others I think. We have lovely relationships with our clients and they are so happy with our service.”

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Over in Charity Formation, the team register around 70 new charities every year. Camilla O’Leary, Charity Formation Advisor, has been involved in helping to register some exciting new charities. “BeSpace is an Oxfordshire-based charity working on creating and running prayer spaces in schools and the community. They are a team of local volunteers who guide people through creative prayer stations and help them to figure out how to pray effectively. They’re all Christians but it’s an open space for people of all faiths.” The team often receive encouraging emails from clients. “We spend so much time on the administrative side of things that we don’t always realise the impact our work has,” says Camilla.

Stewardship’s Accounts Examination Team works with around 300 churches and Christian charities.

The six-strong team are all involved in church finance or governance themselves. “We are all motivated to help strengthen Christian causes,” explains Stephen Mathews, Stewardship’s Head of Accountancy and Consultancy. “We are doing more than compliance; we work to help churches and charities develop good accountability, administration and attitude to finance; what we call an ‘AAA rating’. This helps inspire people to invest money and talent. We also spend a lot of our time supporting church treasurers as they have a key and often unsung role in church life.”

Whatever is happening in the world and whichever direction our country takes, Stewardship continues to take action to make giving easy, strengthen Christian causes and inspire transformational generosity.

Our mortgage interest rate for churches has recently been reduced. If your church is considering a loan or has a mortgage outstanding with a high street lender, contact us to see how much you could save. stewardship.org.uk/mortgages

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THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIANS AND CHANGE We all experience times when it feels as though life is a desert. But what if our very calling appears to have led us there in the first place? Or what if it is only in the hardest times that we discover God’s plan for our lives? What if it is precisely in the wilderness that our voice is supposed to be heard? Meet four change-makers whose stories reveal some of what it takes to persevere with God’s calling, even when change seems a long way off.

Photography by Steve Wright

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Ian Henderson

Lucy Moore

Peter Harris

Natalie Collins 11

Ian Henderson

WE’RE MADE TO

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I

an Henderson was preaching when the phone call came in, so it was via voicemail that he found out his father had been arrested. It took a couple of hours to discover that he was being charged with possession of indecent images of children. It took a couple of months to discover that his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“For a year we were just dealing with whatever was in front of us – the next court date or the next hospital appointment. Eventually, with three weeks to live, the judge gave him a suspended sentence. He went straight to a hospice and died a few weeks later.”

Ian grieved. The experience had brought the realities of pornography close to home, but it had not changed his fundamental assumption that porn was something that some people struggled with sometimes.

A couple of years later, as he approached 40, Ian noticed something within him start to change. With almost twenty years of Christian ministry behind him, and a bright future ahead at The Message, Manchester, Ian began to sense that God was unsettling him.

“I felt God starting to talk to me about the issue of pornography. It was painful and I was reluctant, but as I started to read up about it I got a sense of the massive shift that has happened in the last decade.

I began to see that the world I had grown up in was completely different to the world today.”

That change is colossal. One free pornography site currently receives 4.4 billion hits a month, placing it above Apple and Amazon.co.uk. According to a survey of lawyers in the US, obsessive porn use is cited as a factor in 56% of divorce cases. The average age of first exposure to hard pornography is 11, and three in five youth pastors admit that they struggle with porn.

And even those who use it regularly are desperate to stop, with one survey indicating that 56% of men said their taste in porn has become “increasingly extreme or deviant”, often creating problems in their real relationship, while 88% said they would be willing to seek professional help if it was available online.

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I’m a massive believer that we’re made for this stuff.

We’re made for risk and doing the scary faith things.

“The rise of the internet and prevalence of smart phones and tablets means that pornography has never before been more affordable, accessible, anonymous or potentially addictive. But back in 2013 the Church wasn’t talking about it and in wider culture there was a taboo about suggesting that there could be something negative about porn.”

Ian knew that God was calling him to raise awareness and begin to fix what he could of the damage caused by porn, but it was in many ways a leap in the dark.

“It made a lot of sense to stick around at The Message; they are a great charity – I knew I could do something worthwhile there. I had no experience in this work with porn, and had no clue how I was going to get paid. But the reasons for staying began to be more about fear rather than calling. I was thinking, what if I leave and fail? What if I leave and don’t get paid?

Acknowledging the fact that fear was the main thing holding me back became the indicator that it was time to leave.”

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In 2013 Ian established The Naked Truth Project, and early growth has been rapid.

Today its activities range from working in schools to briefing politicians, publishing books to setting up online support groups that have seen many porn users break free from dependency.

It’s a good start, but it would not have happened had Ian not been prepared to face some painful memories and take a serious risk. “I’m a massive believer that we’re made for this stuff. We’re made for risk and doing the scary faith things. Even though it can be scary and hard and upsetting, there’s a sense I’ve had from the start that this is what it means to be a disciple: being in a place of faith and risk, not knowing what is going to happen. It’s what keeps your faith alive.” thenakedtruthproject.com

The Naked Truth Project 20167230

Lucy Moore

WE’RE MADE TO

ASK THE HARD

QUESTIONS 15

What are we there for if we’re not there to help other people come close to God?

W

hat is Church for? For some the answer is simple – church is “a Eucharistic community”. According to Lucy Moore, “that’s a valid argument… for some. I think it’s about people of all ages gathering together to meet and worship Jesus, in a way that values how God has made them to be. I suppose it sounds ridiculous, but people queue up to come into Messy Churches. The children often drag their parents to it and they have a wonderful time there. I think there’s something that makes people say it can’t be church because it’s fun. It sounds absurd, but there’s a type of thinking that you have to be worthy and dutiful and solemn for church to be worth anything. Messy Church challenges that. Just because we enjoy ourselves at it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not church.”

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The questions go deeper than whether communion is essential or how much fun can be had in church. Messy Church contrasts with the individualistic nature of many church services. “In a traditional church the emphasis is pretty much on the individual. Even though we’re all together, we’re sitting in rows, listening to somebody at the front and we don’t have a right of feedback because there’s no conversation there. Messy Church is about learning together, sitting around a table to play together or be creative, having lots of conversations and building relationship.”

For those who are used to the pews and the sermon and the traditional way of doing things, the difference can leave them feeling a little uncomfortable.

with people who’ve never heard of it, but the teams were all too busy with their own regular church stuff. It asks the question, what are we spending our time on, if we have no time for mission?”

It all leads Lucy to wonder what if? “What if Messy Church was really seen as church and the local church set aside a group of fifteen people and blessed them to go out and start a plant? What if they let them get on with it, let them develop their own discipleship procedures? I think the church scene would look very, very different.”

Even though Messy Church has grown fast and holds the potential to redefine the model of church among young families, it has remained committed to supporting those local churches and letting the pace of change be as slow or fast as each church requires. For twelve years Lucy Moore and the Messy Church team have been asking tough questions, but always from a place of grace and positive encouragement.

By far the biggest question that Messy Church asks of the traditional church is this: who is the church for? On a recent trip to Wales, Lucy was left silently asking it yet again. “I heard about a church that had put Messy Church on, and had 90 people turn up to the first one. I was amazed, but then they told me that it was too much to cope with so they wouldn’t be doing it again. What are we there for if we’re not there to help other people come close to God? Aren’t we really just there for ourselves?”

Lucy recalls another situation where a regional coordinator wanted to gather local Messy Church volunteers to help run a Messy Church craft stall at a big tattoo festival. “It was a great opportunity to share God’s love

“I’m not frustrated or bitter! There’s too much to get excited about. The positive outweighs the negative every time; I just remember all the people who are getting on with it without any training, recognition or money. It’s wonderful!

I was talking to someone on Jersey who is doing Messy Church in care homes with people who are elderly and with dementia. Her little church now has five teams taking it to local care homes. These good news stories outweigh everything else; God is so at work in it all. It’s not just a flash in the pan. It’s clearly a move of the Spirit in this generation.” messychurch.org.uk

Messy Church 20032376

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Peter Harris

WE’RE MADE TO

SHARE CHRIST’S INVITATION

W

hen the God-forged passion that burns within you is to care for nature, it could be easy to get a little frustrated with, well, almost everyone.

Consumerism has led to a ‘me-first’ attitude that has soaked into everything from transport to trade, housing to how fresh we like our mangoes in winter.

Peter Harris, founder of the Christian conservation charity A Rocha, has been involved in the attempt to change public thinking.

A Rocha was founded because we were biblically persuaded that the Gospel is relevant, not just for people and communities, but for the earth itself.

“The environmental movement recognises that it made a big communications error in preaching fear and doom and gloom, saying we’re all cooked. Everybody involved has realised that the approach was very ‘us’ versus ‘them’, claiming that we were all about nature while the real problems were caused by big business or fishermen and farmers.

But there are no good guys and bad guys. Instead there are good journeys that everybody has to make, whether they’re an investor, a business person, a farmer or a nature freak.”

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Since its birth in the early 1980s, A Rocha has tried to frame the debate in the widest possible terms. “Our strapline is conservation and hope. If you want to motivate people it’s better to show them a bright shining vision than to appear to be taking a moral high ground and telling them how much trouble the world is in.”

While A Rocha has been able to establish itself as one of the few Christian voices within the conservation movement, it has faced a challenge to be taken seriously within the Church. “A Rocha was founded because we were biblically persuaded that the Gospel is relevant, not just for people and communities, but for the earth itself. You can’t proclaim Christ as Lord without living that out.”

Convincing fellow Christians of this has not always been easy. A Rocha has challenged the “default view of Western Christianity that it’s all about me, my life and Jesus”, hoping to show how people are the losers from such a truncated view of the Gospel. But instead of encountering criticism and disagreement, for many years the words of Peter and many others were met with apathetic shrugs.

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“Some people wondered why we were talking about nature when we have extreme poverty and people who don’t know Christ, as if things were binary and either/or. But I wish we had come in for more explicit criticism; that we could have had a clearer debate and discussion.”

community worship, in our prayer and in working hard to be a well-run organisation.”

At least, that was the case until recently.

“Now people are seeing the dots joining up between environmental degradation and so many things; health crises, migration of people, biodiversity loss. They’re seeing that the Gospel is a much more robust message of hope, and that the Christian message about care for creation is fundamentally one of celebration and hope and gratitude.”

“It’s an invitation to return to what has always been our Gospel. Until the Renaissance the Church typically understood that the Kingdom of God was a creational project. We then took a long detour where we saw it as a merely human project, but today we’re returning to what is just orthodox biblical Christianity. That encourages me, and it’s not as if we have slender resources for a trendy task which is now the environment.

We’re not scrabbling around trying to find stuff which is a support to an issue that society has now decided is important.

This is biblical Christianity.”

Changing people’s attitudes and theology like this is a colossal task, one that is measured out in generations rather than calendar years. “I think big changes like these take 50 years. We always held the Church’s engagement with slavery as a model. We realised from the beginning that this would be a very long-term thing and we sustain ourselves in all the ways that Christians normally sustain themselves; in our personal relationship with God, in our 20

At the heart of it has been a decision to frame the debate in positive rather than negative terms, to draw people in rather than push them away.

arocha.org

A Rocha 20034876

Natalie Collins

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D

omestic violence, human trafficking, child exploitation and gender equality are all issues which touch on the rawest of nerves. To campaign for change on any of the above requires significant reserves of sensitivity, strength and skill. To campaign for change on all four demands even more, and requires a particularly unique, God-given calling.

That calling – and the essential equipping that must accompany it – comes in so many different ways, even from some of the hardest of life’s experiences. For, as CS Lewis observed, “seeds grow in dark places.”

Natalie Collins knows the truth of this from her own experience. Her first husband was abusive, and by the time she was 21, Natalie was a single parent with two small children. At 23 she remarried, underwent a lot of counselling and began to see her own experiences in a new light. As she looked at others around her, Natalie saw that she was not alone, and that her experiences were not so unique. “I began to see this as a problem that was broader than my own personal experience.”

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A year on, and Natalie started delivering programmes with women subjected to abuse.

By the time she was 25 she was working on the issue within the Christian world as well, helping churches face some issues which are often glossed over. She has encouraged Christian festivals like Spring Harvest and Soul Survivor to increase the number of women on their respective platforms, and helped design and deliver a new track of seminars at this year’s Greenbelt festival.

While domestic violence, human trafficking, child exploitation and gender equality might seem like too broad a range of issues to be able to work on, Natalie has grown to see them as interconnected, describing them as components of a gender equality spectrum.

“At one end is women’s representation, and on the other side is male violence against women, domestic violence, sexual violence, trafficking, pornography. Lots of Christians are passionate about ending human trafficking, but might not be able to support someone who is suffering from domestic violence.”

All of this has given her a clear insight into the challenges for those campaigning to prevent male violence against women. ”There’s still a sense that this isn’t a big issue because we’re in the UK, and women can vote and women can drive and the real problem’s in places like Saudi Arabia.

But it’s so pervasive here, it’s the water we swim in.

Our main challenge is making people aware that there is a problem, making

something visible that they’re conditioned to not consider.”

Criticised by Christians who claim that she’s defying God, and by atheists who tell her she’s stupid for being a Christian, Natalie has good reason for not backing down.

My identity is not rooted in this cause, it is rooted in giving all that I am to God. “My identity is not rooted in this cause, it is rooted in giving all that I am to God. My primary goal is to be obedient to God, not to end gender inequality. There are challenges within the church but being a Christian and having hope in new life and the redemption of all things is why I do what I do.”

Like Ian, Lucy and Peter, Natalie’s commitment to work for change is based on a solid foundation of faith. “I hope for the world to change and people to wake up to it, and I act in a way to make it happen, but if it doesn’t my measure of success is whether I’ve been obedient to God not whether there has been change.”

While the burden to transform the world does not rest solely on our shoulders, true change, as every Christian knows, is something we can expect to see around us.

“As Christians we’re called to be obedient to God; changing the world is a natural by-product of that.” project328.info

nataliecollins.info

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“

It was the first time in my life that I had done something that I was sure was the right thing to do, but that was in opposition to the powers that be.

THE

IN

JUNGLE 24

Alison Clarkson Webb

F

ollowing the death of Alan Kurdi (initially mis-reported as Aylan), we all know how quickly the world seemed to alter in the summer of 2015. For Alison Clarkson Webb, however, the change wasn’t merely something that happened to other people; it was about to happen to her.

“I’d heard a bit about the camp in Calais (known as The Jungle) and how lots more people were arriving. In July I had looked online to see what charities were involved but I couldn’t see any of the charities I supported that were. But by the first week of September there was no problem at all finding people going to Calais.”

In the last edition of Share, the article ‘When Emergency Calls’ looked at some of the ways in which established Christian charities have responded to the refugee crisis. One reader, Alison Clarkson Webb, felt that we had not told the whole story. She was right.

A part-time volunteer at a refugee centre in Bristol, Alison helped out with a citywide collection of tents and clothing. Despite filling two warehouses after just one weekend, they were unable to take it to Calais because there were not enough people on hand in France to help sort and distribute.

Along with eight colleagues from the refugee centre, Alison travelled to Calais for a week in October. She spent much of her time sorting donations in a warehouse and making cups of tea for fellow volunteers, while others joined the hundreds of volunteers that have gathered to help the 6,000 refugees in the camp. By the time she returned home, though, she had some significant questions.

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“

These volunteers have chosen to do this and I think they’re more like Jesus than anyone I’ve ever met.

It kind of blows me away.

“Even though we all work with refugees and set out thinking that it would all be fine, we were anxious about how bad things were going to be in Calais. We’d heard there weren’t enough toilets to go around, but we didn’t realise the whole thing was a landfill site.

People put tents on patches that others have used as an open toilet. It was so much worse than we expected.”

It wasn’t just the poverty that disturbed her.

“We were really quite scared by the police.

While we were walking unarmed in pairs around the camp without any trouble, the police were walking six abreast in full riot gear. On our last full day in the camp there was a loud explosion. One of the makeshift shops had caught fire and two gas bottles had exploded. The fire was running through the tents and one of the team members called the fire brigade. We were only ten minutes from the centre of Calais but the fire engine took thirty minutes to arrive. When it did the police made it stop, wait for the officers to put on their riot gear and then march – at walking pace – all the way through the camp to clear the way. Meanwhile the refugees and volunteers managed to put the fire out.

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“It was the first time in my life that I had done something that I was sure was the right thing to do, but that was in opposition to the powers that be. For a law-abiding person who has never been on the wrong side of the police, it was really weird.”

In the nine months that followed, Alison made three further trips to Calais. With each one came a growing sense of how desperate the situation was becoming. At one point the police cleared the bottom two-thirds of the camp, bulldozing tents, temporary shops, churches and mosques. “I’m really certain we can’t go on treating people worse than animals. There are unaccompanied children in the camp that the French government haven’t counted. They don’t know how many 12-year-olds there are living on their own in utter squalor. Somebody has to do something, even if it means taking it into our own hands.”

Like many other volunteers, Alison thought that once a month or two had passed the French authorities would step in and provide a permanent solution. Eventually it dawned on her that they would not. “One year on it’s clear that nobody else is going to do anything.

There are still no major aid agencies in there – the Red Cross are not there, UNHCR are not allowed in by the French authorities to inspect it. Whatever the long-term solution, it has to be a large scale political solution – all the volunteers in the world can’t fix it.”

Perhaps the most significant change for Alison has been to her understanding of how God works. “I came from the mindset that it required Christians to build God’s kingdom, and while I have seen a few Christians with effective ministry in the camp, most of the volunteers are not Christians. Most of the people who are doing what Jesus would do, don’t know Jesus.”

For someone who spent thirteen years working for a missionary society, what she has seen in The Jungle has been a revelation. “There are volunteers in Calais who are genuinely living alongside the refugees. Some came last July, planning to stay for a few weeks and they’re still there, living in the camp, standing in line with the refugees for six hours once a week for a six-minute shower. These volunteers have

chosen to do this and I think they’re more like Jesus than anyone I’ve ever met. It kind of blows me away. I’m so impressed that people who don’t have the same motivation as us would be willing to stand in solidarity to that extent. For me that’s a real wake-up call. Would I be willing to do that? And yet that’s what Jesus did for us.”

How you can help Because of the restrictions that the French government has placed on the camp, there are no major British Christian charities operating.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t help. calaidipedia.co.uk has information on how you can help, especially when it comes to donating essential goods (which can be delivered straight to the warehouse), or by volunteering.

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Legal & financial Using Stewardship to

y l s u o m y n o n a give

– A practical perspective

The 1,500 respondents to our recent survey of Stewardship giving account holders demonstrated that the ability to give anonymously is very much appreciated. Here is a useful checklist of some of the varied reasons why anonymous giving is so popular.

Relationship Money talks, as they say. This can be obvious, but it can also be subtle. On the one hand a donor can deliberately attempt to change relationships through their giving. But, more subtle and maybe unintentionally, we may find ourselves reacting differently to a generous donor, or a wealthy member of the congregation when compared to others.

Equally, if the poor amongst us give generously, others may form a view based on their perceptions of what they see. If giving clouds balanced and healthy relationships, then anonymity is probably the answer.

Public profile Those that are in the public eye (whether by reason of public position, or perhaps because the person is known to have financial resources), do not generally want their giving to be public. Nor do they want fundraisers to be able to find them, for example through public registers such as Companies House.

Discretion over a particular cause Even amongst Christians, there are differing views over what is, or is not, an acceptable cause particularly where moral judgements and Biblical interpretation are involved. Much more so is the divide between Christianity and other world views. Donors, particularly major donors, may want to put their full support behind a controversial or unpopular cause because of their faith perspective but not want that support to potentially be on any public record.

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Private charitable trusts

Avoiding unwelcome approaches

Families and individuals sometimes set up charitable trusts to handle their giving. Aside from the need to appoint trustees, keep accounts, submit annual returns and so on, grants made to other charities are subject to accounts disclosure rules that require recipients to mention them by name in their accounts. Organising the same giving anonymously through a Stewardship Gold account solves all of these issues.

The Olive Cooke case that hit the headlines just over a year ago illustrates the negative aspects of fundraising and donor development. Whilst you may wish to support a worthy cause, you may not welcome regular begging letters or even attempts at ‘donor development’ by the cause concerned.

Avoiding recipient reliance on the donor Where the donation is significant, the donor may be concerned that the recipient does not become over-reliant on their funding to the exclusion of seeking wider support for their activities. Indeed, some major donors have made a series of ‘smaller’ anonymous donations rather than one large one.

Recipients in an insecure environment Many of our account holders request gifts to full-time Christian workers. Some of these are working in sensitive situations, such as Muslim countries. We are guided by the recipients themselves as to how funding reaches them in order to protect their wellbeing. However, donors themselves sometimes feel that their data may become vulnerable. A measure of protection can be gained by anonymity.

Anonymous options with Stewardship In all of these cases, there is a simple solution in the Stewardship giving account. You can ask us to set your whole account to ‘anonymous’ or you can choose yourself to make individual donations anonymously on a case-by-case basis. Either option is very simple to implement, and your chosen recipient will only have Stewardship’s details.

The legal perspective Whilst account holders request us to make donations from their account, legally the funds belong to Stewardship, as a charity. So it is quite in order for the account holder’s name to be withheld from the ultimate recipient.

And finally...

?

In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us “… when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly”. Giving should not be done for show, to make the giver look good before others.

Visit stewardship.org.uk/share34 for more information, plus full links Kevin Russell, Technical Director

@KevnRussell

For the very latest news, subscribe to our free Sharpen email bulletin by visiting our website stewardship.org.uk You can also check out our Blog and Events pages for technical updates on law, accounting and tax stewardship.org.uk/blog and /events 29

Ask Steve Professional advice for churches and charities Stephen Mathews heads up the Stewardship consultancy helpline team, a specialist service offering expert knowledge to churches and charities.

Q. We have come across the term “people with significant control” recently. What is a person with significant control? Are we likely to have any in our church, and what do we do if we have?

A. Recently introduced legislation in the form of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 requires all companies to keep a register of People with Significant Control (PSC). This requirement only applies to charities that are structured as companies and so does not include trusts and Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs). Whilst in a church context the register adds little, failure to comply is a criminal offence and may result in fines for the officers of the company.

Whether your church has any PSC depends upon whether anyone meets one of the five conditions laid down by the legislation. Three of the conditions consider share ownership, voting rights or the ability to appoint and remove the board. The final two (less definitive) introduce the concept of significant influence. Our paper “People with Significant Control – do you have any in your church?” explores these conditions more deeply.

Regardless of whether you determine that you have any PSC or not, there are certain things that you have to do.

You must: •m aintain a register (even if you have nobody to include on it); • keep the register up-to-date; • f rom 30th June 2016, include the register information in your confirmation statement at Companies House. This statement replaces the annual return.

There is no specified template for registers but the required details for each person are listed and have been included in our paper.

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Q. Our church administrator has so much time off sick that we want to make him redundant. Do you have a standard redundancy letter that we may use?

A. Handling staff matters is never easy.

Handling staff matters in a church context can also introduce a pastoral element into what might already be a tricky situation. Where churches face difficult staffing issues, there is a temptation to resort to “redundancy” as the path of least difficulty and confrontation. Whilst sometimes this might be appropriate, often (and certainly in this case) it is not.

Redundancy is about a position not a person.

Wrongly using redundancy as a convenient route to remove an employee that you no longer want, may result in a church defending costly claims of unfair or wrongful dismissal and having to cope with the associated negative press.

Churches are subject to all the same employment legislation as any other employer, and church workers enjoy the same employment rights as anyone else. Indeed, it could be argued that churches that seek to operate under Kingdom principles should be raising the bar even higher as managing staff is as much about trust, honesty, openness and transparency as it is about the law.

Formal contracts, performance assessments, appraisals, and disciplinary procedures all play a part in good staff management and ensuring that proper disciplinary procedures are followed when difficulties occur is essential in avoiding unwanted claims from disgruntled staff.

Taking good specialist legal advice is strongly recommended before handling any contentious staffing issue.

Q. I understand that the new charity SORP based on FRS102 has introduced a number of new requirements for inclusion in the annual accounts. Our church has annual income of less than £200,000 per annum – do we have to follow the new SORP? A. For accounting periods beginning on or after

1 January 2016 the only option for a church using accruals accounting is to report under the full requirements of the FRS102 SORP. However, not all churches are required to use accruals accounting, so for many there is still a choice to be made.

Charitable companies limited by guarantee must always produce accounts on the accruals basis, but unincorporated charities and Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) are only required to prepare accruals accounts if their gross income in the year exceeds £250,000. For churches not exceeding this threshold, there is the option of reporting using the receipts and payments basis.

Receipts and payments accounts deal only with financial transactions that take place during the year. There is no need to consider prepayments, accruals, depreciation etc., and no need to follow the FRS102 SORP. Receipts and payments accounts are: • • • •

g enerally quicker and simpler to produce; o ften cheaper to have examined; o ften better understood by church members; p erfectly acceptable to the Charity Commission.

Where there is a choice, we would urge trustees and leaders to consider using the receipts and payments method. It may not serve all situations but may save you both hassle and cost.

For those churches required, or wishing, to use accrual accounting our paper ‘SORP 2015: the key aspects’ is a helpful tool.

Visit stewardship.org.uk/blog for links to all the briefing papers mentioned Stephen Mathews, Head of Accountancy and Consultancy Services.

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

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