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2021-03-31-accounts

AIMS AND PURPOSES

Tree of Life Church is fulfilling its mission statement of inspiring people to dream, challenging them to live the dream. We are responsible for ensuring that our congregations in Dagenham, Guildford, Watford, Croydon, Brentwood and Dorset, alongside our gatherings in Nuneaton, Trimley, Cambridge, and Swindon are cared for and supported in a pastoral, evangelistic, and community-based manner. We also want to continue planting new churches across the United Kingdom and are preparing for that.

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The church is committed to enabling as many people as possible and having open paths to as many people as possible to become, if they wish, part of our church community. We currently have six weekly services in Dagenham, Guildford, Watford, Croydon, Brentwood, and Dorset. In addition, we have four monthly meetings in Cambridge, Trimley, Swindon, and Nuneaton. We have also been having monthly meetings in Hemel Hempstead, which we have paused after lockdown, having united our Hemel and Watford campuses.

Throughout our services, with both the worship section and the preaching of the Word, we enable both Christians and non-Christians alike to learn more about the Christian faith and how to put the Christian faith into practise.

We attract many people who have never been to church before, as well as a significant number of people who have not been in a long time. We also attract people from a wide range of Christian backgrounds, both Catholic and Protestant. We have deliberately inculcated a culture within our churches that is welcoming to new people ensuring that people who have never been to church before are made especially welcome.

We are bringing together people from now forty different nationalities to our six congregations every weekend and believe that this in itself benefits all our communities that this occurs within.

When planning our annual activities, the trustees have carefully considered the Commission’s guidance on public benefit, and in particular, the specific guidelines on charities that are for the advancement of religion. In particular, our remit is to equip everyone in the church to be able to minister, serve and communicate the Christian faith to others within their communities. To ensure this work is maintained and monitored, we invest in the community and in resources and venues that enable us to continue and increase what we are doing.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE

Church Services

All our services are growing slowly in attendance and have time for people to develop friendships and relationships, time for singing songs that the congregation find spiritually nourishing and preaching that is both inspirational and challenging. We are very nearly ready to plant a church in Suffolk as soon as the lockdown restrictions ease up.

Our services combine contemporary worship from around the world with home grown songs from our own band, with a lecture on how to live the Christian life. We often bring in speakers from around the United Kingdom and other nations around the world to ensure people are exposed to and given an understanding of how Christianity is expressed throughout the world. Throughout the lockdown restrictions, we held up to thirty online services per week, called over one thousand different people, distributed to the needy and helped in major ways. This positive push during lockdown has contributed to our significant increase as a charity.

All are welcome to attend our services, and many listen or watch later social media, and there has been a year in year growth in all our congregations. We advertise on local radio, in newspapers, on billboards and through leaflet distribution. We also have a strong online presence through Facebook and Instagram.

As well as our weekly services, we have several conferences every year featuring guest speakers with specialisms in areas that we believe will benefit people. This year we ran a family conference, a leadership conference, a men’s conference, and a ladies’ conference, all online, with some sessions being viewed online over 12,000 times.

We also have several small groups that meet in houses, which we entitle Living Churches. These we transferred to Zoom. Most of these are Bible study groups where people share the Christian faith, study together, pray for each other, and worship together, with the small size of the group ensuring the group can be interactive and let more people contribute. Some of these small groups are on specific topics that we consider relevant and helpful, such as raising children, how to pray for others, and financial management.

These small groups are the bedrock of our church family and have helped many people face problems with support around them. They have helped many people deal with difficult situations and get answers to difficult questions. These groups are all led by lay-leaders and because of that we invest considerable time and finances in training these leaders who we title “elders”.

VENUES

As yet, Tree of Life Church has no building assets. We hire meeting places for all our locations every weekend. In Dagenham, we meet in the Vue Cinema on Cook Road, in Guildford in a local hotel, in Watford and Dorset in community centres, and in Brentwood in an education centre, and in Croydon we meet in a local community centre having moved out of a school.

As our paid staff travel frequently from location to location, one significant expense in the Tree of Life Family is mileage, and our long-term plan is raising up leaders locally and training them within each of our church plants and release them into being autonomous but networked and guided from Dagenham. Our long-term goal is to plant churches that plant their own churches.

Our plan is to purchase property within Dagenham as our congregation reaches the 250-300 attendance mark, and not to purchase elsewhere until we have a building in Dagenham.

PASTORAL CARE

We provide pastoral care to many people in our various congregations through our team of pastors and elders. We have organized several social events and provide pre-martial counselling as well. We also have parenting classes for those with young children.

WORLD MISSION

We give over 10% of our income each year to world mission, focusing on supporting several orphanages in Africa, and several charities that are involved in teaching about Christianity around the world. Among others we give regular support to three children’s homes in Burundi, children’s work including feeding them in Kenya, a Bible College in the West Midlands, a Bible College in Colorado and a pregnancy centre in Kenya. We also support several charities that help churches study the Bible more effectively.

Nearer to home, we hold several evangelistic meetings a year, and have made gifts to those struggling within our congregation, normally in the form of food, this year focusing on those most affected by lockdown.

ECUMENICAL RELATIONSHIPS

Tree of Life Church is part of the wider group FMIN which is based in Colorado, USA. There are currently five hundred churches within the FMIN network across the world. We pay a monthly subscription and benefit from a whole host of relationships and connections.

We support their events in the UK and have ensured FMIN leaders are supported when they are in the UK helping churches. A number of our staff are also part of ARMI, another organization for ministers, based in Colorado.

MEDIA MINISTRY

Our media ministry has expanded significantly this year, with us now being on Revelation TV five times a week, on gospeltruth.tv twice a week, and on Word Network now internationally. We are also on UGN radio eleven times a week, and back on Faithworld TV five times a week.

We have a team of volunteers that take phone calls when programmes are broadcast, and they will pray with people. We have an app so people can access previous broadcasts and sermons from our ministry.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Our income this year as 595799, entirely in unrestricted funds. Receiving offerings at our services is currently our main method of raising income, but we also receive offerings via the telephone and online through the TV audience. This figure contains the amount claimed and received through gift aid during the financial year.

Our total expenditure throughout the year was 501144. This increased expenditure is due to higher rental costs, more TV slots, and the new church and new locations we have opened. In addition, we have given two staff pay rises.

VOLUNTEERS

We would like to thank publicly all the wonderful volunteers who make Tree of Life Church happen every week in every location throughout their regular and ongoing serving. We want to thank the elders and others who open their houses week after week to enable our Living Churches to run and to educate people in the Christian faith. We also have people coming in early in all our locations to welcome people, to make teas and coffees, and other essential tasks. We want to give a very special thankyou to those who are involved in children’s ministry, donating their time freely every weekend to educate children and youth in the church about the Christian faith.

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Tree of Life Church has two parallel systems of management structure. In terms of accounting the trustees are responsible for ensuring that finances are raised ethically and spent appropriately ensuring that the charity benefits the public interest.

In terms of spiritual and community care, the Pastoral Team decides and plans what will happen in the Celebration services and is responsible for who is running and leading the Living Churches and who teaches in the Living Churches and Celebration Churches. The elders have jurisdiction within their own living churches, but are expected to follow the teachings and structure put in place by the Pastoral Team.

The Pastoral Team and the Pastoral and Eldership Team decides and plans on issues of general concern and to ensure that care is provided throughout the church services. As financial matters arise, they are passed onto the board of trustees.

ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

The postal address of Tree of Life Church is BM BOX 2031, London, WC1N 3XX. The telephone number is 0300 111 8733. The trustees are as previously recorded by the Charity Commission.

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR APRIL 2020 -MARCH 2021

INCOME Unrestricted Designated Restricted TOTAL Giving 595799.34 595799.34 TOTAL 595799.34 595799.34 OUTGOINGS Salary 116647.10 Venue Hire 24384.27 World Mission 117051.67 TV and Media 110915.33 Other 131315.88 TOTAL 500314.25 ASSETS AND LIABILITIES Bank Accounts 64671.00 Currently, Tree of Life Church has no building assets.

Independent Examiners Report to the Trustees of Tree of Life Church

I report on the accounts of the Trust for the year ended 4[th] April 2020 which are set out on page 5.

The charity’s trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts. The charity’s trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144(2) of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act) and that an independent examination is needed.

It is my responsibility to:

My examination was carried out in accordance with the general directions given by the charity commission. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes a consideration of any unusual items of disclosures in the accounts and seeking explanations from you as trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be needed in an audit and consequently no opinion is given as to whether the accounts present a “true and fair view” and the report is limited to those matters set out in the statement below.

In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention:

Have not be met; or

NAME:

Relevant Profession Qualification:

Address:

Date: