‘to follow Jesus in every way’
Annual Report for 2022/23
Published for our Annual Meeting, 3[rd] May 2023, covering May 2022 to May 2023
Church Family News
Hello & Goodbye
We have welcomed Ayliffe Taylor, Jenn Hale, Helen Porter, Kathleen Adom, Amy Mills, Carlos, Steve Olawiyola and Lorraine Fisher as Church Members, and we’ve welcomed about 40 others now regularly worshipping with us (online or in person).
Sadly taken from us during this period were Christ Church members Kay Smith and Karen McLeod. We have prayed for all those mourning their loss, and rejoice that we’ll be reunited in the heavenly age to come. We also said goodbye to Doris Kay, Jonathan McMurtary, Herb and Marg Payne, and Paul and Gillian Gath, all of whom have moved away from the area.
Sadly also taken from us was our much-loved caretaker, Brian Walker. After a gap while we reassessed our caretaking and cleaning needs, we also said goodbye to Hayley Bedford, and we were fortunate to recruit John Woodmansey as our new joint caretaker/cleaner in November.
Electoral Roll and Membership
As of 5 April 2023, there were 115 adults on the Electoral Roll , 63 of whom are not resident within the parish. 7 have been added to the Roll and 7 removed during the year. We now have 113 adults on our separate Church Membership list – 8 have joined the membership and 11 have left. Of this number 95 are affiliated as ‘Ecumenical’ members, with the others having a variety of denominational affiliations. We estimate that we also have an additional 75 adults as well as 60 children and teenagers who we know, and are regularly worshipping with us in person and online. We also estimate that we have at least 30 joining us online regularly who aren’t yet known to us.
Rebecca Pain, Church Administrator and Electoral Officer
1
Minister’s Review
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:16)
These words have been true over the last year, as God has been to His people in each previous year. We have seen that in the way that:
-
He has often provided for us in big ways and small, including voluntary help from those with spare time after our caretaker Brian died;
-
Having guided us last year to start ‘The Well’, we had a good base on which to build to make the ‘Warm Welcome space‘ for the community in the cold months;
-
He has graciously provided an excellent staff team to share in the work of ministry and support to ministry;
-
we have seen His love shared between us, including the very many who continue to serve in the church (see the Thanks at the end) and in our town-wide ministries (including Street Pastors, The Safe, Junction 5, Town Chaplaincy, Community Food Link, Food Bank …);
-
God has added to our number, welcoming a good number of people who have moved into the area, looking for “a good church”;
-
through this, our diversity has increased, a sign of God’s Kingdom at work here and now;
-
the vast majority of our pre-pandemic church family are now meeting in person again;
-
- He has led people of all ages to living faith through Jesus, including believers baptism for some of our teens and adults, and baptism of infants from believing families.
No church is perfect, of course, because it’s made up of sinners like me. We all have different backgrounds, gifts and preferences, and go at different speeds. I’m grateful that despite these differences we have ‘borne with one another in love’ and continued to look for God to bless all of us, and through us our wider community.
It remains a wonderful privilege to lead the ministry at Christ Church, because of the faithfulness, friendship and support of so many. Thank you!
Jonathan Clark
2
Reports from Ministry Areas
The following short reports deliberately don’t cover every activity or team in detail, but particularly reflect where there have been changes in the last year.
Prayer Life
No church, ministry or individual Christian can flourish without the “hidden life of prayer”, which brings us to trust and know God more fully. Our small groups are praying, and of course we intercede in all our services, but our evening prayer gatherings (some in person again; some on Zoom) have not been well attended. This is not a good sign.
Mission and Outreach
Our focus this year has been on developing our welcome at our building. See below for the new Well and Warm Welcome spaces, and the continued weekly Craft Group and fortnightly Tuesday Lunches which include a number of older people who aren’t in our congregations.
Some church members have responded to the Ukraine War by hosting refugees in their homes; others have helped by supporting English Language support groups, including one hosted at CCC.
Our Christmas special activities (including Carol Service, ‘Blue Christmas’ Service and Festival Day) were advertised online and through Christmas cards to most houses in the parish. We have started to contact people moving into new homes/flats in the parish.
We have continued our good links with Great Binfields School (with Open the Book, pre-recorded assemblies, the interactive Easter Trail for Year 4, and pre-recorded Easter service) and the smaller links with Four Lanes (both a Christingle and ‘church building visit’ live-streamed over Teams). We have again hosted the 1[st] Chineham Cub pack for an evening of investigation about the Christian faith, and this year welcomed the Chineham Beaver Lodge too. Maggie C and Marianne S continue to lead Open the Book teams in other Basingstoke schools, and we’re grateful to all who tell God’s story in this engaging way.
Our online services continue to be a helpful way for people to ‘check us out’ – our doors are now open in this way, wherever people live, and whenever they want to.
Teaching
During this period our small groups have studied the Bible in many different ways. In our services we’ve worked our way through Bible books (Ruth, 2 Thessalonians, Esther), as well as considered themes (Our Generous God, The work of the Holy Spirit, Who is God?, People in Prayer).
We have continued with Sunday morning groups for primary and secondary age children – see more details below.
3
Worship Services
We’ve enjoyed the first year without any Covid-19 restrictions ...
Our Wednesday morning services each week continue to attract 10-20 people who much appreciate it. The style is ‘informal traditional’, and quite varied, thanks to the different styles of its leaders (Sue Strawson, Katie Garner, Janet Scott, Liz Lang, Jonathan Clark).
Our Sunday morning services have seen slow but steady growth in numbers and variety. We’ve continued to stream this service (with big thanks to the hard work of our Video Team (see report below)), but gradually more people have joined us in-person again. On average we have 150 joining us in person and 75 online each month. On any given Sunday, we’re only seeing half to two-thirds these numbers, as previous attendance habits (and attitudes?) were changed by the pandemic.
The variety of Sunday service styles has increased, including a number of all-age services with ‘response zones’ (even on Remembrance Sunday with many young people from Scouts, Cubs and Beavers too), and latterly several services using full printed formal Holy Communion liturgies.
We’re well aware that some want to move back to the previous pattern of 9am and 10.30am Sunday morning services which we had until the pandemic. The ministers, staff and Wardens have frequently discussed during the year, and the Church Council have also discussed it several times at length. At the time of writing, we have not currently come to enough of a consensus to come to the congregation with a proposal that we feel is sustainable. Simultaneously though, the Council have started to review our Church Health, and Vision, which will inform all of the life of church, including a future pattern of services.
Musically, we started the year mostly using the ‘lyric videos’ that our musicians and audio editors made in 2020 and 2021, but by the end we almost always have live-led worship again. The recordings are great, but we definitely feel more engaged and lifted when led live, and able to respond more to what the Spirit is doing in us. We continue to use a mixture of the best of older and newer songs and hymns, with the emphasis on words that are both true and meaningful, and with tunes that are easy to pick up and sing.
1 Some of our services (as seen from YouTube):
4
We have continued to make our services available on CD for a member of our congregation who can’t access the internet. We have done more Home Communions for church family members who can’t get to our services, helped by training Denise Bain to lead this when Jonathan Clark isn’t available.
Children
At present, we are still running one group for the children for years R to 5. Pre-school children are welcome to stay as long as an adult is with them. This is not an ideal situation but the consistency of numbers makes it difficult to split the group, which can vary from 8 to 26. There remains a need for additional leaders and helpers.
Thanks go to the team, Shirah, Amy, Keith, Mark, Marguerite, Martha, Helen, Katie, Ayliffe and Steve for their work with this group. They have been following a timeline through the Bible and the children have discovered many stories from both the Old and New Testament. They have enjoyed celebrating and learning about the events that happened at Christmas and Easter. We also ran a Messy Light party which was well attended.
Liz Lang
Youth
Since November 2022, we have been able to offer a session every Sunday morning for the youth, years 6-11. This has been made possible due to additional volunteers joining the team. I would like to thank Jonathan Pain, Angie Sawyer, Tracy Orr, Andrew Varley and Aidan Nickerson for their support.
It has been encouraging to see this group grow. This is partly due to year 6s moving up but there are a couple of new members too. Currently there are 14 on the register with an average of 6-8 attending each week. Over the past months they have studied and discussed issues that concern them, preparing themselves by putting on the armour of God as well as looking at what the Bible says about creation, climate and compassion. We are in the process of setting up a mentoring initiative with volunteers from the congregation who will be paired with a young person and, through developing a relationship, help and support them on their Christian journey.
One of the challenges is organising additional activities as the young people attend 10 different schools, each having many extracurricular commitments. However, we did enjoy a social evening out at Pizza Express where a great deal of food was consumed!
There has been a shift in what youth work looks like today and it is important to know that it is not just about what happens at Christ Church but in the wider area too. I represent Christ Church at the Basingstoke Youth Leaders and Pastors group made up of people from many different churches across the town. We meet every half term to pray, encourage and share ideas with one another. This has enabled us to work together to run activities, joining groups together. For instance, CCC Youth met with Hub Youth for a games and pizza evening. We also met with Melrose Church and Hub Youth to play Taskmaster. Hub Church is currently running Youth Alpha and they invited CCC Youth to come along. By arranging these small events, there is an opportunity to provide more than would be possible where there are groups with lower numbers.
I am part of the b:united team which is responsible for running events for the youth of Basingstoke. There are three main events a year which follow a format of games, food, praise, worship, guest speaker and prayer. The numbers attending these are from 60 - 80 and it has been great to see
5
young people connecting with others that they go to school with but who attend different churches. Recently two social events have been introduced where they can invite their friends; 98 went trampolining at Atmosphere and over 50 came to Nerf Gun Wars. We have a second trampolining coming up in May and ice skating later in the year.
There are gaps which still need addressing, especially for those in years 12 plus and young adults, and we will be looking to see how we can provide something relevant to them.
Liz Lang
Pastoral Care
Galatians 6:2 says “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfil the law of Christ.”
At Christ Church we reach out in many different ways to welcome all and serve the needs of Church family as well as our local community.
The welcoming team each Sunday offers a friendly face and a first point of contact on Sunday morning, but each and every member of our church family continues to play a vital role in welcoming and supporting those who come to Christ Church. The volunteers offering tea and coffee at the end of each service help to create the convivial atmosphere where people can get to know each other. It is really heartening to hear how many new arrivals to the area and those visiting have felt the warm welcome uplift them as they arrived at our doors.
The prayer team petition the Lord and uphold all that goes on in Christ Church asking for help in the name of Jesus Christ and we have been richly blessed in so many ways. “God is good.” The opportunity to pray on a more personal level at the end of each service has become a much-valued aspect of our service, uplifting and comforting to those who have sought it.
House groups continue to offer crucial ways in which support and friendship is offered as the Bible is studied.
Tuesday Lunches: Marianne and her team once a fortnight transform the Shaftesbury room into a lively bespoke dining room where delicious meals and buzzing conversations make everyone feel welcome and give those who might otherwise eat alone share company as well a tasty meal.
The Well offers a warm place to meet, chat, complete jigsaws, play games or read while helping yourself to tea, coffee, biscuits and sometimes cake!
Warm Space operates during the rest of the week each morning offering the same opportunities as The Well.
The Pastoral Team volunteers continue to visit, offer practical help and a friendly ear. The Team which was blessed in church last year consists of a coordinators group and a wider team of outreach. Please contact the office if you need to get in touch.
Flowers: Each week we are blessed with flowers to enhance the church and our worship, a wonderful reminder of God’s creation and its beauty. Thanks to those who use their talents and time to display these. After the service some of these flowers are taken to members of the congregation and the community to cheer and celebrate with them.
Home Communion: For those who cannot be with us in the building due to ill health, Jonathan and the Pastoral Team, when possible, take communion out to our brothers and sisters at home so that
6
they may join in the shared supper and the reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s love for each and every one of us. This has been much appreciated by those who are unable to be with us in church.
Denise Bain
The Well/Warm Welcome
The Well, meeting every Monday morning and the second Saturday afternoon in the month, had been going for over a year and was attracting regular visitors each week. Then last summer we heard about the Warm Space initiative and felt this was something we could embrace. So as the weather got colder we opened up each weekday from 10 -12. We got extra furniture thanks to a Councillor Grant from Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, making it possible to set up a welcoming area in the foyer. The grant also funded the printing and delivery of fliers advertising our “Warm Space at The Well” and other warm spaces in the area; places where people struggling to heat their homes could go for a warm up, a hot drink and some company.
We haven’t been inundated with visitors but we have made a difference. Even people popping in with bottle tops or stamps, or coming to the office have been welcomed and some have stayed for a cuppa and a chat.
We have an amazing group of volunteers from within the church and the community who have loyally turned up and just been there. We thank them all.
With warmer weather hopefully on the way we shouldn’t need to provide warmth but we do hope to continue having a welcoming presence each weekday morning. If you are passing, please pop in and say hello.
Janet Scott
Socials
Conscious that the pandemic disrupted most relationships, including friendships between church members, we have aimed to have a different sort of social time each month, as well as the usual after-service refreshments. This included a “CCC Big BBQ” in the summer, and a first joint social with Zion Church on Good Friday.
Sparklers
Over the last year we have been very blessed with being able to welcome lots of new parents/carers to Sparklers. The group not only has availability for 20 parents to book in (we are just about to up this number to 23), I also hold a couple of spaces back in case new parents or referrals from Health Visitors/Homestart try to book. We are also running a cancellation list which allows us to invite parents in if someone has to cancel.
A huge thank you to our amazing team of volunteers (Keith, Geraldine, Elaine, Frances, Kate, Anne and Gill) for all their hard work.
Tonya Butler
Ecumenical Life
Christ Church remains formally part of the Church of England, Methodist and United Reformed Church denominations, and the local Baptist Association. We’ve had visible expression of this by
7
having Rev Martin Beukes join the team as our Methodist Minister, and Rev Trevor Woodget continuing as our Baptist Minister. They are on our Church Council, and have preached.
Our local area connections as part of OneChurch Basingstoke remain strong. Examples of this include:
-
Liz Lang being part of the cross-church detached ‘youth table’ at the top of town meeting youth after school, and b:united events team;
-
CCC members being part of town-wide services on Zoom and in person;
-
We’ve hosted occasional OneChurch events, and some of the weekly local church leaders meetings for support and prayer;
-
The fledgling Basingstoke ‘Movement for Recovery’ has changed name to ‘Together for Basingstoke’, and continues to build partnerships between local Christian projects and charities, and our local civic groups, particularly Basingstoke & Deane Council. Jonathan Clark is on this steering group, and the OneChurch leadership team.
EcoChurch
Despite having no clear leader, work has continued, increasingly looking to influence our local area. This including hosting a seminar on green finance, and helping the new Chineham Repair Café get going (by hosting it for free, and Jonathan Clark being a trustee), and starting to liaise over local conservation efforts. Jean Wilde continues to provide ideas and contacts, and Leila Bennett has stepped up to lead on the ‘church grounds’ part of the portfolio.
Sunday Video Team
The Video/Visual Team is David Blake, Andrew Price, Keith McLeod, Gareth Rowlands, Peter Chiverton, Jonathan Pain and Michael McConnell. Through the pandemic the focus of the Team was to output the church services solely to YouTube, but during this last year the focus has slowly shifted towards the congregation within the building. For some within the building, the camera output has been a distraction and to this end we are now experimenting with showing the camera output on the front-of-house screens for less of the service.
However, to give the home audience the visual context of what is happening within the building and a connection to the speaker it is important to still present camera output to YouTube.
This has been a challenge as we are trying to simultaneously output two versions of the service.
Whilst the current team size is just sufficient to limit the times needed to be on duty to once a month, it would be advantageous to train up new people. A number of the Team members have been involved from the beginning of Covid and need a rest; others are involved in the band, so sometimes it proves difficult finding a balance of rota duties. Please consider joining the Team - we need more people.
David Blake
Safeguarding
Liz Lang continues as our Safeguarding Officer, and Alex Bain as our DBS Officer, both liaising with the professional officers at the Diocese of Winchester.
8
During this period the Church Council has complied with the duty to have ‘due regard’ to the House of Bishops’ Safeguarding Policy and Practice Guidance. As part of this the Church Council now has Safeguarding as a standing item on its agenda.
We have also asked most of our leaders, all on the Church Council, and those working with children and other vulnerable adults, to complete basic online safeguarding training. We have established a new recording matrix to track what training church members have completed.
Liz Lang
Data Protection
Rebecca Pain is our Data Protection Officer.
We continue to display notices informing congregation members that we film our services, but aim never to show people except those who come to the lectern to contribute. Our live-streaming team members can blur out the image, or cut to a still image, or mute the stream entirely, if need be. We can also remove sections of a service from the YouTube recording if we realise after the fact that someone or something should not be publicly available.
Rebecca Pain
Thanks
We are an active church, and its only possible because lots of us get stuck into its different ministries. So, thank you to every one who has got involved. Particular thanks go to those who have been leading or coordinating activities and groups, including Alex Bain, Denise Bain, Linda Banfield, David Blake, Becky Cassini, Maggie & Peter Chiverton, Martha Clark, Anne Daw, Kate Dean, Katie & Jim Garner, David Josey, Aidan & Katie Nickerson, Keith Lang, Liz Lang, Patience Ndaga, Jonathan & Rebecca Pain, Marg Payne, Howard Roughley, Marianne Sales, Janet Scott, Carolyn Shergold, Sue Strawson, Jo Weineck, Judi Wonci, Jean Wilde, Mark & Rachel Wilson, and Andrew Young.
Thanks too to our Church Wardens Katie Garner and Olu Ojo-Oratokhai and staff team Liz Lang, Rebecca Pain, Tonya Butler, (and for part of the year Brian Walker, Hayley Bedford and John Woodmansey), who in their different ways have contributed much to our life and ministry together.
But most of all, “thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Jonathan Clark
Mission Partnerships
Since the first years of the Church there have been links between groups in different areas involved in spreading the gospel of God’s love. Our partners reach out in different ways to show His love to others and we thank God that we have been able to continue to support our partners through our tithe and prayers. We’re currently without a Mission Partnership Group leader, so the following is a briefer summary that usual.
9
Evangelical Action Brazil: John and Liz Medcraft continue their good work in NE Brazil preaching, teaching, feeding and building and gifting toilets and showers to poor families as well as whole villages! We were pleased to see them in person in autumn 2022.
Cathy Bartram with Wycliffe : Cathy is on the teaching staff at Moorlands College training the next generation of linguists to translate the Bible into new “Heart Languages”. This will mean people get to read the Bible in their own languages for the first time.
Flavel Church : Karl and Deb Stone continue their witness and outreach in the heart of Dartmouth, Devon, through church and coffee shop.
Smile Uganda : Alex and Bennie Gift and their team of pastors continue to work hard to support local families, youth and children in many different ways: through youth groups, food parcels, sponsored children to attend school, teaching skills to adults, and preaching. They are working on the ‘Seeds of Love’ park to provide space for locals for sport, recreation, and a venue to provide some revenue. But the first job is to provide public toilets! We were pleased to host Alex and Bennie in March 2023.
URC Food Table : The Community Food Table continues to operate some of the week outside the United Reformed Church, London Street. It uses food that would otherwise go to landfill donated by the Community Food Link.
Youth Outreach Table : This continues 4 afternoons a week outside the United Reformed Church, London Street, mainly manned by local church’s youth workers and helpers.
(‘Compassion’ Supported child) Angoon continues to develop and correspond with some of our young people.
Please see the Finance Report for details of the donations we’ve made to these partners, and the Street Pastors, Town Chaplains, Junction 5 debt advice as they continue to support local people.
Please pray for health, energy and wisdom as they spread God’s love in word and deed …
10
Buildings & Facilities
Brian Walker was a brilliant caretaker for us for many years. Always cheerful, we only discovered after he died just how much he’d given in voluntary hours to the church. While we reviewed our cleaning and caretaking needs we were wonderfully blessed by a small but dedicated team who voluntarily covered most of his work, and Hayley Bedford’s too after she decided not to be part of the new team. The cleaning was chiefly undertaken and managed by Katie Garner.
Later in the year it was very good to welcome John Woodmansey to the team as joint Caretaker/Cleaner. This now means that there is a person to keep on top of the day-to-day work that is needed around the building in terms of low level maintenance and the cleaning. Going forward, John will be working on redecorating some areas as well as looking at ways to improve the outside grounds to give better use.
There is continued regular maintenance and servicing carried out, including main doors, shutters, fire alarm and extinguisher checks, emergency lighting and the sump pump. The electrical distribution boards required their five year check which was completed at the end of 2022.
Less was spent on maintenance and refurbishment than hoped, because it has proved difficult to actually get responses from builders, let alone quotes, in the current climate. This has pushed some expenditure into future years.
We are currently looking at major two projects. One is to repair the roof where leaks from broken ridge tiles and the Velux windows are causing water to come into the building. Work to address this will have been completed by the time you read this. The second is for a new control panel for the main worship area lighting with the possible replacement of the lighting to LED bulbs. This has been proving difficult to source relevant quotes as we will need a complete new system to replace the obsolete one. The inner doors, although working at the moment, are reaching the point of needing a new motor and finance will need to be put aside to do this.
Liz Lang
Lettings
By the time of last year’s Annual Report, most of our regular hirers had returned following the lockdown period; these include a variety of U3A groups, card/board games and local arts groups, as well as two other churches. Unfortunately, however, since Christmas we have lost three of our regular hirers due to a decline in their numbers, and so we shall be looking to advertise the rooms we have available to maximise their use. On the other hand, the number of one-off bookings for children’s parties etc. increased last year as people made up for not being able to hold family gatherings during lockdown; last year these averaged one per fortnight.
Rebecca Pain
11
Administrative Information
Christ Church is located in Chineham, Basingstoke, and is the Church of England Parish Church (part of the Diocese of Winchester). It is also a Local Ecumenical Partnership (LEP) jointly held with the Baptists (Southern Counties Baptist Association), The Methodist Church (Basingstoke and Reading Circuit) and the United Reformed Church (Wessex Synod). The LEP has a Constitution and Sharing Agreement agreed between the four denominations.
The correspondence address is Christ Church, Reading Road, Chineham, Hampshire, RG24 8LT. The Church Council is a charity registered with the UK Charity Commission, number 1142640.
Objectives and Activities
The ecumenical Joint Church Council (referred to simply as ‘the Church Council’) of Christ Church has the responsibility of co-operating with the incumbent and other denominations’ ministers in promoting in the ecclesiastical parish the whole mission of the Church, pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical.
The Church Council is committed to enabling as many people as possible to worship at our church and to become part of our church community. The Council maintains an overview of worship in the parish where we aim to put our faith into practice through prayer and scripture, music and sacrament.
When planning our activities for the year, we have considered the Commission’s guidance on public benefit and, in particular, the supplementary guidance on charities for the advancement of religion. In particular, we try to enable ordinary people to live out their faith as part of our parish community through:
-
Worship and prayer; learning about the Gospel; and developing their knowledge and trust in Jesus. (See earlier sections for details.)
-
Provision of pastoral care for people of all ages living in the parish. (Including many of our regular groups.)
-
Support community life by provision of community centre space for local groups to use. (In particular we continue to be pleased to host before- and after-school childcare run by the local Willowdene business.)
-
Missionary and outreach work – by giving prayer and financial support.
To facilitate this work it is important that we maintain the buildings and facilities of Christ Church and the Church Centre complex. The PCC is specifically responsible for this; for details of how the PCC works as part of the Church Council, please see our separate ‘How We Work’ document.
Structure, Governance and Management
The method of appointment of Church Council members is set out in the Church Representation Rules, the Constitution, and interpreted by our ‘How We Work’ document. All church attendees are encouraged to become a Member of Christ Church, to register on the Electoral Roll and stand for election to the Church Council.
12
Church Council members who served between 8 May 2022 and 2 May 2023 were:
| Title/Role | Name | Dates (if different) |
|---|---|---|
| Denominational Ministers (ex officio) |
Jonathan Clark (Chair, Anglican) Trevor Woodget (Baptist) Ruth Midcalf (Methodist) Martin Beukes (Methodist) vacant(URC) |
Until May 2022 From September 2022 |
| Church Wardens (ex officio) |
Katie Garner Olu Ojo-Oratokhai |
|
| Treasurer | David Josey | |
| Ordinary Members | Patience Ndaga Andrew Young Gareth Rowlands |
|
| Deanery Synod Representatives (PCC ex officio) |
David Josey Jonathan Pain Rebecca Pain |
|
| Denominational Representatives |
Marianne Sales (Methodist) Liz Foster (URC) vacant(Baptist) |
The Lead Minister is also a member of the Basingstoke Deanery Synod, and Christ Church can appoint up to 3 lay members to this Synod.
The Methodist Minister, Lead Minister, and Methodist representative are members of the management team of the Basingstoke & Reading Circuit and Connexion.
The URC Minister, Lead Minister, and URC representative are voting members of the Wessex Synod.
The Baptist Minister, Lead Minister, and Baptist representative are voting members of the Southern Counties Baptist Association.
Financial Review
Due to illnesses and other challenges in producing the annual Finance Report, your Treasurer was late in handing the draft report and supporting paperwork to our Independent Examiner. Thus the report presented to the APCM is the draft report. When the draft report is passed by the Independent Examiner, then Church Council will be asked to adopt it. Should any changes be required to the draft report, then these will be brought to the next Congregational meeting.
Common Mission Fund : We give a general mission contribution to each of the four denominations that constitute Christ Church. The amount of giving is set yearly by the Church Council, and we aim to give generously to each, more than covering their costs in providing ministry through Christ Church. The largest part of this goes to the Diocese of Winchester in recognition that they currently provide the stipend for our minister, his housing, and we use their Safeguarding and DBS systems.
Reserves Policy : We “aim to hold sufficient reserves to guard against unforeseen emergencies — three months running costs (including staff salaries and building maintenance) — and review this at least every 2 years.”
13
The Council maintains a wider set of Financial Principles and Practices in our “How We Work” document.
David Josey & Jonathan Clark
14
Looking Ahead
During the last year we’ve responded to an unprecedented refugee crisis. Who knows what surprises the coming year will hold?
Also this year we’ve seen how Esther and Mordecai trusted God in dangerous and uncertain times. We’ve heard personal testimonies of God at work in our ordinary lives. So we go forward choosing to trust Almighty and loving God who knows the end from the beginning. As Christ’s Church, we continue to follow Jesus by praying, learning, worshipping, supporting, being green, welcoming the stranger, having church family time together, and spreading his good news beyond the church walls and our YouTube channel.
Those things should be true every year. But what’s specific for us in 2023-24? Well, I want to make significant progress with the new Church Council and Leadership team on:
-
Deepen our life of prayer , with bigger and bolder prayers for God to be at work in us, and through us in Chineham area.
-
Continuing to become more open to the Holy Spirit ’s work of transforming, equipping and guiding, both corporately and individually.
-
Finishing the review of our Vision (and the summary Mission Statement) , created some 20 years ago, and not reviewed for at least 10 years.
-
Integrating new church members fully into our church family, including the following ...
-
Training, encouraging and involving new people to contribute and serve in our many areas of ministry, thus increasing our capacity for …
-
Working out the best new pattern of gatherings for prayer, worship and discipleship for the next few years. (The one thing we know isn’t possible is simply to return to exactly the same pattern of services from 2019.) Some of the key questions are:
-
what’s the best mix of days of the week and times for families, shift workers, retired?
-
which should be streamed or recorded?
-
are there ways we can be more inclusive for those with physical disabilities, neurodiversity etc.?
-
Responding in love and truth to what are likely to be controversial doctrinal changes by the Church of England.
-
Improving the insulation, comfort and usability of the Wesley Hall , and bid for funding to make other improvements on the ‘old side’.
Jonathan Clark
15