2020-12-31-accounts

charity registered in England No 1147116 www.churchfromscratch.org

Annual Report and Impact Statement for the year ending 31 December 2020

Table of Contents

Table of Contents	Page 2
Annual Report and Impact Statement	Page 3 - 14
Independent Examiner Report	Page 12-13
Statement of Financial Activity	Page 14
Statement of Assets and Liabilities	Page 15
Notes to the Accounts	Page 16-19

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Annual Report and Impact Statement for the year ending 31 December 2020

Charitable status

Church from Scratch is a registered charity in England, No. 1147116. Principal address: 34 Cranley Road, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, SS0 8AL.

Trustees serving at 31 January 2020:

Mary Blake Ongoing Peter Dominey Ongoing Katy Parsons Retired 24.2.2021 Natalie Hughes Appointed 1.9.2020 Alex Emery Appointed 24.2.2021

The charity is established by means of a constitution with trustees appointed by the Partners (members).

Summary of Objects and Activities

Church from Scratch is a Christian church, a member of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Eastern Baptist Association.

The principal purpose of the Church is the advancement of the Christian faith according to the ways of Jesus as found in the Bible and which uphold the fundamentals of the Baptist denomination. The Church also advances education and carries out other charitable purposes in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world.

In addition to the reports set out below, our activities include holistic mission, public worship, prayer, Bible study, teaching, baptism, communion, pastoral care and social action, through a community comprising of and working with many disadvantaged people.

Public Benefit Statement

The charity’s trustees continue to have regard for both the charitable objects set out in the governing document and to ensuring that the activities of the charity, as described, meet the public benefit test. In so doing, they take account of the Charity Commission’s public benefit guidance when planning the charity’s programme of activities.

The Trustees of Church from Scratch are confident that the activities of the charity demonstrate strong evidence of public benefit.

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Nature of the Church

Church from Scratch is a Jesus centred network of Communities, projects and initiatives concentrated in south east Essex; responding to local needs and opportunities – an inclusive church family of people who are often marginalised and disadvantaged. The church acts as a pathfinder in Christian mission and as a change-agent.

A network of Communities across south east Essex

At the heart of CFS is a flourishing network of Communities. These are typically home-based and form around a weekly meeting where people work out what it means to live as followers of Jesus. The six Communities are located across south east Essex, from Pitsea to Shoeburyness. They provide opportunities for discipleship and transformation as people develop relationships of trust over shared meals and through shared lives. Many marginalised and disadvantaged people are part of them, and British Sign Language is used in one group to include the deaf. Two Communities hold a weekly gathering in Shared Space stores (Shared Space is the social enterprise which CFS founded and partners with).

Each Community is guided by one or more facilitators who are coached, encouraged and supported by the church leadership. Inspirational small-group discipleship resources are created by an in-house team of authors to resource the Communities.

During 2020, people belonging to CFS have grown in faith and new people have joined as we share life and faith together, supporting each other with practical care for those among us facing serious mental and physical illness and difficult domestic situations.

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The 4 foundational values of CFS

These have stood the test of time over the years and sustained us as we find continuing and new ways to express and live them out. They hold us to the ways of God’s kingdom and are at the very centre of all that CFS is and aspires to be:

We value Jesus at the Centre: doing it his way; changing as we follow him deeper; relying on him; recognising we're a little bit of his worldwide church; realising Jesus' Spirit is at work now.

We value Building Community: building real and loving relationships as we rely on each other; growing up in faith together; giving our community away to others.

We value All people: moving wider to all; encouraging participation by all; standing up with those who need us.

We value Living life to the full: finding Jesus in all parts of life; holding on to faith as we take risks; helping each other to grow into the full and unique people God wants.

Activities, events and programmes in 2020

We continued to follow these four priorities

We sense these are needed to unlock our future and help us live out the values on which CFS is founded. The priorities are:

1. Fostering passionate spirituality

re-founding CFS on Jesus in a closer relationship with him.

1. Building deeper connections

helping us to belong to each other across the groups of CFS.

1. Reaching new people

with a focus on re-building opportunities for families, young adults and children.

4. Increasing capacity*

finding the people, time & money we need to help CFS sustainably grow and deepen.

* CFS is a church with poorer people than other churches in the area but we are strong on love, community, faith and life. We’re deeply grateful to Christians from other local churches who give generously to CFS, wishing to support our unique mission.

Discipleship Weekend Away

In February, just before lockdown, we took over a youth hostel in Kent for a residential discipleship weekend. A group of about 30 participated in 4 sessions on being freed from the traps of life and a trip to the local winter sports centre.

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Lockdown

This year has been difficult year for all and because we would usually meet in each other’s homes around a meal, gathering together without a ‘Public Place of Worship’ and being socially distant has made it especially hard. Yet, despite the difficulty that Covid 19 has brought, God has continued to bless us and help us to reach out and support people in Southend.

Due to lockdown we had to cancel a wide range of events and trips which were in advanced planning, including a church team being sent to eastern Europe, two summer camps, a range of day events, two LGBTQ+ training events, etc.

Throughout lockdown the church has been meeting together on Zoom which has required additional IT and support to be provided for some - we have been able to develop new ways to share, bless and encourage each other. Our Zoom meetings have attracted several newcomers to CFS and look like this:

Weekly Community Groups

These groups were a continuation of our weekly get-togethers when we would normally meet in each other’s homes. We were able explore the Bible together and share Communion in this way using resources created by our in-house team.

CFS Daily

These were short gatherings every weekday of lockdown, held in the early evenings to spend time with God and each other. It has helped us maintain a rhythm and stay connected with God and each other – especially for those on their own during lockdown.

Our New Minister in Training

This has been an exciting time for the church as with the help of Zoom we have been able to hold Special Partners meetings and explore the possibility of God’s provision of Natalie Hughes joining us as a Minister in Training for her final two years of study at Spurgeon’s College. We have seen God provide financially and this has helped us to see His will in this decision. It has been a blessing to us all to appoint Natalie to join CFS on 1[st] September 2020. Due to relaxed COVID 19 restrictions we were able to hold a physical ‘Big Welcome’ to welcome and mandate her for the role.

Night Owl Prayers

We heard from people who were finding it difficult to sleep and so we created these weekly sessions at 10:30pm to give a quiet and reflective space.

Making Space

These are two groups we have started for our volunteers who work in the Shared Space social enterprise shops we partner with. We have been able to provide chaplaincy to both of our shops, and whilst in lockdown we merged the groups and with Shared Space held a weekly online support group instead.

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‘We Remember Them’

We have made contact with an organisation that supports local women involved in prostitution in the red-light area of the town and those who are battling addiction. Together we started to remember the names of many, many people we know who had died as a result of addiction. So, we created an online remembrance service for the town, called ‘We Remember Them’ which ran online three times, as an hour of quiet and meditation. We are continuing to support this group as they move into their premises to start a ‘Drop-in Service’.

Weekend Workshops

A series of four on-line Weekend Workshops were held which was a fun way to connect and also meet other people on-line. The four sessions were:

Learn Sign Language

Cooking lesson (bring your own ingredients and cook along) Card Making for Christmas Taskmaster (fun quiz)

Love Through Lockdown

As a resource for other churches during lockdown we created a 24-page copyright free colouring book. It comprises original artwork of Bible quotes and doodles to download and has since been downloaded hundreds of times.

Talking God - Theological Reflections

We held a series of theological reflections over zoom to develop people’s ability to think as Christians and teach theological reflection skill to an invited group of participants. These included: a reflection on the nature of online communion and another on the questions Jesus asked.

Christmas From Scratch

This was our modern-day adaptation of the Nativity story written and filmed by Church from Scratch and friends. It was a big undertaking with a large team. We created a series of 10 videos which are available at

www.churchfromscratch.org/christmas We released them through December 2020 under the description: ‘ Imagine if Jesus was born in 2020. Mary is an ordinary teenager. Joseph a normal guy.’ The videos were viewed over 50,000

times with churches and people from across the country and world, re-sharing them.

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Southend Emergency Fund

We gave some of one of our minister’s time to work with two others to establish Southend Emergency Fund (SEF) under the auspices of Shared Space. SEF has drawn together a coalition of 40+ local charities including Church from Scratch, to support people in the town effected by Covid-19 and its mitigation. To date £205,966 has been raised and over 60 grants given

When we were allowed out!

Within government guidelines we met and encouraged each other outside with events such as:

• Prayer walks – particularly for those who found Zoom difficult. And we created a video resource for people to use to support these.

• Pier Walk – to help sponsor a project run by our friends in an eastern European church.

• Garden Hop – in five gardens with firepits, looking at what the Bible says about fire.

Together Free: Peter, our minister continues as part of his Church from Scratch time to be a founding trustee of Together Free which works to stop modern slavery and human trafficking.

Resource creation and sharing

In 2020 we wrote and published small group resources including the following series:

• Vision, Values, Hopes

• The Greatest Showman

• Psalms

• Psalm Bank - Psalms written by church partners

• Christmas From Scratch

• CFS Daily Liturgical resources

• CFS Daily Resources

• A Bible reading scheme

We are committed to actively sharing these with other churches and church plants and using them in our own Communities. A hallmark of

the resources is their highly participatory and interactive approaches that cater for a range of learning styles.

We also re-edited several of our old series of small group’s resources to the new standard for use.

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LGBTQ+

We are blessed to continue to welcome a good number of LGBTQ+ people who help to lead and serve with us. As an affirming church, and in partnership with other local churches, we have created events, training and resources for other Christians and churches who want to acknowledge the experience of LGBTQ+ people and talk about how to make church a safe environment.

We had two training events planned for 2020 which had to be cancelled due to COVID restrictions. We continue to remotely support LGBTQ+ Christians who reach out to us from across the country, feeling isolated and rejected.

Improved communication and participation

• Developed the church website further in the year to provide a resource section for other churches to use.

• Sent regular CFS email news to a mailing list of almost 200.

• Used videos as an internal way to improve communication.

• Built a following on Instagram account @cfs_southend as part of the CFS intent to reverse an older skewed age profile and reach the younger generations.

• Released videos on facebook with one receiving over 11,000 views and built a larger following for the CFS facebook page facebook.com/churchfromscratch/

• Developed the annual report (you are reading it!) to make it more attractive, relevant and accessible to the church.

• Released a CFS video to celebrate and express who we are, so new people become aware of, understand and feel able to join in with us.

International Deployments

We continue to support Dan and Annie Dupree. Dan was our student minister until 5 years ago and they now work in eastern Europe with the Roma people among others.

We continued to support and encourage them as they worked under the auspices of BMS World Mission.

Partnership with Shared Space

Shared Space is the social enterprise CFS founded with which we actively partner:

• Formed an agreement where our student minister acts as chaplain to the two stores and their volunteers.

• Ran a CFS Community at Shared Space Westcliff and Southchurch

• Explored starting a Shared Space in Tilbury/Purfleet area in partnership with local Baptist churches in that area which did not find a way forward

• Continued to working towards the establishing of the third Shared Space as a mission presence.

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Some of the CFS actions for 2021

• Centre all we do on Jesus, so we become more like him.

• Live out and express the values of CFS.

• Develop and work from the CFS Development Plan.

• Equip people of CFS to express and share the good news of Jesus, so Southend and people are transformed.

• Write and publish small group courses and videos, to assist CFS and other churches.

• Build upon our partnership with Shared Space social enterprise , further replicating the Shared Space model on another site as feasible.

• Develop the Communities in depth and number so we become more authentic and prevalent.

• Identify, train and nurture CFS people, so leadership is shared, and new Communities can be planted.

• Encourage greater generosity of time and money within and beyond CFS, to release resources for the mission we are called to.

• Develop capacity through the Immerse Intern Programme and create other pathways to help Christians to join CFS and to build the capacity of CFS.

• Develop children’s work.

• Support Baptist pioneering so others venture out in incarnational mission.

• Share our resources and insights through an increased resource sharing through the new CFS website and training events so others are helped.

• Be receptive to opportunities and needs as they present and respond with agility, so we don’t miss the party.

• Support the newly formed anti-slavery and human trafficking charity called Together Free through one of our minister’s time, given as a trustee.

• Run residential events as COVID allows such as weekends and holidays.

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Accounting Basis

The accounts were prepared on a receipts and payments basis.

Reserves Policy

• Reserves will be maintained to ensure core activity can continue during any period of unforeseen difficulty.

• A proportion of reserves will be maintained in a readily realisable form.

• The calculation of the required level of reserves is an integral part of the organisation's planning, budget and forecast cycle. It considers:

• Risks associated with each stream of income and expenditure being different from that budgeted

• Planned activity level

• The church’s commitments

On this basis, and having reviewed the policy during the year, the Trustees believe that for 2021 a reserve equivalent to six months’ running costs should be maintained. The reserves policy will be reviewed annually.

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Mary Blake Church Secretary on behalf of Church from Scratch 26 February 2021

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Examiner’s Report

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Independent Examiner’s Report

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Statement of Financial Activity for the year ended 31.12.2020

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Statement of Assets and Liabilities for the year ended 31.12.2020

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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2020

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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2020

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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2020

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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2020

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