charity registered in England No 1147116 www.churchfromscratch.org
Annual Report and Impact Statement for the year ending 31 December 2022
Table of Contents
| Table of Contents | Page 2 |
|---|---|
| Annual Report and Impact Statement | Page 3 - 10 |
| Independent Examiner Report | Page 11 - 12 |
| Statement of Financial Activity | Page 13 |
| Statement of Assets and Liabilities | Page 14 |
| Notes to the Accounts | Page 15 - 18 |
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Annual Report and Impact Statement for the year ending 31 December 2022
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 on 31 January 2022:
Alex Emery Mary Blake Natalie Hughes (retired 18 June 2022) Peter Dominey
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 ensure 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 communal groups, projects and initiatives concentrated in south east Essex; responding to local needs and opportunities – an inclusive church family of people who are typically marginalised and disadvantaged. The church acts as a pathfinder in Christian mission and as a change-agent.
A network of community groups across south east Essex
At the heart of CFS is the network of community groups. These are often home-based and typically organise 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 with each other together over shared meals and through shared lives. Many marginalised and disadvantaged people are part of the groups, and British Sign Language is used in one to include the deaf.
Each community is guided by one or more facilitators who are coached, encouraged and supported by the church leadership. Small-group discipleship resources are created by an inhouse team of authors to resource the meetings.
During 2022, 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.
The 4 foundational values of CFS
These values 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 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.
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Activities, events and programmes in 2022
We continued to follow these four priorities
We sensed these were needed to unlock our future and help us live out the values on which CFS is founded. The priorities were:
1. Fostering passionate spirituality
re-founding CFS on Jesus in a closer relationship with him.
2. Building deeper connections helping us to belong to each other across the groups of CFS.
3. 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 exceptionally poor people compared to other churches, 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 distinctive mission.
During the year
Night Owl
These weekly meetings on Fridays at 10:30pm provided an hour-long end to the day and week, providing a quiet and reflective space. We ran these in the first part of the year.
Supporting the Shared Space volunteer community
We helped facilitate weekly meetings for the 85 Shared Space volunteers.
Talking God - Theological Reflections
We held theological reflections over zoom to develop people’s ability to think as Christians and teach theological reflection skill to an invited group of participants.
Activities throughout the year
This has been a difficult year for Church From Scratch with our minister having severely limited capacity due to a close member of his family being extremely unwell since May and the knock-on effects of this. As a church we have walked closely with them in this, and it has been good to see others in the church taking on additional responsibilities to share the load.
Monthly Gatherings - For people from across the church in various venues, with musical worship, exploring themes and discerning what Jesus has for us.
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January
We started our series named ‘Rocket Man’ which compared the ups and downs of the life of Elton John with our own journey through life with the help of Jesus.
February
Immersive Experience – our immersive training experience continued for church leaders and ministers from Baptist churches across the country with another 5 Baptist leaders attending our latest residentials. Over 100 church ministers and leaders have completed this intensive 4-day training programme.
Medway Residential - A large group from the church took over the Medway Youth Hostel in Kent for a weekend of teaching. We shared fellowship and special times together with God, encouraging each other as we thought about our walk with Jesus on the Emmaus road.
March
We baptised Nathan as many joined him in the pool and we all rejoiced as he shared his testimony of freedom.
April
During Easter week we held Passover meals in various homes to help all understand Jesus better.
Easter Sunday was a time of celebration as the church gathered together for praise, fellowship and breakfast.
May
Radical Roots: We developed a new video training course to help Baptist churches reconnect with the historical founding stories of our movement. We filmed a 5-part costume drama to be called Radical Roots. This series, written in-house, tells stories of historical Baptist figures through the centuries, and helps people explore the radical roots from where modern-day Baptists churches have come.
To make Radical Roots possible we secured funding for Radical Roots from a private Christian trust, Baptist Together, Baptist Historical Society, Northern Baptist College, Spurgeon’s College, and nine Baptist Associations including our own Eastern Baptist Association.
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The films were edited through 2022 for release in 2023 with accompanying small group materials.
We are committed to actively sharing these resources with other churches and church plants. A hallmark of the resources is their highly participatory and interactive approaches that cater for a range of learning styles and their fresh take.
June
Natalie Hughes was our Minister in Training for the past two years. During this time, she developed our prayer life, created new church events, wrote resources, and was the CFS chaplain for the 85 Shared Space volunteers (Shared Space is the Christian social enterprise we started and partner with). In June we sent Nat out to become minister of a Baptist church in Nottingham. This is the third Minister in Training we have had the privilege to train.
July
This year the church was unable to enjoy the usual camping and discipleship weekend at Mersea Island due to our minister and family not being able to head up this event due to ill health. The church continued to support each other at this difficult time.
August
With such good weather we were able to share another special time of sharing at our monthly gatherings, followed by a BBQ.
September
During this month CFS delivered Safeguarding training inline with our policies and procedures.
October
We made changes to our Community Groups so we could welcome more people into our existing groups.
We spent the best part of two months with the theme of “And Breathe” across the church. With individual weeks including: Breathe and remember, Breathe and be still. Each week included a prayer practice for each person to use through the week.
November
We started building towards a series with creation and use of a new series of Advent resources with each week based on a Christmas carol.
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December
We gathered to celebrate, worship and reflect again on the wonderful gift we have been given in Jesus, through Christmas resources written for the groups, a Christingle Service and a Christmas day event. People across the church welcomed others into their homes for Christmas who would have been isolated.
Resource creation and sharing
In 2022 we created 6 small group series of resources for use by CFS and to be shared with the wider church along with a number of one-off resources. The 6 series were:
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Rocket Man
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Easter Reflections
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Post Resurrection Stories
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Old Testament Characters
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And Breathe
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Advent
International Deployments
We continue to support Dan and Annie Dupree. Dan was our student minister until 7 years ago and they now work in Albania with the Roma people among others. We continued to support and encourage them.
Partnership with Shared Space
Shared Space is the social enterprise CFS founded with which we closely partner:
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Our student minister acted as chaplain to the two stores and their volunteers.
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We run ‘Making Space’ groups.
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Our minister leads the work of Shared Space, and at the end of the year developed it to include new outreach to refugees and asylum seekers in Southend and we are actively partnering in that.
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CFS Aims for 2023 includes
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Centre all we do on Jesus, so we become more like him.
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To live and express the values of CFS in all we do.
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Develop and work from the CFS Development Plan.
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Equip people of CFS to express and share the good news of Jesus, so people in and beyond Southend are transformed.
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Write and publish small group courses and videos, to assist CFS and other churches in their mission and discipleship, including by publishing the Radical Roots series
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Build upon our partnership with Shared Space social enterprise , further replicating the Shared Space model and working with Shared Space in mission.
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Develop the Community Groups in depth and number so we become more authentic and prevalent.
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Identify, train and nurture CFS people, so leadership is shared, and new Community Groups can be formed.
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Encourage greater generosity of time and money within and beyond CFS, to release resources for the mission we are called to.
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Support Baptists and others in pioneering so other people venture out in incarnational mission.
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Share our resources and insights through developments to the CFS website and through training events including Immersive Experiences.
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Be receptive to the opportunities and needs as they present, responding with agility so we don’t miss the party.
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Support the newly formed anti-slavery and human trafficking charity called Together Free through our minister’s time, given by CFS to be a trustee.
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Run residential mission and discipleship events as capacity allows, including weekends and holidays.
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Accounting Basis
The accounts were prepared on a receipts and payments basis.
Reserves Policy
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Reserves will be maintained to ensure core activity can continue during any period of unforeseen difficulty.
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A proportion of reserves will be maintained in a readily realisable form.
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The calculation of the required level of reserves is an integral part of the organisation's planning, budget and forecast cycle and it considers:
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Risks associated with each stream of income and expenditure being different from that budgeted
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Planned activity level
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The church’s commitments
On this basis, and having reviewed the policy during the year, the Trustees believe that for 2023 a reserve equivalent to six months’ running costs should be maintained. The reserves policy will be reviewed annually.
Mary Blake Church Secretary on behalf of Church from Scratch 30 January 2023
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Independent Examiner’s Report
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Independent Examiner’s Report continued…
Left blank as the examiner has raised no matters of concern
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Statement of Financial Activity for the year ended 31.12.2022
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Statement of Assets and Liabilities for the year ended 31.12.2022
Signed: Peter Dominey (trustee) 27[th] March 2023
Signed: Mary Blake (Church Secretary) 27[th] March 2023
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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2022
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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2022
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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2022
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Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 31.12.2022
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