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2023-12-31-accounts

Lookin g Up | Looking In | Looking Ou t

TRUSTEE’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31[ST] DECEMBER 2023

Charity: New Life Church, Gt. Cornard Charity No: 1162045 Charity Address: Community Office, CloverLink [Off Clover Court], Minsmere Way, Gt. Cornard, Sudbury. CO10 0LL Trustees: Richard Soper, Matt Warnock, Graham Jack, Faith Marsden, Nigel Bayley & Stu Clarke

New Life Church is a registered charity and can be regarded as acting on behalf of the congregation meeting together and being known as New Life Church [NLC]. The trustees now have pleasure in presenting their report for the year ended 31[st] December 2023

The report is prepared as part of the church’s policy of following best practice and is therefore in line with the ‘Statement of Recommended Practice – Accounting and Reporting by Charities’ and complies with applicable law.

CHARITABLE OBJECTS:

New Life Church, Gt. Cornard is a charity for the advancement of the Christian faith in the area of Gt. Cornard, Suffolk and in areas of the world, where we have similar beliefs / having developed relationships with churches in other countries. I.e. Reggio Emilia [Italy] and Ruse [Bulgaria]

ORGANISATION & GOVERNANCE:

The Elders [Matt Warnock & Ben Troughton] of the church meet weekly together and then on a monthly basis together with the wider leadership team to consider the strategic direction of the church. The Elders also have responsibility for the pastoral matters in the church. The dayto-day leadership of various works and ministry areas is devolved to ministry leads who have budgetary accountability for their areas of responsibility.

The Trustees are responsible for legal and administrative matters – The Elders seek to recruit further Trustees based on either relevant expertise and/or reputation in their chosen field of business/ministry.

In July we welcomed Stu Clarke onto the Eldership of New Life Church.

REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES:

As we moved entered 2023, the use of the bigger space at Thomas Gainsborough School continued alongside our CloverLink Community Office in Gt. Cornard. These were a great resource for the church as we sought to minister into our local community.

For ease we have split our review into 4 areas: NLC | Church; NLC Community; Community Engagement and Abi’s Footprints Baby Bank

NLC | CHURCH

Our weekly teaching plan saw speakers from within our Eldership and wider Leadership Team, as well as welcoming friends from other churches and ministries [Mogs Jones, Emma Denton, Matt Levett, Andy Malcolm (Fishermen’s Mission), Stuart & Jude Ayling (Eden’s Project), Ben Wildman (SIM), Victor Jack, SJ Harknett, Andy Jelfs, Home4Good, Val Dufour (Tearfund)] all contributing into our teaching series.

As has become our yearly schedule, we started the year focusing on our vision of Looking Up, Looking In and Looking Out. In February, we moved into more detail of Looking Out through the book of Acts and how the early church ‘looked out’ into their communities, exploring the practical examples they demonstrated, and how we can relate to them today.

February 2023 saw us celebrate with the Bishop family, as we joined wider family and friends in in dedicating their daughter Poppy.

From April to the summer break, we spent time teaching on Philippians that carried over into our Life Groups, the teaching focused on the key themes of Paul’s book of transformation, joy, Christ-like thinking, community and generosity.

For the last term of 2023, we moved into the Old Testament looking at the prophet Isaiah, focusing on verses often referenced in the New Testament and how they applied to their first audience. We stayed around the prophets as we finished a mini-series in November ‘Looking at Jesus’ as King, Servant and Conqueror.

With the changed dynamics of Sunday’s meeting together, the options of gathering in person or accessing the live stream of the service continued throughout 2023. Allowing individuals to stay involved and access our Sunday mornings when attending in person is not an option.

Creche continued to develop their teaching resources for our youngest members of the church providing story and creative crafts that constantly bring those stories to life.

The Youth and Junior Church carried on their own specific teaching from Energize looking at practical life issues, bible characters and themes. – We also saw 6 of our youth join the Eden’s Project as they attended the Satellites Youth Conference at Peterborough Showground.

Life Groups in Acton, Gt. Waldingfield, Sudbury and Gt. Cornard continued to support church members practically explore their faith in safe environments where questions can be asked, and discussions had. Time can be spend getting to know each other better, to pray and share at a more personal level.

Further support comes through weekly youth activities, discipleship one2ones/group work, youth mentoring network, home visitation and prayer meetings.

During the year covered by this report, the churches membership went up and down as people made NLC their home with others deciding to move on to new fellowships [Membership sitting 110 DEC23].

A mixture of 12 volunteers and members of the NLC’s Leadership Team carried on with the LICC Online Learning Hub meeting bi-monthly to explore key areas of teaching from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.

NLC continued to employ an Office Administrator on 6hrs a week (term time only) to provide support to the Community Pastor and Eldership. Having been unsuccessful in bringing in a second worker during 2021, we advertised more widely through a variety of paid options.

A key part of 2023, saw our Community Pastor go off on Sabbatical for 3 months between May and July. The plan for these 3 months was worked through at Leadership Team and Trustee’s,

as this was the first time we’d offered a sabbatical to a staff member. The plan was broken down into a month of Rest, month of Recuperation and lastly being Refreshed, culminating with a report being fed back to the leadership on return. The final term saw our Community Pastor and Leadership Team exploring the report further and how that effects the role.

NLC COMMUNITY

We continued our involvement in the one of the local primary schools – Pot Kiln PS. Offering a combination of pastoral support to children, families and teachers. This was still more focused on Yr. 6’s in the summer term supporting the 3-day school residential at Mersea Island.

Linked to the school’s work was continuing to mentor fortnightly an upper school student that is not currently based in education currently having been removed from all the local Upper Schools.

Aware of the some of the more practical and pressing needs in our community – we expanded our ‘LoveFund’ budget to practically be able to support local families, schools and local projects. This was facilitated through food, clothes and gift vouchers along with purchasing wish list items for Pot Kiln PS.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

CloverLink our Community Office continues to support its local community through monthly litter picks, prayer walks into the surrounding area and CloverLink-Up Coffee Morning supporting the local residents close to the Community Office.

The building also provides amazing opportunities for pastorally support, meetings and connecting with its community. CloverLink remains a stopping point for Abi’s Footprints clients coming in to help the work to receive support – further detail on this is found below .

Through our developing relationships, we have continued to develop our Monday Night Football for Dad’s and Young Lads with over 45+ contacts being involved – Football is the mechanism that helps the team get to know people, their stories and the social aspect helps build friendship and deeper support for the more complex issues that have arisen.

One of the key dates in our church calendar has always been our Sizewell Weekend away, as it provides NLC with the chance to invite these connections together.

Part of our vision has been to enable and encourage individuals to find their frontline, as they get to know people in their circles. LICC has provided language of the scattered and gathered

church, with the challenge of what do we do over the 168hours that we are scattered into our Monday to Saturday.

ABI’S FOOTPRINTS BABY BANK

2023 was a significant year for Abi’s Footprints Baby Bank. Demand for the service continued to grow, impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. During 2023 we directly supported over 360 children, and indirectly well over 1,000 people including siblings, parents, grandparents and friends. According to Government statistics it appears that we are now reaching a remarkably high proportion of children living in poverty in this area.

We continued to provide a family-centred service but by early 2023 we had long-since been unable to invite parents to visit our main 540 sq. ft. facility because nearly every inch was filled with the increased volume of stock required. Volunteers also struggled to cope with the cramped conditions, heavy/awkward lifting, ladders to reach the high racking and so on. Safety was a major concern.

In June 2023 we moved to an adjacent, much larger warehouse (1,900 sq. ft) within which skilled volunteers constructed a well-insulated ‘inner room’ with a small office and areas for refreshments, information and toddler play. The shelved walls contain 150 manageable boxes for clothing, organised and readily accessible for families and an increasing number of volunteers. On 19th July we celebrated with an ‘official’ ‘Grand Opening’ when the Mayor of Sudbury ‘cut the ribbon’ and gave an encouraging speech.

During the year we were increasingly aware of additional needs that were emerging. These included those fleeing domestic violence suddenly arriving in a strange location with little more than a suitcase and those recruited from abroad to work in the care sector, with little realisation that a seemingly attractive salary would be inadequate to meet the needs of their family. To help the volunteer team respond more adequately to these additional needs, in August 2023 we appointed a part time (7.5 hrs) Family Support Worker to offer more holistic and pastoral support for families in greatest need.

‘Footprints Stay & Play’ continued to develop from starting September 2022 – Stay and play is a bi-weekly drop-in for mums/carers, babies and toddlers, picking up the threads of our precovid ‘Oasis’ group and moving it to Thursdays to run alongside the local well-baby outreach clinic. This rapidly became a well-established group, filling a much-needed gap in local provision.

FINANCIAL REPORT:

SUMMARY OF FINANCIAL POSITION

Our income for the year was £84,302 against £73,338 for 2022. Our expenditure for the year was £94,086 against £73,266 for 2022. Our net balance for the year was -£9,784 against +£72 for 2022. Our opening balance at the start of 2023 across all bank accounts was £49,530, and our closing balance was £39,746.

INCOME

GRANTS

During 2023 we received a total of £15,862 of grant funding towards our Abi’s Footprints Baby Bank initiative. These were as follows:

GIFT AID RECOVERY

We received £9,491 in gift aid recovery during 2023 on donations between Q4 2022 and Q3 2023.

ABI’S FOOTPRINTS

Total income towards Abi’s Footprints was £21,731 – of which £4,646 were individual donations towards day-to-day operations, and £952 towards the Big Build project.

NEW LIFE CHURCH

Income for New Life Church activities totalled £46,410 of which £46,327 were individual donations.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Other income included £2,340 for Monday Night Football and £3,990 for our Sizewell Weekend.

EXPENDITURE

SALARY

Employment costs remain our largest expense – totalling £32,136. This is made up of:

RENTS

Rents are our second largest expense – totalling £21,826. This included £9,710 for our Baby Bank facility – though this included a forward payment of £2,750 on rent for 2024 Q1 as this was included in a grant that needed to be spent by 31[st] December 2023. A further £2,000 was for rent on our Great Cornard office/hub, £2,000 for hire of AFC Sudbury for our football outreach. £3,455 was paid for the hire of Sizewell Hall for our church weekend away. Our Stay and Play mums and babies group cost £574.50 to hire the Stevenson Centre.

ABI’S FOOTPRINTS BABY BANK

BABY BANK

Activities of the baby bank totalled £16,725. The largest proportion of this was Rent, totalling.

STAY AND PLAY

The total cost for this event for the year was £729.13 – of which £574.50 was rent, £99.69 was refreshments, and the remainder was other running costs such as flyer printing.

BIG BUILD

Our largest project expense in 2023 was £10,527 to fit out the new premises for Abi’s Footprints Baby Bank. This was offset by donations of £1,223 meaning a net cost of £9,304. Some building materials were personally purchased and gifted towards this project, reducing the overall cost to us.

CHURCH SERVICES

The total cost of our Sunday Morning services was £10,048 – with £1,144 on the Kids, Youth and Creche groups and the remaining £8,904 on main hall activities.

We spent £1,208 on Refreshments and £3,379 on Rent. A further £4,174 was spent on external costs – this includes £698 on licences for streaming, music, etc, £252 on teaching plans for younger groups, £618 on online activities (streaming services, podcast host and 4G hotspot) and £2,250 on external preachers.

SUPPORTED MINISTRY AND GIFTING

We continue to support local, national and international ministries with financial gifts, as well as smaller gifts for those within our church family and wider community when they are going through difficult situations.

Our gifts in 2023 included £552 for Compassion, £2,400 to Eden’s, £2,000 to support a missionary family in Asia, £1,000 to Future Vision and £525 to Tearfund.

We also gifted £2,060 to support the work of Friendship Church and Christian Mission Church, both in Bulgaria.

£742 was spent on supermarket gift vouchers to support families known to us through the Baby Bank initiative.

2024 BUDGET

Our 2024 budget is based on our actual spends for 2023, adjusted for known increases (such as Salary increases and rent increases) and not including any non-recurring income/expenditure from 2024.

The budget figure for income is £84,545 and for expenses is £87,756.

If achieved, this would be a net deficit of £3,211 and would mean our closing balance would be £36,535 against an opening balance of £39,746.

We are a church that likes to spend what we receive and not generally increase our bank balance, so it is our anticipation that our overall balance will continue to fall during 2024 to offset the exceptional gifts received in 2020 and 2021.

DECLARATION.. Following the Trustees meeting on 4 June 2024 the above Trustees Report was agreed as being a true and fair representation of the work carried out by New Life Church. Signed: Dated: 30. Signed.. Dated: 3fy. kn.1 Signed: Dated:

----- Start of picture text -----
Charity Name No (if any)
New Life Church 1162045
Receipts and payments accounts CC16a
For the period Period start date Period end date
To
from 01/01/2023 31/12/2023
Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment
Total funds Last year
funds funds funds
to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £
A1 Receipts
Donations Received 43,522 14,699 - 58,221 -
Grants - 15,862 - 15,862 -
Other income 329 399 - 728 -
Gift Aid Recovery 9,491 - - 9,491 -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
Sub total (Gross income for
30,960 - 84,302 -
AR) [ 53,342 ]
A2 Asset and investment sales,
(see table).
- - - -
- - - - -
Sub total - - - - -
Total receipts 53,342 30,960 - 84,302 -
A3 Payments
Rent and building expenses 5,004 27,978 - 32,981
Consumables 2,217 1,654 - 3,872
Donations Given 9,767 3,302 - 13,069
Third Party Services 5,503 569 - 6,072
Recurring Costs 2,772 117 - 2,889
Wages, pension and personal
development 29,088 3,048 - 32,136
Resources 885 1,650 - 2,535
Office Costs 334 199 - 533
- - - -
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total [ 55,571 ] 38,516 - 94,086 -
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total [ - ] - - - -
Total payments 55,571 38,516 - 94,086 -
Net of receipts/(payments) - 2,228 - 7,556 - - 9,784 -
A5 Transfers between funds -£3,213.90 £3,213.90 - - -
A6 Cash funds last year end 42,379 7,151 - 49,530
Cash funds this year end 36,937 2,809 - 39,746
----- End of picture text -----

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period Unrestricied funds garnst£ Restricted funds Endowment funds to rwrpst£ Categories Detalls B1 Cash funds 25,892 813 sss 1Q232 TO￿ cash funds 36.937 Endowment funds funds Datsils to n￿108t£ to noarost£ Fund io¥thi¢h Details C06tlWv)nall currW￿¥al￿0 lopfjonal) B3 Investment assets Ful￿ tn which Curnntvalu• loptionall Detalls B4 Assets retained for the harity's own use Chairs Arn￿ThE duo Detalls (Optior￿lI B5 Liabilities Signed by one ortwo trustees on behalf of all the Irustees Print Name Dale of approval

Independent examiner's report to the trustees of New Life Church, Great Cornard on accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31 December 2023.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity’s trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’).

I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.

Independent examiner's statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination which give me cause to believe that, in any material respect:

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

N K Smith FCA

19 Highbury Way, Great Cornard, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 0HE

24 July 2024