## The Parochial Church Council of ## Seer Green and Jordans Trustees Report and Accounts For the Year Ended 31[st] December 2023 Charity Number 1175583 ## Holy Trinity Seer Green and Jordans: Annual Report of the Trustees 2023 ## **Charity Number: 1175583** ## **Our Vision** Our vision at Holy Trinity is to live and share Christ’s love. 1. Trustees annual report for 2023 ## _Structure, Governance and Management_ The charity is managed by the Parochial Church Council (PCC). The governing document is The Parochial Church Council Powers Measure (1956) as amended and Church Representation Rules that came into force on 2 January 1957. Lay members of the PCC are proposed and seconded by members of Holy Trinity’s Electoral Roll. The vicar is also a member of the PCC. In 2023, three new members were appointed to the PCC and three members left, one of the new ones due to ill health. There were 10 to 13 members of the PCC in 2023. There were 6 meetings of the PCC in 2023, and the Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM) was held on 14 May 2023, after the 10am Sunday service with the members of the church. The minutes of the meetings are published on our website to share information with our church community. ## _Objectives and Activities_ The year began with a broken heating system and a very cold church. Once it was clear there was no quick fix, we moved our 8am service into the vestry and our 10am service to the Scout Hut. Our 10am congregation seemed to handle – possibly even enjoy! – the simpler, brighter space, and the ability to position chairs in a more communal layout. By Easter Sunday, the weather allowed us to return to the main church, to a pretty-much packed Easter Day celebration. Prior to that, we had a lovely Maundy Thursday meal together in The Three Horseshoes; a rich joint service with the Baptist Church on Good Friday; and a fabulous Saturday Easter Egg Hunt which seemed to draw out the entire village! We have also been enjoying a rich, creative prayer station for the Easter season, centred around the Fruit of the Spirit; thanks so much to Sarah Allen for initiating that. As warmer weather continues to inch its way to us, we’re enjoying being able to meet once again back in the centre of the village. 1 We had seven baptisms in 2023, and a number more are on the way. These generally happen at 12pm, though the 10am service will start to feature more in that regard. Thank God for the opportunity this presents to invite young families in the village into a fuller expression of the Christian faith. the challenges, a question emerged: while we’re doing the deep-dive required to replace the heating, what else might we do? A number of people seized the opportunity to express ideas and longings they have for the space. ‘Vicaring 101’ says, ‘Don’t attempt a major renovation in your first year in post (obviously)’, but the heating had other ideas and it has been hugely exciting to see what is starting to come together. Various needs in the community were (re-)articulated in this process: the need for alternative layouts and formats for church services which connect with underrepresented demographics; the lack of spaces in the village where people can come together in ways that don’t suit the pubs (especially families with littlees); the lack of provision for youth; the need to improve our step-free accessibility and increase our fire limit (which currently prevents us from hosting the whole school). As a result, a vision is coming together to draw the community through the doors of the church; to create a space which responds to their felt and unfelt needs, and which is able to host them in a greater variety of ways. While much of the above remains aspirational, and will continue to involve consultation with the congregation, diocese, and various experts, we have taken the first steps of applying for faculties to remove the pulpit and chancel rail, remove a few pews, and make the remaining pews more moveable. A big thank you to the working group which is pushing forward with this project: Tom Allen, Janna Holder, Peter Vinall and Jane Spoerry. Moving into the summer, we had a lovely tea party in the vicarage garden in June. (I say ‘tea’, though we did ‘dilute’ our tea a little). It was a great warm-up to our August Sunday afternoon tea parties at the church, which enabled us to connect with a large number of villagers. Thanks to all of you who provided cakes etc, and especially to Katharine Parker for organising them. In the autumn, we started our monthly afternoon service for young families, “Families @3.30,” and we’ve been having a steady stream of 15-20 people most times. This has joined a wider pattern of children and family events across the month, shared between Holy Trinity and Seer Green Baptist Church, with whom we continue to enjoy a rich partnership in all aspects of Kingdom ministry in our villages. This pattern includes Toddlers in the Woods, and we again recognise the huge amount of work Ali Cork puts into enabling that to happen each week. 2 in St Giles with Bishop Alan, who very sadly passed away unexpectedly in February 2024. In November, the newly built Grandstand quickly came into its own. It has been home to Whisky Wednesdays – an initiative to gather younger men in the village, round fire and single malts, where they can chat at a deeper level than is natural in the pub. It has taken on a life of its own, with di�erent people initiating added extras such as curry, whisky tasting, and (as the evenings start to allow), BBQ and croquet! We don’t seek after faith conversations (remember, no preachers allowed), but people bring up issues around faith very naturally, at which point we gently embrace the opportunity within the authenticity that lies at the core. Also in November, the Grandstand became home to the new youth group, and we are hugely appreciative of Sarah Allen who has grabbed this vision and run with it. Within weeks of starting to gather the six teens with whom we had connections, the group started to grow through nothing we did. The Spirit does seem to be especially at work among teenagers. In December, Jane Spoerry stood down after many years as our church administrator (having also been warden for a long time!). Words cannot express our appreciation for all that she has brought over the years, and we’re delighted that she remains part of the church community, filling gaps as she sees them in the way only she can! Christmas was full of opportunities among the community, as it always is. There was a notable increase in attendance from the previous year, though I suspect that was mainly down to the heating working! Again, huge thanks to Tom Allen who navigated the technical and diocesan challenges of making that happen. ## _Financial Review_ During 2023 our new branch of Lloyds Bank in Hazlemere was closed. Our account was moved to the High Wycombe branch but our sort code and account number has remained the same. This is the second change in two years as the Beaconsfield branch closed in 2022. Going to High Wycombe each week, in terms of travel, parking etc. was not sustainable. We now use the very helpful branch of the Post O�ice in Chalfont St Giles to pay in cash and cheques. Making payments and transfers via online banking has made the process quicker and easier as we are now only reliant on the postal system for the very few cheque payments we make. The volume of online payments received for the Parish Magazine subscriptions has grown over the last few years, so from the end of 2024 they will be paid into a 3 separate bank account which the two subscription coordinators can have direct sight of. This should make the subscription collection easier to track ## **GENERAL FUNDS** ## **Receipts.** Planned giving to General Funds has decreased from £39459 in 2022 to £38913 in 2023. No new donors have joined any of the schemes set up to facilitate planned giving. There was a small increase due to those donors to the Parish Giving Scheme who have linked their giving to the rate of inflation, but sadly we have lost some regular givers during 2023 so the net e�ect is a small decrease. Our general collections have remained at the pre pandemic levels of 2019. More people are using the contactless device allocated to us by the Diocese as part of their Digital Giving Rollout. We received a full year of rental payments for use of the Parish Church Hall which makes a significant contribution to our overall running costs. ## **Payments** Payments to charities never exactly mirror donations received due to timing di�erences in paying over sums to the charities and reclaiming Gift Aid on donations. Our Diocesan Quota (Parish Share) has been paid in full at the House for Duty level in 2023. Other payments were largely in line with our budgeted projection. We are still benefiting from the 3year fixed term contract agreed with our energy suppliers in December 2021. ## **Outcomes** At the end of 2023 we recorded a surplus of receipts over payment of £409. This was as a result of careful management of our expenditure. For further details of income, expenditure, assets and liabilities please see the attached accounts for the year ended 31st December 2023. ## **RESTRICTED FUNDS** ## **Building (Friends of Holy Trinity)** In accordance with our published accounting policies, we were able to use this fund for all payments in respect of repairs and maintenance on the church buildings and churchyard. We have incurred significant costs on churchyard maintenance and work needed on the churchyard trees. We also constructed an outdoor building in 4 ## **2. Charity Information** _Trustees:_ Reverend Jeremy Carr (Vicar) Audrey Hardy (Treasurer) Janna Holder (Children and Families Minister) Olwyn Davision-Oakley (Parish Safeguarding O�icer) Linda West (Licensed Lay Minister) Janine Dunnell (Churchwarden) Tom Allen (From May 2023) Anthony Bargioni (From May 2023) Janice Barrett Nora Bennett (Left July 2023) Susan Puttergill Rene Shurtenberger (From March to May 2023) Mark Webb (Left May 2023) 5 _Registered Address:_ Holy Trinity Church Orchard Road Seer Green Bucks HP9 2YA _Bankers:_ Lloyds Bank P.O. Box 1000 Andover BX1 1LT CCLA One Angel Lane London EC4R 3AB _Contact Details:_ Web: holytrinitysgj.org Email: holytrinitysgj@gmail.com 6 I CHARnV COMhllSSlON I CHARITY(OMM¢SSION I CIARIIY COMMISSIONI