2023-03-31-accounts - Hearsall Baptist Church

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Contact: MINISTER TREASURER SECRETARY Revd David Sutcliffe Mrs Julia LePoidevin Mrs Anne Thompson

Hearsall Baptist Church

Churches Together in Earlsdon

www.hearsallbaptist.org

and Chapelfields

Queensland Avenue, Coventry. CV5 8FE.

2023 Trustee Report for Hearsall Baptist Church Charity No. 1188555

Administrative Information:-

Queensland Avenue, Chapelfields, Coventry, CV5 8FE. Registered with the Charity Commission on the 16[th] March 2020. We adopted the Governing Document provided to the Baptist Union by their solicitors, on the 2[nd] of October 2019 at a church member’s meeting.

Minister:- Reverend David Sutcliffe, (only paid member of staff).

Elected Trustees:- Martin Prue and Janice Clemons.

Ex-Officio members Anne Thompson (secretary) and Julia LePoidevin (treasurer)

Aim and Purposes

Hearsall Baptist Church Trustees, which include our Minister, the Reverend David Sutcliffe have the responsibility of promoting worship, the mission of the church, the practical aspects of managing the buildings and activities taking place on our premises, and as such have six main duties:-

A Ensuring our charity is carrying out its purpose for public benefit.

B Complying with the charity’s governing documents and the law.

C Acting in our charity’s best interests.

D Managing the charity’s resources responsibly.

E Acting with reasonable care and skill.

F Ensuring our charity is accountable.

The Trustees are nominated by the church members and voted for at church meetings, by all members who have at least six months standing. Church members can only stand for election after they have been members for at least 12 months. The trustees serve for a minimum of three years, then can be re-elected for another three year period, but after that must stand down for at least a year.

Registered Charity 1188555 operating as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation.

There are various specialisms within the group at present, such as an eco- trustee and one of the trustees is also the safeguarding trustee.

At present we have fifty-six members. Our congregation is more on the upper age group side, with one or two young families. There was a Sunday school (except during the Covid lockdown), although the facility continued online. However it has been difficult to get this started again regularly and we now have an all-age service once a month and with Parade Services and occasional different services, this seems to be all we can manage with the volunteer leaders we have.

The trustees meet monthly except for Easter and Christmas. The average level of attendance is 80%. The trustees discuss actions and take recommendations to the church members to vote on the outcomes. The meetings of the church members are held nine times a year. Our AGM is held in July and includes all the organisations using our rooms and our own groups and post holders are invited to submit a written report to be included in a booklet, which is available in print and online before the AGM. The Baptist Union offer resources and advice for all the various facets of the functions we are responsible for and issue guidelines to us and have solicitors which are recommended by them.

The Baptist Union hold the deeds for the church property and the Heart of England Baptist Association hold the deeds for the Manse, which is a separate property a few streets from the church. The trustees are also responsible for the upkeep of this terraced property. At the church we have had to replace the boiler in the kitchen which supplies hot water and heating for radiators in the corridor, at a cost of £4,000.

Ecumenical Relationships

Hearsall Baptist Church is a member of Churches together in Earlsdon and Chapelfields (CTEC). There are five churches in this group, two Anglican, one Methodist and one Roman Catholic and ourselves.

The Ministers of these churches meet together regularly to discuss joint activities and to offer each other support. They also have joint meetings with the CTEC committee and sometimes preach in each other’s churches on a pulpit swap where permitted. There are joint initiatives which have been undertaken, such as providing finance for a Christians against Poverty worker who provides finance and debt advice to people. Another one is the Good Neighbours Project, which started with CTEC and is now under the auspices of Hope Coventry, who pay the wages of the workers and provide legal help and support. This has spread to other areas and Coventry City Council have financed the workers in some of the areas. The churches provide premises for certain events such as afternoon teas and socials. Volunteers visit elderly and lonely housebound folk for company.

There are also joint services run with all the churches taking turns and also Lent Lunches and a joint meal for fellowship during the week of prayer for Christian Unity in January. The proceeds from the Lent lunches are split between Cafod and Christian Aid. Most months there is also a prayer breakfast, hosted by each church in turn. The Charity supported by CTEC this year is called Wildtracks which is an environmental charity saving areas of rainforest and rehabilitating monkeys and other wildlife into the wild. Last year it was the Torch Trust, which supplies materials and

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support for churches to enable blind and partially sighted people to take as full a part as possible in worship. Hearsall has signed up to this initiative.

Public Benefit

The community rooms adjoining to the church are used by many community groups, these include, Al Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous, Youth Organisations such as Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Rangers, Beavers and Scouts. There is also a dance group, a stamp and coin club, Morris Men, a choir and a School reunion group. We now also have an Art Venturers group once a month on a Saturday morning. Various other community events may be held here throughout the year. There is also a branch of Sureway Assembly of God Church meeting in our hall on Sundays. We have lost a couple of groups since the pandemic.

Other groups which are considered as part of the church outreach are a Song and Storytime Group for pre-school children, a lunch club for the elderly and a conversation group called Talking English, for people whose first language is not English. During the Covid restrictions this Conversation group has kept in touch by WhatsApp. The lunch club returned to meeting in person in July 2021. It is to the credit of the group leaders that ways have been found to keep in touch with all these groups during the pandemic. Most groups had returned by the end of 2021 and are still going.

Mission and Evangelism

Helping those in need demonstrates our faith. We collect items for the food bank on the first Sunday of the month. At Christmas we managed to support Coventry City Mission in their gift giving appeal, by either collecting money for them to buy presents or people ordering them to go direct using an Amazon Wish List Facility. During Christian Aid Week we had a monetary collection, and people in the church took envelopes just to their own neighbours and then had them dropped back. We will be holding our Christian Aid meal this year for the first time since the pandemic. Our Harvest auction raised £428.51 for a charity called Practical Action. We had a wonderful concert called “Share the Joy” in November 2022 and raised £1233.23 to support refugees from the Ukraine. We also collected £350.00 to help after the earthquake in Bangladesh.

At Christmas the members vote for a few charities to support as part of our giving. Also there are collections at various times, when there is a particular need, such as floods in Bangladesh or similar. Some members have also volunteered at foodbanks or other Charity initiatives. We managed to obtain our silver environmental award with A Rocha after great efforts by our eco-trustee. Having services about the environment and being involved in the River Sherbourne Project with other churches and organisations such as Warwickshire Wildlife Trust had managed to gain us this. Now that the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust have gained their grant to open up our local river, the River Sherbourne, there are practical projects people can also be involved in and community activities held in some of the areas.

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Church Services

All are welcome to attend our services and we like to think we are very inclusive and welcoming. Our average weekly attendance is about 40-50 normally. This number increases at festivals and often numbers are swelled by visiting family and grandchildren. At Christmas we like to try and include them in our nativity service. We normally have four parade services in the year when the youth organisations are encouraged to join us and join in. A very popular event is our harvest festival service, followed by coffee and cake and an auction of the fresh fruit and vegetables, with the funds going to an aid charity, such as Operation Agri or similar.

As well as our regular services, we enable our community to celebrate the events of life. There were three Baptisms planned for last year, but these had to be postponed due to the Coronavirus lockdown. We have since been able to conduct these and gained new church members.

During Covid 19 lockdown we were very fortunate that our regular attendees had increased their giving, even though not attending every week. For this we are very thankful as we had lost £10,000 from income from our room hire the first year and £5.000 in 2021, although of course our utility bills were minimal. We started new contracts in February this year, after having horrendous quotes from several utility bidders. There is still great concern as to what the utility bills might be when we renegotiate contracts. Our electricity bills for each of the winter months were over £1,000 and gas about £250.00 per month.

We were able to have a Nativity Service and a Carol service at Christmas and serve refreshments, as we would have done before Covid, so that was wonderful.

Our congregation is mostly elderly, and only two of them have not returned after Covid, but throughout the time the services have been available as an audio format online through our website or latterly as a podcast. For those not able to access that we have provided printed and CD copies. We found this to be a good way of doing things with a high quality. We still produce a podcast titled “Knowing You Jesus”, but it is a more shortened format now with a message and readings and some music. There are far less people who access it now, but it is still valuable to those who are not able to attend and we still deliver CD’s of the podcasts to those who need them.

One of our Bible Study home groups has continued to meet on Zoom and the other has resumed in person. We are hoping to be able to provide an evening one as well.

Hearsall is famous for a five-pointed star, which is lined with LED lights and placed at the top of the church tower every Christmas, and can be seen from quite a long distance away. With energy prices spiralling, we put this on a timer so it only comes on when it is dark.

Financial Review

We ended the year with a deficit of £11,132.00. The balance sheet reserve has closed at £61959.00. The figure for the pension fund deficit was £6,000 but has now been revalued. Our monthly payment to this is now only £1 from August, after an

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agreement made with an insurance group. Our principal source of income is voluntary giving. We re-negotiated our property insurances to reduce payments.

Vision for the Future

We have been trying to find a way of replacing our buildings. Our vision for the future is to try and reduce the footprint of our buildings, which are not economical or environmentally friendly to heat. This is to future-proof our existence in the community for another fifty years or so. The Community rooms are ninety years old and the church itself was built in the 1960’s. We have been trying to find a way to do this for several years and were waiting to go forward with a local developer, who is trying to make this financially possible for us, by having a profit from a project of their own on half of our site.

We have recently found out that we may not be able to do this as the latest plan involved two GP surgeries having a joint building on the site. There is not enough parking to make this viable, so there is no point going to pre-planning with this. It could only work if they had the whole site. We have now suspended talks with this developer. We now need to talk to the Baptist Union to see what is to be done, also with the rise in energy prices, we will have to think again.

Our Regional Minister came to talk to the trustees in January to see if he could help us find a way forward. We have also been approached by a local United Reformed Church about whether we could form a Local Ecumenical Partnership (LEP), with them and we talked to our Regional Minister about this and had a meeting with the elders from this church. We have had four shared services at both churches over the last few months and both congregations were informed of the idea in March this year and the church members of each church voted to explore this option. We have had a questionnaire consultation over the hopes, concerns and questions about this and have fed back the answers we can give so far. The next step is to form a group from both churches to explore further. We are also having an anonymous straw poll to see how many people would be willing to attend this church as part of an LEP, before we proceed further and take a formal vote.

The plan would be for us to use their premises and sell ours. To that end we have had to consult the Baptist Union Solicitors to find out about our Ultimate Trusts and who would receive the proceeds if we sold up and what the terms of any limitations would be.

We acknowledge that our energy bills are having an impact on our finances and that we have an ageing congregation who are not able to fulfil roles within the church and also we are finding it difficult to find people to take on the responsibility of becoming trustees in this more legal world. The age of our buildings and the cost of repairs is also a worry.

Although we had several options for the way forward, the number of these that are financially possible and viable are reducing and we pray earnestly for an answer

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BAPTISTS TOGETHER END OF FIXED TERM FORM BAPTISTS TOGETHER Name of Church BUC Acrnunt Number Church Address CcyfL ca s g 14 Name and contart detallg of Church Treasurer Name ID&JI Email address LSLIO . (cr Daytlme phone number Please IndlGite whlch actlon you would Ilke to tak•- Account Interert Mlnlmum d• oslt £1,000 d( Transfer to 7 day not1 account 2.50% Transfer to I month not1 account 3.75% £1,000 Transfer to 3 month notlce account 4.50% £1,000 Rtrlnvest in l year fixed interest account (Indudlng Interest) Rfrlnvest In l year flxed Interest account (dudIng Int•west) Interest to be returned to Church 5.00% £i,ooJ 5.00% £i,OOD YIN Interest to be added to an exlstlng Account Account No Extra Funds to added to investment Amount Retum Funds to Church** 10,01501 * Interest rate5 are as at 01.08.2023 For Ojffent rates ease see v.basOrg.UWdePos1tscCwnts ** funds to be added to inyestment must wch us by maturity date. The extra funds 11 be hdd In a 7-day notke account unJl the I" of the nKJnth, followiThJ maturtty date, when they will be transferred to the I year flxèj account Baptlst Unlon Corporation Llmlted Re8lStered office Baptlst House PO Box 44 129 Broadway Didcot Oxon OXII 8RT telephone 01235 517700 emall buc.corp@baptist.org.uk DX 40852 Didcot A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England 32743 Regj'stered Chartty Number 249635

*If you have indicated that you want your funds retuned, the funds will be retumed to the designated Bank Account. Due to Increased scams and fraud, we have changed our proces and we will now need eviden of your registered bank account for all withdrawals, This may be in the fomi of either bank ststement or cancelled chequelcopy of deposit paying-in bch)k. The evidence may te scanned and emailed direct to 'isherwood ba tist.or .uk. These details will be saved securely against your bank account file, to be used and referred to for future withdrawals. Please remember if you change your bank account, you will be requlred to send simllar evldence of new bank account details. If you are rtrlnvestln91 please113t the three people WI are authorlslng thls new account and wlll be requestlng wlthdrawals from th1$ account. One of them must be the person whose contart detalls are gtven overleaf. They wlll all need to slgn below. Name Role Emall Church Treasurer SlgAatuMs 26-1-2) .i.l¥ ease arrange for the three signatorles Ilsted to slgn and date . You should then either a) Send the completed form by post OR b) Scan and emall the form to isherwood tist.or .uk You should also kp a copy of this form for your own records. Wlthdrawlng money Requests for withdrawing money frorn your account should be signed by two of the three people listed above and sent by post (to the address overleaf) or by email to 'ishernvood ba ts'st.o Important Information about a change of signatorles should be nt on a church letter headed signed by two of the people listed above by post (to the address overleaQ or by emall to isherwood tist.or Please ensure you have read the ternis and condltlons relatlng to these acrounts whlch can be found at www.ba isLo de ositaccounts

72991.f 72991. 11057.IK) IIC67.(0 61934.ts) 6193Q 8118.W 9194.Lb) 72591.IXI 71991J UThre5rt4dfvr&ts Generalfund SOCl(0mittee 58922.l•J io. 302.( 67399.141 69a3.thj 71634A DÈtstor5 and prepayments JALY Rebnue Aefuré CurrentkcDunt 24fy17m 4fyJ7S.th) Our #31 I(re irKreased tyÉl1423XXI. We havehad add&[c0ststh4r. £4175.O) rementotthe kftckn In additiontjje 5ncurd addOonl costs Of£4933.(forthetknS roor Totsl recevtsthi5 yearwere£59599.IY)h£518O}ofthtsGrfIAWdthi Wecutrentty havéE4fKw,lx)ined iTrtsfy. We no bD8ercwryè 1IrtYti)ihepethlfL¥hJ. ofEIg6fy).I•X ThEfinanckilstatemehtsre apwryrtd4tthoTiust*e5W_. Se¢re&tsryllN5tee

HEARSALL BAPTI CHURCH RECEIPTS & PAYMENT ACCOUNT for Year ended 31st March 2023 Total Total 2022123 202V22 funds fvnd5 RECEIPTS Voluntary giving Collections All other voluntsry reaepts Gift Ald reowered Investment income 34363.(KJ 2342.IXJ 17225.Tr1 5289.(Kl 455.(KJ 34363. 40467. 2342.¢XJ 1175.chj 17225.CQ $624. S289. 6091.LI) 455.IXI 306. Total R¥l*pts 5%74.(X) 59674.(W) $3663.00 PAYMENTS Cler8y and staffing costs Hall and Church running costs combined Church runnin8 Costs Hall running costs Mission giving and donations Le8al/accountan¢y /other one off fees LInceS Subscriptions Administration and Printin8 Miscellaneous ITnelephone Caterin8 Cancelled cheques previous year 33924 25054 33924 . 25054 39931 7280.IXI È105. 7280 405 6863.th) 1843.CK) 1603. 35.¢J) 1834.00 1384.fKI 568.(X) 1070. 1384 568 1070 1323. 210.(K) 277.00 70731 62857.00 IcM).00 70731.tX) Ex¢e55 of Tedepts o¥er payffierts Transfers betwèen fvnds -11057 70731 -9194 Cash at bank and In hand at 31st Marth 2023 641

Report of the Independent Examinerto the Trustees of Hearsall Baptist Church for the year ended 31" March 2023. Respective responsibilities of trustee5 and examiner. The charities trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts In accordance with the terms of the Charities Act 20111"the act"). I report In respect of me examination of the charity's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act, and in carryin8 Out my examination, I have followed the applicable direciions given by the Charity Commisslon under section 145151 Ibl of the Act. Basls of Independent examiner5 Statement. I have completed my examlnation. I confirm that no materlal matters have come to my attention in connection with the examlnation which gives me cause to believe that In any material respect: The accoun8 record5 were not kept In accordance wlth 130 of the Charltles Art.. or the account5 did not accord with accounting records. I have no concerns and have not come across no other rnatters In connertlon to the examination to whlch attention should be drawn In the report in order to enable a proper understandln8 of the accounts to be reached. Signed........................... .G K Insley 68 WindyArbour Kenilworth CV8 2BB