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2024-06-30-accounts

Wormley Free Church Annual Report

(Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion) Office: Huntingdon Lodge, High Road, Broxbourne, Herts. EN10 6AA Registered Charity No. 1194850

Trustees Annual Report July 2023 to June 2024

Until 2021, Wormley Free Church was a constituent part of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion charity, reference 232674. On 18th June 2021 the church was separately registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), with the charity number 1194850. This change was administrative, a move encouraged throughout the Connexion, and the church continues to be an active member of it. This report including financial statements covers the year from July 2023 - June 2024, the third full year of the charity.

Trustees

Following the church handbook, which sits alongside our constitution and describes the church’s ‘spiritual life’, trustees are elected on a revolving basis from the church leadership team, with staggered terms of office.

During the year, our leadership team consisted of:

General Aims and Objectives

As laid out in the Wormley Free Church CIO Constitution, the objects of the CIO for the public benefit are to advance the Christian faith in accordance with the Statement of Beliefs appearing in the Schedule hereto in Wormley, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire and in such other parts of the United Kingdom or the world as the charity trustees may from time to time think fit.

We seek to fulfil these objectives through communicating the Christian faith in relevant ways to our local communities, enabling as many as possible to worship with the church and to become part of our community, and seeking to serve the needs of local people. We seek to enable people to live out their faith through:

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To facilitate this work we employ a minister, Rev. Benjamin Quant, and maintain the fabric of the church building and manse, and hire the local Community Centre for our Sunday services. We employ Mrs Amanda Newman for 2 hours a week to clean the Church.

Mission & Outreach

As a church, sharing our faith through showing and communicating God’s love is a core feature of our life. We encouraged and supported our members in doing so in their daily lives as the ‘dispersed church’. Alongside this we ran organised activities as the ‘gathered church’. In 2023-24, these included:

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All of these activities have continued in 2024/25.

We also ran seasonal services and activities at Harvest, Christmas and Easter to attract and communicate the Christian faith to those who are not Christians or do not usually attend church. Some of these involved working with local schools, churches and organisations, such as those listed in ‘Other Organisations’ below.

All Age Activity

We seek to include, support and reach out to all ages, for example over the year we offered:

Collective Worship

Over the year, we continued to hold services in Wormley Community Centre and sought to ensure our services were accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, and welcoming to visitors as well as regular members. The use of the Community Centre rather than our own building is for a number of reasons:

We would like to address these issues but do not currently have the necessary finance.

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We provide a crèche for toddlers and ‘Sunday Club’ for primary school aged children. Over 2023/24 we had four secondary school aged children who remained in the main service, which we sought through various means to make accessible and engaging for them as well as the rest of the congregation. On the first Sunday of the month and on special days in the church calendar we held all-age services.

Although we have a paid minister, we encourage active participation within our services, and have a range of people in our preaching and service leading team, of different nationalities, ages, backgrounds and genders.

We continued to provide a live-stream and archive of our services on YouTube and our website. This made them accessible for those unable to attend in person. Through use of slido.com, those watching online could interact with us during the services. This has supported those who are unable to attend through illness, through being away, or living outside our local area, particularly those who have moved away and who wish to maintain a relationship with us. This continues to provide a way for those looking for a church to find out about us, along with the website, which, as indicated in last year’s report, we have redesigned to make the homepage more orientated towards the general public, rather than those already attending the church.

Education

Alongside the teaching that took place in Sunday services, we provided a midweek Bible study group. This has continued to take place online as this better suits the lives of our members and makes it available to others outside the area. We also provide a daily Bible Note by email (Monday-Friday), often based on the previous Sunday services’ theme (these are available to the wider public via our website), and weekly email newsletter providing information about our faith, pointing to interesting articles and pieces of news on the internet, and publicising events and activities coming up.

A significant aspect of our education work outside the congregation, takes place in our local schools (see ‘All-Age Activity’ above).

Pastoral Support

Pastoral support was offered to our membership through the leadership team through visits, phone calls, emails, and prayer as desired/appropriate, as well as mutual support being encouraged amongst our members. We continue to be committed to offering prayer support through weekly prayer meetings, praying for the needs of the church and the world, and an active prayer request WhatsApp group.

Pastoral support was also made available to those beyond our membership, to those who attend our regular activities and the wider community. This included opportunities to talk and be prayed for, as well as the provision of funeral services, weddings and dedication / thanksgiving services for children.

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Specific Objectives for 2023/24

At the start of the year, the church leadership and membership prayerfully considered what specific objectives we should focus on for this year, alongside maintaining our ongoing work. This year we have sought to deepen our relationships within the church alongside our ongoing work towards redeveloping our church building to make it more accessible and welcoming and fit for mission.

Deepening our Relationships

Last year we focussed on developing the youth work at the church, building their relationships with each other and holding a monthly Youth Night. We continue to seek to support our teenagers, but decided this year to broaden the focus to deepen the relationships within the whole congregation. This focus was chosen as:

We worked towards this objective in a number of ways:

Over August we took a break from our Bible Study, prayer meeting and Toddler Group programmes, and held a series of ‘Summer Socials’, activities designed to encourage building and deepening relationships. These included activities such as local walks and board game evenings. These were open to all ages and we encouraged the congregation to invite their friends to join us.

Although it is hard to measure the success of this objective in a quantitative way, we sense from the numbers attending our events and services, and reflecting on the mood of these and the health of our relationships, that this has indeed been worthwhile. We will also be welcoming some of our new congregation members into church/CIO membership at our 17th October 2024 AGM.

Church Redevelopment Project

As described in our 2022/23 report, our kitchen has often been at the heart of our life as a community and at the heart of our outreach. From being used for: teas and coffees after services, meals together, and a place to creatively design and make hot chocolate with the

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youth, to being a key component in outreach such as for: meals for Alpha Courses (courses for those exploring Christianity), our weekly Drop In lunch for the local community (mainly attended by elderly people living on their own), meals for the Winter Night Shelter, and refreshments for our Toddler Group and Foodbank volunteers. It is, however, small, making it difficult for more than one or two people to use it at once, in a poor state of repair, and not attractive to the wider community of potential hall hirers. To make it fit for purpose and to enable us to expand the scope of our provision to the congregation and wider community, we decided to investigate refurbishing it and the possibility of extending it. By the end of 2023, through consultation with architects, surveyors, builders, kitchen fitters and others with relevant expertise, as well as through much discussion and prayer as a church community, we decided to look beyond simply redeveloping and refurbishing the kitchen, to a wider redevelopment of the church premises as a whole.

An architect was invited to design and present to the church a vision for its redevelopment with the brief of making it attractive and welcoming, as well as maximising its potential as a resource for fulfilling our mission as a church of serving the local community, and offering Christian worship and education, in an inclusive and accessible way.

During the year, we worked towards submitting planning permission for a project that would result in:

Planning permission was applied for shortly after the end of the year covered by this report and was granted.

The funds required for this project are likely to exceed what is able to be raised from individual donations, and so over the year as a church we spent time praying, raising funds as a congregation, and identifying grant bodies we could apply to once planning permission had been obtained. During the year we raised £15,050 in gifts and gift aid and at the end of the year we had £31,652.68 in the Building Fund Account.

In 2024/25, with our planning permission application being accepted and identifying the scope of the project, we will look to make a series of grant applications alongside our own fundraising as a church, with the hope that we can start the redevelopment in 2025/26.

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Other Activity

Alongside the above activities, as a church, we were involved in three other activities of particular note over the year, which demonstrate our commitment to serving the local community.

Paul Cookson

Paul Cookson is a well-known performance poet, recognised widely for his work with school children. Over November 16th-17th, 2023, we invited and sponsored him to come and run sessions at Wormley Primary School and Broxbourne CE Primary School as a gift from the church and to deepen our relationship with them. This was highly successful. His visit culminated in an evening show at the church to which the local community as well as school families, were invited to.

Kings Award Presentation

As a church, we are a key part of Broxbourne Foodbank. Our minister was one of the team that set it up and is a trustee and regular volunteer, along with others from the church, and another member is also a trustee. The church building is used as the main distribution centre, Monday to Friday each week. The foodbank is entirely staffed by volunteers. In recognition of the faithful, hard work of its volunteers, the Foodbank was awarded the King’s Award for Voluntary Service, the equivalent of an MBE for an organisation, the ceremony for which was held on the 14th March, 2024.

Broxbourne Hustings

On the 30th June, 2024, we coordinated and hosted the local Churches Together Hustings event so that local people could come and hear from and question the candidates for our local MP.

Other Organisations

Where appropriate to our aims and objectives, we have worked with and supported other organisations, including financially as permitted by our aims and objectives. Over the course of the year this included:

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Hall Hire

We make our church premises available for ‘hall hire’ as a source of revenue and as a way of supporting local community events and activities in line with our objectives. Over the year it was hired weekly by Saracen’s children’s cheerleading class and Cocaine Anonymous, monthly by Women Aglow, and ad hoc childrens’ parties and other events. We subsidise hire where needed by groups or individuals which are not-for-profit and serving the local community.

Volunteers

The church fellowship cannot function without the assistance of volunteers. We encourage our members to play an active part in running and attending our activities, and are grateful for their participation.

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Safeguarding

As a church that is committed to being a welcoming and inclusive community for all, we are aware of and alert to the importance of safeguarding, including child protection and caring for vulnerable adults. We have a safeguarding policy in place which we review on a regular basis (available on our website) and consider carefully the implications of contemporary culture, church culture, the ability of all to raise concerns, and the range of forms abuse can take, including spiritual abuse. We continue to be supported in this area by The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion and Thirtyone:eight.

Food Safety

We also recognise the importance of food hygiene and ask those with responsibility for the preparation and serving of food to have up to date training (Level 2 Food Safety & Hygiene). Our February environmental health inspection by Broxbourne Council awarded us 5 stars. The desire to maintain good standards of food hygiene and safety is one of the motivations behind our church redevelopment project.

Financial Review

See Accounts below

Income

The total receipts on unrestricted funds were £62,896 and restricted funds of £26,637, giving a total income of £89,533 an increase of £32,345 in comparison to the total income of £57,188 in 2022-23.

Expenditure

Over the year we spent £53,502 from unrestricted funds and £15,105 from restricted funds, giving a total expenditure of £68,607 an increase of £17,118 when compared to the previous year’s total of £51,489

Balance

Our closing balance was £51,651 an increase of £20,926 on last year’s balance of £30,725

Reserves Policy

It is the church policy to maintain an unrestricted balance of 3 months unrestricted expenditure or £13500 whichever is greater to cover emergency situations that may arise from time to time. The balance of £18,139 exceeds this target.

Administrative Information

The church is situated at High Road, Broxbourne, EN10 6EN. Its registered office is Huntingdon Lodge, High Road, Broxbourne, Herts. EN10 6AA.

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The church has been a registered CIO since 18th June 2021.

The Trustees that have served during the year are:

Jennifer Vallely’s term of office comes to an end at our October AGM when she will stand down. She has agreed to be nominated for a second term, subject to a vote of the membership at our 14th October 2024 AGM ( Her nomination was accepted unanimously by the membership at the AGM ).

We maintain a website: www.wormleyfreechurch.org.uk in order to support and publicise our activities.

Statements

During the year there have been no serious incidents or loss of funds that would pose a serious risk to the Charities beneficiaries, resources or reputation.

Declaration

I declare that this is a true report and in my capacity of Chair of Trustees I am authorised to sign it on behalf of the Trustees.

Name: JENNIFER VALLELY Signature: Date: 13.02.24

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CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examinerfs report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Roport to tho trusteasl membern of Wormiey Free Church On accounts for th• yèar onded June 2024 Charlty no Ilf any) 1194850 Set out on pag•$ 12-13 I report to the trustees on my exarn1nat￿ of the accounts of the above charity ("the Trust") for ts year 8nd8d 30106 12024. R•gponslbllttl•s and As the charity trustees of ￿ Trust. you are responsible for the prepafation basls of rnport of the accounts in aCC￿￿n(￿ with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (Ihe Acr). I report in resped of my examination of the Trust's accounls carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 1495)(bl of the Act. I have completed my examination. I confirni that no material matters have come to my attention in c%)nnection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect: accounting records there not kept in accA)rdance with sectlon 130 of theAdor the accounts do not ac(th with the accounting records Independent oxamlnorfs statem•nt I have rw) concerns and have com8 across no 0th8r matters in connection th the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reathd. Slgned: Date". 1411012024 Namo: Graham Squibbs Relevant professlonal quallficatlon{s) or body (If any): Address: 15 Springfield Road, Middleton, Manchester M24 5DL

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND YIALES 1191850 Receipts and payments accounts CC16a Forthe perlod 1st July 2023 30th Jun• 2024 To Section A Receipts and payments Unrnstrl¢t•d nd• Rostrlct•d nds Endowmont fund• Total lunds L•t b•ar A1 RKo1 v¢4￿¥ry In(xnè 54917 319 57 Gfft TAX R￿rI 19.J43 3,711 GhlÉ for Ind￿￿ Lty• In Powts ToLkBrs S(KJAV ConThnlty FkThl ross income 0,1 510 1.333 AR) Tot•1 A3P• ¥452 Rylr5 M4inlwwKe Insurnr￿ Vlaier 1.141 7.312 210 YoLrth Wr hw ChanUoB 31) 313 Gm$ frK Indmdu Dwln Pol￿ts and TrOJs 170 1.271 171 17$ 510 217 •75 Sub totsl 1410$ 51,409 A4 AsBet and InV￿lM•nI • tabl• Sub total 15.105 ,107 51,489 Nel olrecelptrfpayments) AS Trnnsf•rs b•tw••n lunds A6 C•sh lund* last y•ar •nd Cash ffunds this yearend 11,S3 11.1 33,$1 51,651 30,72 12

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period Unrestrbcted Rtrstrlded fund• nd Endowmvnt fvnds C•tgories t• n•Ar•tt 81 Cash funds 14219 1¢7 Totsl cash funds 18.139 33.512 sll endowment lund8 fvnd• fvnd B2 Olher monotsry a•sets 11412 Pvhot• hi¢h CuTh•nt ¥￿• B4 AsW8 r•laln•d for th• ¢harty• own u FuThd to ¥Jhl 85 Llabllltl•s 135 03.0724 t*haWof ￿1 th8 tDJsle8S Swnabjre Print N8Th Date ol roval JENNIFER VALLELY 14.10.24 13