Welcome

St Michael & All Angels Church is delighted to welcome everyone. Our mission is to encounter and develop a loving relationship with God, and to take the gospel out into the community in love and service while providing a supportive Christian fellowship.  We are a friendly, welcoming church. We wish to continue and develop our work with families with less formal worship, while continuing our services focussed on sacramental spirituality and prayer following the liturgical year.  We believe in living our faith through care for others in the local and wider community as well as within the church membership. We desire to share our belief that Jesus loves us whatever our race, gender etc and in his summary of the commandments to love God and our neighbours as ourselves.

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Important notice regarding coronavirus

Regrettably, during the current health crisis, all churches have been closed – but prayer and public worship continues. All our services are being streamed on Facebook.

To access, simply click on the “F” symbol at the top or the foot of this page.  You do not need a Facebook account to watch the service: just click on ‘Posts’, ignore ‘Log in or Create a New Account’ and scroll down until you reach the appropriate video. Earlier services are still available further down. If obscured by a further invitation to subscribe, click on ‘Not now’ at the bottom. If no sound, click on the picture. You can watch the earlier services at any time.

22nd May
 

Dear All

Church life goes on, even in these strange times, and the DCC continues to work on your behalf, as Daphne explains….

On Friday evening (15^th May) our DCC (District Church Council) held a meeting on Zoom. Sharon hosted this, John Gibbs and Daphne Scott, our Church wardens, Peter Simmonds, Hamish Broom, Mary Bischoff and Lynn Johnson, DCC members, were joined by Nicki Edwards, Honorary Treasurer of our Team PCC. You would be right in thinking that our subject for discussion was our Church finances.

All charities are finding that donations are down but basic costs remain the same. Our church is no different. We know, too, that some people are in difficulties themselves.

As our church management committee, it is the DCC’s responsibility to monitor and decide how to deal with this present difficulty. The Church of England is wealthy you may believe. It is indeed asset rich and it has beautiful buildings that are costly to maintain. We maintain our local church. We pay for our priests and their housing through our Parish Share which goes to the Diocese.

We are in a good position, having some funds in reserve, but even before the lock down our expenditure was predicted to exceed our income.

Following the lock down our hall income is non-existent, the rental from Bekonskot for our carpark has gone, we don’t have our plate collection at services and our Spring Fair had to be cancelled. If you have looked at last year’s accounts, which would have been presented at our Annual Church Meeting at the end of April, you will see that this accounts for about a third of our income.

To mitigate this Gemma, our Hall Manager, has been in contact with suppliers of water to pause payment, and every item of expenditure is being carefully assessed. Zoe Lawrence, Office Manager, is keeping up with the bookkeeping and Geoff Naylor is producing monthly management accounts for us, instead of 3 monthly, for which we are very grateful.

As a Church we have been good at responding to appeals for specific projects such as the floodlighting and Centenary Fund but regular, predictable giving is needed for the day to day running costs. Yet we live in unpredictable times!

Hamish volunteered to help with another letter to ask people to give using the Parish Giving Scheme, which can now be arranged over the telephone as well as by downloading an application form.

The three Anglican churches have developed online services attracting over 500 on Sundays and there are ways to explore so parishioners could donate at the time.

We may be able to prepare for social events and fundraising before we can meet together.

There was consensus that we must not be afraid of talking about money, so we are sharing the concerns with you all.

The Plant growers have been finding ways of selling the plants grown for our Spring Fair and sending the money via our Golden Giving account.

We need ideas for the future, so do let us know your thoughts. Our DCC will meet again when we have the next month’s accounts.

Daphne Scott and John Gibbs-Church Wardens May2020

Fundraising for St Michael and All Angels Church. Our Projects so far. We are continuously improving St Michael and All Angels Church. Recently we resurfaced the Church Path & Church Car Park used by many church goers, hall and meeting room users. If you would like to contribute financially towards our projects, you can do this through Golden Giving.

• Church Path & Church Car Park Fundraising 2018
• Church Flood Lighting 2019

Rotas, please sign up

Useful Information

• St Michael’s Church – Annual Magazine 2018/2019
• Beaconsfield Community Bus