the stewardship magazine | issue 30

MANCHESTER

transforming generosity

A CITY TRANSFORMED?

ANDY HAWTHORNE OBE

ABIMBOLA & FOLU KOMOLAFE

DAVE SMITH

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Attention Charities and Churches:

Contact us 1 Lamb’s Passage, London EC1Y 8AB

020 8502 5600enquiries@stewardship.org.ukstewardship.org.ukYou can contact the editor by emailing editor@stewardship.org.ukEditor: Craig BorlaseDesign: adeptdesign.co.uk

Stewardship is the operating name of Stewardship Services (UKET) Limited, a registered charity in England and Wales no. 234714 and a company limited by guarantee no. 90305

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We are Stewardship, a charity that effectively releases resources to support individuals, charities and organisations worldwide. Our mission is to enable you to live and give generously, advancing God’s Kingdom.

We believe that generosity is transformational, for the giver and for the receiver. Our work inspires and supports a generous resourcing community, with transformational results.

We are delighted to partner with you in your journey of generosity.

About us

I just can’t help it, I’m friendly. I like to say hello and good morning to neighbours I know, as well as those I don’t. In fact, the more they resist, the greater my resolve to wear

them down over time.

Sometimes it backfires.

I had just spent the afternoon in Manchester and my mind was still buzzing after meeting with Andy Hawthorne at his Manchester office. Honestly, whilst Andy was truly inspiring, I found myself deep in thought about everyone else I had met there. The baristas, bike mechanics, beauticians, wedding planners, t-shirt designers, entrepreneurs, evangelists, musicians…

It was easy to see this was a unique and special place. It was more than a collection of staff, ex-offenders or those not in education, employment or training. It was more than a programme. It was a community.

I found myself on a train platform, sheltering from the cold light rain, when an older man approached and greeted me. I gave him one of my friendliest hellos. We chatted briefly about planning permission and his thoughts on the flats adjacent to the platform and then he asked me what I did for a living. As he listened to my reply his generous smile disappeared. He told me that he had little time for religion, and I had little chance of explaining I wasn’t much for religion either.

He felt all the religions were the same and they should just become one and save money. I tactfully tried to explain that they all had different beliefs but he wasn’t interested. This friendly greeting was in danger of backfiring.

I thought back to the community I had just left. Rich or poor, black or white, male or female, ex-offender or not, it didn’t matter. Religion wasn’t the core of that community; it was relationship – with each other, and – fundamentally – with Jesus Christ.

This issue of Share features stories that we gathered on that trip to Manchester. Together they form one big story of ordinary people making extra-ordinary choices, changing whole communities in the process.

When the train pulled in and I took my seat in the empty carriage, the man from the platform sat right next to me. He didn’t want my religion but he wanted a friend. Perhaps my friendly outlook hadn’t backfired after all. Perhaps the risk is always worth it.

Michael O’Neill, CEO Stewardship

Editorial

Contact us 1 Lamb’s Passage, London EC1Y 8AB

020 8502 5600enquiries@stewardship.org.ukstewardship.org.ukYou can contact the editor by emailing editor@stewardship.org.ukEditor: Craig BorlaseDesign: adeptdesign.co.uk

Campaigning all the way to the bankJustin Welby and anti-poverty campaigner Frank Field have joined forces to launch a report into the increasing reliance of many UK families on food banks.

The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the UK have published their report, Feeding Britain, which flags up failures in the welfare system and makes suggestions for eliminating hidden hunger in the UK. Food banks were launched nationally in 2004 and since then have grown at an incredible rate. The Archbishop is clear about the organisation’s role in feeding the hungry: “This extraordinary achievement has been done without the assistance of central government. If the Prime Minister wants to meet his Big Society, it is here.”

Indian adventureThe team from Life Association (see Share 27) completed a coast to coast cycle across India last autumn. Ten riders took ten days to complete the route that exceeded 1000km. Three times the team had to increase their fundraising target to keep pace with givers. In the end they raised over £40,000 – enough to make education freely available through their school in Machilipatnam, as well as enough to establish a health centre at their school in Gannavaram, benefiting not just the children in their care, but also the local community who are barred from distant health care centres by lack of money or lack of transport.

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News in brief

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Features6 40acts turns five

8 Stewardship: where we’re heading

10 Manchester: the church responds

12 Making the message known: Andy Hawthorne OBE

18 The power of a phone call: Dave Smith

22 Glorious generosity: Pastors Abimbola and Folu Komolafe

26 Legal and financial roundup

28 Consultancy helpline

The magazine is printed on paper from farmed forests: for each tree felled, another is planted. The paper is chlorine-free and environmentally friendly.

Payroll awardStewardship’s very own Payroll Bureau team were shortlisted for the Payroll Service Provider of the Year Awards 2015. The team’s nomination was supported by a raft of overwhelmingly positive feedback from some of the 400 churches and charities currently outsourcing their payroll to Stewardship. The black tie ceremony was a glittering affair, held in London on 5th March, and we’re delighted to announce that we won. Well done to everyone on the team!

Like what you read? Use your Stewardship account to lend your support

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Now we Are

Stewardship’s multi award-winning Lent campaign, 40acts celebrated its fifth year.

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Sam Donoghue is involved with Childrenswork magazine and works for

the Diocese of London. “My Lent experience had been fairly hard work; I gave up sugar three years on the trot! I’m known for my deep and abiding love of biscuits so it was a huge sacrifice.” News of the 40acts strap line – ‘giving out not giving up’ – put a big smile on Sam’s face. “I was ripe for the picking. I’d done the giving up bit and was more than ready to take on something new. I loved the kids’ resources in the campaign. Kids really get generosity and the graciousness of God.”

Phil Hulks is Urban Saints’ Cluster Development Director. “I’d known about 40acts for several years and liked it a lot. Last year, we partnered with them and produced materials and resources for youth. We heard some great stories about acts of kindness in the community. It was a wonderful experience!”

Bex Lewis is a Research Fellow in Social Media and Online Learning at Durham University. “I ran a Lent course for several years and I love the way 40acts gives thousands of people a simple and integrated message.”

Rob Allin, Stewardship Pastor at Cambridge Community Church, loves the deliberate acts of kindness encouraged by the campaign. “I always say you can’t out-give God. As a church, we’re focusing on having an attitude of gratitude during 40acts and beyond.”

Clare Hendry wrote for the 2011 campaign. “When you give up chocolate for Lent, it’s all about you. When you get involved in generosity then it’s all about Jesus, reflecting in a small way his amazing generosity on the cross, and that helps us to share our faith.”

Sam Hailes is a freelance journalist and self-confessed screen addict. “I wrote about putting your phone down,” he says. “Technology is a tool. It needs to be put in its proper place. Putting our phones down can help us focus on strengthening our real life relationships away from the distractions that technology can sometimes bring.”

Emily Owen contributed to 2014’s campaign. “Lent has had bad connotations in the past, but 40acts takes the concept and flips it on its head. Anything which takes Christians out into the world has got to be good.”

Amen to that. Happy birthday 40acts!40acts.org.uk

With stats like those, the team met up in January to celebrate and reflect.

with

1500 PEOPLE taking up the challenge,

attracted

46,000 SUBSCRIBERS

and prompted around

1.8 MILLION ACTS OF GENEROSITY

CAMPAIGN

OUR

2014

Having launched in 2011

Subscribers for this year's campaign currently at

73,000!

STOP PRESS!

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With a move in to the city, new members of the team and exciting new projects on the horizon, Stewardship has been through a lot of change lately.

These changes are the result of a growing sense

among staff and trustees that Stewardship’s role should be transformational, as well as transactional.

Over the last two years we’ve worked through a process to discern what this role might look like into the future. We’ve arrived at a brand new vision statement, a refined mission, both underpinned by our values of generosity, relationship, integrity and excellence.

THE W RLD

Encounter JesusTO

CHURCH GENEROSITY

making giving EASY

INSPIRING

greater generosity

STRENGTHENING C h r i s t i a n c a u s e s

A NEW VISION FOR STEWARDSHIP

We believe that these new statements reflect the unique position that Stewardship has amongst other ministries serving and representing the UK Church. The renewed vision statement has captured the imagination of staff and we’re excited as to what the future holds.

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Why making giving easy?Stewardship is already trusted with around £60million of charitable giving each year, and it’s a responsibility we don’t carry lightly. We also recognise that the world is changing rapidly, with digital technology providing significant opportunities to improve the way in which we are able to move financial resources from those who give, to the ministries and causes on the frontline. Our ambition is to make the mechanics of giving as straightforward and easy as possible for those using our services.

Why inspiring greater generosity?As a charity independent of any one denomination (yet working with them all) we believe we are uniquely positioned to influence and inspire future generations to understand what a life of Christian generosity looks like. The growing appeal of our generosity resources, such as 40acts and Advent Wonder have confirmed to us that many Christians want help and support in this important area of their discipleship. Our ambition is to ensure that money discipleship and generosity are being taught confidently in our churches.

Why strengthening Christian causes?Last month the Charity Commission announced that a further 17 organisations – including three churches or Christian ministries – were under investigation for not filing their accounts for a second year running. We believe that strong, well governed Christian recipients – whether churches, charities or individuals in Christian service – who steward their finances diligently and transparently, are a powerful witness to the wider world.

Encounter JesusTO

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MAN C H E STER

A B R I E F H I S T O R Y

Once it was just another northern town surrounded by a sea of green

countryside. Many of the 75,000 people who called it home worked in the textiles industry, but at best the place was a poor relation to the bustle and trade of its westward neighbour, Liverpool.

That was in 1801. Within a few years the full power of the Industrial Revolution had taken hold of Manchester, and everything started to change.

People poured into the town from the surrounding countryside, putting huge pressure on housing and sanitation. In the first 40 years of the century, the population trebled in size.

While a UK labourer had a life expectancy of 38, in Manchester, it was just 17. Over half of the children of Manchester workers died before the age of five.

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The story of what came next is all too familiar. A wealthy middle class emerged, growing rich on the proceeds of manufacturing, while thousands toiled in poverty to support that success.

In 1842, contemporary social commentator Rev R Parkinson stated: “There is no town in the world where the distance between the rich and the poor is so great.” In the period that became known as the Hungry Forties, Manchester paid the price for being the heart of the industrial north with infamous levels of squalor, poverty and high infant mortality.

While a UK labourer had a life expectancy of 38, in Manchester, it was just 17. Over half of the children of Manchester workers died before the age of five. In one slum alone, 380 people shared just one privy.

And what of the church? They did not stay silent. As the wife of a Manchester-based Unitarian minister and a successful novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell was clear-sighted about the town’s horrors. She recounts meeting a poor man who grasped her arm and said, with tears in his eyes: “Ma’am, have ye ever seen a child clemmed [starved] to death?” Her novels, notably Mary Barton and North and South paint a picture of a town in crisis. Many of the town’s churches, including Cross Street Chapel, pastored by her husband William, banded together to address poverty and suffering.

There are clear parallels between the recent rise of food banks and the response to Manchester’s crushing poverty in the 19th century. Christian philanthropists distributed shoes, clothing, soup tickets, food and bedding. They also responded directly to need – when typhus and cholera broke out, one philanthropist funded a public wash house to cut down on infection.

At a time when there was plenty of judgmental charity that came with strings attached (the “deserving poor” versus everyone else), Manchester showed what Christ-driven compassion looked like as Christians went into the slums and gave help where it was needed, without the requirement of tract reading or regular chapel attendance.

These ordinary Christians, many of whose names have been long since forgotten, embraced the call to sacrifice what they had for the sake of helping others. It was yet another case of the Church doing what the Church does best: putting aside differences and uniting for the sake of the Gospel.

In the 1980s and 90s Manchester became known as the home of new British music. The angst, the swagger and the hedonism all folded into a sound that only added to the city’s fame.

But that wasn’t the only new phenomenon growing up from Manchester’s streets. The church was starting to wake again…

Elizabeth Gaskell

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A n ill-equipped team. An oversized vision. Too little experience and barely any expertise to speak of. But passion. Lots of passion.

It didn’t take long for Andy Hawthorne OBE to discover that his first steps as an evangelist were precisely the kind that seem to lie at the start of some of the very best God-shaped adventures.

A STORY OF PROVISION AND PERSEVERANCE

In many ways the early years of Andy Hawthorne are typical of many Christians. He and his two brothers were brought up by God-following parents who continued to love their boys when they turned their back on the faith and chose teenage rebellion instead. In time each of the brothers returned to Christ, bringing – like so many prodigals – a fresh perspective on God’s grace and calling.

Yet what Andy and his brother Simon did next was a little less typical; shocked by the numbers of young men they met who were straight out of prison and had clearly never heard the Gospel in language they could understand, they chose to put their successful fashion business at risk and put on an ambitious multi-event mission throughout their beloved home city, Manchester.

“This was in 1987 when Western Europe had turned its back on God and was the only place in the world where Christianity wasn’t growing. And of all the cities across the continent, the church decline in Manchester was the steepest.”

In need of support, the brothers met with local church leaders, yet not every conversation boosted their confidence. “The bishop told us that he couldn’t think of a single church out of 360 that had a lively youth group,” says Andy.

And yet by the end of the week-long mission young people were queuing up all afternoon to crowd themselves into the 3,500-seater venue for the evening meeting.

And so, from that point on, a pattern was established; Andy, his brother Simon and a growing team of others – forming a charity called The Message – learned to look for the areas of need, pray about what they could do in response and commit themselves to act.

What they saw around them was a whole generation whose only knowledge of Jesus was as a swear word. After another week of mission in 1988 they launched The World Wide Message Tribe; a schools band presenting a clear Gospel message.

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The bishop told us that he couldn’t think of a single church out of 360 that had a lively youth group.

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Any DIY enthusiast knows that dealing with one problem inevitably reveals another. And so it was with The Message. “We were invited to work in two schools in Benchill. At the time it was the worst of all 34,000 wards in Britain – a place known for drive-by shootings and prostitutes hanging around on the streets. The police wouldn’t let us do our usual closing gig in the school, so we held it in the hall. 700 kids turned up, I preached and 100 of them properly gave their lives to Christ. The next Sunday they all came to church – the only one we could find to partner with – and overnight the congregation went from 20 to 120. But nobody told these lads and girls that you don’t bring dogs and skateboards to church. The church wasn’t equipped to deal with kids with that much baggage and so we watched the vast number of them fall away.”

We’re not going to see society really changed by lots of food banks or lots of debt relief or loads of people living in tough communities – as much as those things are Gospel imperative. We’re going to see society changed by the Gospel changing people’s hearts.

And so began Eden; an invitation to Christians to move in and change the community from the inside out. Eden became one of the most ambitious, inspiring programmes to come out of the UK church for decades, and over 300 people applied to join the 25-strong team that moved into Benchill. “Like most of our best ideas it was pragmatic,” says Andy. It took time for the community to start to trust the Eden team, but as they did, crime started to fall and the first shoots of change became visible. Even the Daily Telegraph noticed it, reporting on the project in 2000 with the headline ‘Could these people raise your house price?’

Over the years that same pattern of looking, praying and responding has driven Eden’s dramatic growth. Today there are over 30 Eden teams spread across the UK and beyond; projects in South Africa are already under way and there are plans to start working in Canada.

It is the same approach that drove The Message to launch the Enterprise Centre – providing ex-offenders with a job and training alongside a home and supportive local church. “We’re targeting the hardest to reach; the same people that the government are spending billions on through the probation service. But while they’re seeing 80% reoffending within 2 years, we’re seeing about 5%.”

The impact of The Message has gone even wider than the dozens of Eden projects, hundreds of local schools and thousands of

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young people it has worked with over the years. Its impact has been felt across the city. Like a cyclist at the front of the peloton, the passion, enthusiasm and determination of The Message has made it just a little easier for others that have followed, as the other stories in this magazine make clear.

But with a successful charity firmly established, good work being carried out in the city and beyond and even a trip to Buckingham Palace in the bag, neither Andy nor anyone at The Message are looking to coast.

“We can forget as a church that nobody else is going to share the Gospel. We’re not going to see society really changed by lots of food banks or lots of debt relief or loads of people living in tough communities – as much as those things are Gospel imperative. We’re going to see society changed by the Gospel changing people’s hearts. That’s why this next season we’re looking to recruit, train and release loads of evangelists. I’m gathering ten fruitful young evangelists around me, but within a year I want those ten to have their own ten.”

Unsurprisingly, Andy has a lot of time for Billy Graham. “I was moved watching the video he did recently where he said ‘I will preach this Gospel as long as God gives me breath.’ That’s exactly the kind of perseverance that we need.

The Message20025053

“Too often we overestimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate what can be achieved in ten. We just need to keep going with a good heart – a good and noble heart, that has Jesus’ agenda for the poor and the lost – and see it right the way through to the end.”

Back in 1987, after that first mission was over, Andy and Simon were troubled by a £6,500 shortfall. “All the giving had stopped and the braces we’d been selling like hot cakes had finally gone out of fashion. There were all these bills on my desk and I drove home one day with a heavy heart. The phone rang when I got in and it was an old lady telling me that she had just received £4,000 that she didn’t need and wanted to give it away. Ten minutes later I was round there with a bunch of flowers, she gave me the cheque and we had an amazing time of prayer.”

Of course, the remaining £2,500 came in the next day, thanks to an unexpected VAT refund. But it was the previous day’s gift that bears so many of the hallmarks of God at work; an act of great generosity, the uniting of people from different backgrounds, the kind of timing that encourages all involved to persevere. When experiences like those present themselves to us, we know we’re on the right track.

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When you’re fishing people out of the river there comes a time when you ask who’s chucking them in.

How one simple question changed everything

DO YOU WANT TO

OUT?

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* See page 17

A few years after Andy Hawthorne was seen running around the

streets of Manchester with a bunch of flowers for the radically generous OAP* who had just become woven into God’s story of hope for the city, a bored German teacher picked up the phone as it rang in his home one evening.

“It was a friend of my wife Shona asking if we wanted to help out on a Sunday evening soup run,” says Dave Smith. “We thought ‘we don’t have anything else on, so why not?’”

And that is how it all began. A simple request, a brief pause to consider it, a small step into the unknown.

Over twenty years have passed since Dave and Shona returned home from their first night helping to feed, clothe and care for the city’s homeless.

Manchester, he says, has changed considerably. “I’ve been here for getting on for 40 years and when we first came it was very sectarian. Churches were all highly suspicious of each other and they didn’t do anything together. That’s changed. People have come to realise that the Gospel is more than personal salvation. Evangelicals first discovered social action and now they’ve discovered social justice. Social action is meeting the needs in front of you and social justice is looking behind those needs to what’s causing them. It’s what Jim Wallis meant when he said: “When you’re fishing people out of the river there comes a time when you ask who’s chucking them in.”

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For the six years that followed his initial experience of the Sunday evening soup run, Dave remained a slightly frustrated sixth form German teacher. During that time he, Shona and some friends established a charity – Mustard Tree – which helped deliver a wider range of services to the city’s homeless, but it was only when redundancy was offered that he approached his Trustees with a plan to dramatically increase the charity’s work.

had been put on death row for refusing to obey instructions to go and sign the death certificates in the death camps and he gradually told me his story – how he escaped and what life was like for him now.

“What shocked me most was hearing that even though he had been given a flat on the 14th floor of a block in Hulme, the only contents were a bed and a cooker. He had nothing to cook with, no curtains and nothing to sit on. He had £30 a week in vouchers that could only be spent in three stores in the whole of Manchester, the nearest of which was two miles away. All he could buy there was food and maybe a few household goods, but nothing else. So he came in twice a week to see what he could get from us.”

The former eye surgeon told others and within a few weeks Mustard Tree began to reflect the political instability worldwide; asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Kosovo and Africa all came in search of help.

“It blew my mind that there were so many of them and that they were being so shoddily treated when they got here. So many of them told about not getting benefits through, about landlords that didn’t care two hoots and left them without hot water for three weeks. And then we came across the ones who were destitute; the ones sleeping rough.”

With changes in immigration law in 2003 threatening to make life even harder, Mustard Tree started a new project specifically designed to help destitute asylum seekers. “The first week 15 people turned up. Within four months we were up to 85.

“We had people staying on our sofa bed, including a former child soldier from Uganda who’d been abducted by the LRA, but things took off. It got too big for Mustard Tree, so

It blew my mind that there were so many of them and that they were being so shoddily treated when they got here.

“I told the Trustees that I wanted to go full-time. They said that the fact we didn’t have any volunteers was a problem. ‘What are you going to do on your own?’ they asked. I told them that the reason we didn’t have any volunteers was because we didn’t have anyone full-time who was recruiting. So they said if I could get twenty volunteers by the end of the month I could go full-time. On the last day of the month I finally got our twentieth volunteer.”

Within a year Mustard Tree was renting rooms in an old mill in Rusholme and giving away everything from food and clothing to kitchen utensils and furniture to those caught in poverty. And then, in 1999, it happened again; a simple encounter that changed everything.

“The first asylum seeker turned up. I knew nothing about asylum in this country, but here was this little guy who had been an Iraqi eye surgeon in Saddam’s army. He

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we started the Boaz Trust.” Yet again, Dave was back to the beginning, with no initial funding until his church stepped in.

A decade on, the Boaz Trust has 14 houses, most of them loaned, from which they provide accommodation and support to destitute asylum seekers. And even though you might not know it, there are thirty other groups across the country doing similar work to them.

It is a misunderstood area of work.

“Some churches wonder whether this is legal. They assume that if people have been refused asylum

Boaz Trust20100645

Mustard Tree20029436

that they should therefore be sent back. It’s not illegal as long as they’re complying with what the Home Office have asked of them and we’re not doing anything illegal by housing them,” explains Dave, before pausing.

“Remember Corrie ten Boom? She did loads of stuff that was totally illegal but is now almost beatified. Even if helping destitute asylum seekers was illegal we’d still be doing the right thing. It’s morally correct.”

How one church reimagined

the role of generosity in their

Sunday service

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How one church reimagined

the role of generosity in their

Sunday service

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This is a simple story. It’s about sacrifice, compassion and risk and how those three

attributes can cause a husband and wife to leave their homeland and relocate thousands of miles away. It’s about the turning upside down of some of our assumptions about who is the giver and who is in need. But most of all this is a story about generosity and the infectious, glorious, joyous power that surges within it.

We start in Lagos, Nigeria. It was 2003 and Pastor Abimbola Komolafe and his wife Pastor Folu had seen their church thrive. Numbers were up, but it was time to go. Like all missionaries, they recognised the call to make a new home in a community that is in desperate need of God’s help.

They arrived in Gorton, Manchester, a few minutes outside the city centre but a million miles away from the affluent world of hyper-wealthy footballers, socially-mobile media types or dynamic entrepreneurs. If Gorton is famous for anything, it is as the location for the Channel 4 series Shameless, the one-time home of moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady and the fact that the imposing former Franciscan monastery was abandoned and left empty in 1989.

With the backing of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastors Abimbola and Folu Komolafe planted Jubilee Church. Their aim was simple: “to be an extension of the hand of God.”

As well as building up the church with all the usual Sunday and mid-week services, they started reaching out to the local community, in particular those who were homeless and those living in poverty. It worked, with the church growing so rapidly that it has already planted ten other churches and the original Sunday congregation tops 1,000.

Jubilee Church20091887

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Any single mother or widow could come along and receive a gift – always cash, sometimes food

But that’s not the best part of the story.

Two and a half years ago, Pastor Abimbola shared a vision with the church one Sunday. He told them about the way his old church back in Lagos was based next to an army barracks, and how they developed a particular ministry among widows, inviting them in for a free meal once a month.

Would Jubilee Church want to do something similar for the widows and single mothers of Gorton?

“They were 100% behind us,” he explains, which translates as: ‘they funded the project entirely.’

And so it began; a monthly service where any single mother or widow could come along to Jubilee and receive a gift – always cash (ranging from £50 to £100) and sometimes food or some other item to help their welfare. The amount varies from month to month depending on the size of the collection (never less than £8,000) and the numbers of women who come (as many as 230).

“Anyone – any single mother, any widow, anyone who is a member of this congregation or anyone who isn’t, anyone who is a Christian or anyone who isn’t – can come.” says Pastor Folu. “Africans, Caribbeans, British, they all come. We tell them that we’re doing this on behalf of our Saviour because this is exactly what He did. We encourage them to surrender their lives to Him and quite a lot do. And on the following Saturday we gather them for a meeting to learn more about God. We hear people giving testimonies there, saying how they’d never been to church before, how they’d been down on themselves for a long time, how they never thought they were anybody but they’ve given their lives to Christ and everything has changed.”

“There’s a lot of crying during our first Sunday service,” says Pastor Abimbola.

Is the system open to abuse? “We try to make sure that people who aren’t meant to be there aren’t. We take their addresses, we teach them from the Bible why we’re doing it and remind them not to take it if they shouldn’t be receiving it. One time we had a man call us up and tell us that his wife had taken money the week before even though she clearly wasn’t a widow or a single mother. She didn’t try it again. But even if people do try to deceive us we want to do this for God, it’s between them and God.”

Despite the fact that news is spreading about the church’s generosity, and some people travel from Liverpool and Leeds for the gift, most of the women who walk up to the front of the church on the first Sunday are local.

“If there’s one thing about Jubilee Church, it’s a church that gives,” says Pastor Abimbola. “We’re still just taking the words of Jesus and putting them into action. We’re just taking steps as we believe we are led by the Holy Spirit.”

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Kevin Russell explores what’s new and noteworthy

Legal & financial roundup

Visit stewardship.org.uk/share30 for more on each of these items, plus full links

Tax effective giving – is it just Gift Aid?There are a number of ways of giving, tax effectively, to charity. Our blog outlines various means of giving, and links to helpful Stewardship Briefing Papers that go into more depth including how to make best use of the available reliefs.

It covers Gift Aid, gifts of quoted shares and securities, Gifts of land and property, Legacy giving, Deeds of Variation, Payroll Giving, and the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme.

Up and coming changesFor more details on any of these changes, please see our blog.

c The National Insurance Employment Allowance of £2,000 pa is being extended to the employment of personal carers in the home.

c The disposal of UK property by a non-UK resident person is to become liable to capital gains tax. This is likely to affect missionaries serving abroad who decide to sell their UK home.

c Social Investment Tax Relief is to be extended, subject to European approval, making it more likely to be a feasible option for raising capital.

Risk managementThe Institute of Risk Management has produced a two-page summary on how charities should approach risk management. Our blog contains a link to the IRM paper and also to the comprehensive Stewardship Risk Management Toolkit.

Have you paid enough tax to ‘cover’ your Gift Aid donations?HMRC have recently been challenged by both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee to take steps to reduce the amount of Gift Aid incorrectly claimed because donors have not paid sufficient tax to ‘cover’ their Gift Aid donations.

Our blog explains why this has become an increasing problem and how a lady earning £13,000 per annum is not paying sufficient tax to cover all of her donations.

Kevin Russell, Technical Director

For the very latest news, subscribe to our free Sharpen email bulletin (formerly known as Legal Eagle) by visiting our website stewardship.org.uk You can also check our Blog pages for technical updates on law, accounting and tax stewardship.org.uk/blog

Twitter updatesStewardship’s Technical Director is now on Twitter. Keep up to date with all the Tech Tweets by following Kevin @KevnRussell (no ‘i’ in Kevn!)

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HMRC charities digital serviceHMRC has launched a new online service, allowing charities to apply for recognition as a ‘tax charity’. Recognition as a charity by HMRC is entirely separate from registration with the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI and is required by law, if the charity is to benefit from tax reliefs such as Gift Aid.

The online service replaces paper form ChA1. Later in the year, HMRC also hope to bring form ChV1, which deals with variations to a charity’s registration, within the online service.

New charities and those that have not previously been recognised by HMRC as a tax charity should register now. For more details and a link to our Briefing Note on recognition as a ‘tax charity’ by HMRC, please visit our blog.

Payroll, PAYE and employee benefits simplificationsStarting in April 2015 and April 2016, there will be a series of simplifications to payroll administration:

c There will be a statutory exemption for trivial benefits in kind, broadly, those costing less than £50. These will no longer need to be reported on form P11D or be subject to a PAYE Settlement Agreement (2015).

c Certain expense payments and benefits, deductible from tax if incurred by the employee direct, will no longer need to be reported on form P11D, or be subject to a formal dispensation. They will be treated as tax exempt (2016).

c Certain benefits in kind (car, car fuel, private medical cover and gym membership subscriptions) will be able to be voluntarily dealt with through the payroll. No P11D reporting, or adjustment of PAYE codes, will be necessary (2016).

ScotlandOSCR have put the first of a series of model charity accounts onto their website. They can be accessed from oscr.org.uk (Navigate through the following pages: Charities/Managing Your Charity/Charity Accounting) and cover SCIOs using Receipts and Payments accounting.

Northern IrelandIt is now compulsory for all charities in Northern Ireland to register with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. They are urging all charities that have not yet heard from the Commission to follow the steps at www.charitycommissionni.org.uk (Navigate through the following pages: Manage Your Charity/Register Your Charity/Registration List and Expression of Intent Form).

HMS GRANT

Professional advice for churches and charities

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Ask Steve… Stephen Mathews heads up the Stewardship consultancy helpline team, a specialist service offering expert knowledge to churches and charities.

Q: I hear from other churches that HMRC is challenging whether grants made overseas are allowable charitable expenditure. We make several overseas grants – what should we do?

The Church in the UK has a rich tradition of working in partnership with overseas churches and other organisations to spread the gospel, bring social justice and poverty relief. We want to see it continue to flourish.

However, recently we have been involved with a number of churches facing challenges from HMRC concerning grants made overseas, particularly where the grant is made for general rather than a specific purpose. Responding to these challenges is time consuming and perhaps costly, and in the event that a grant is not allowed there can be tax implications for the church.

The simple risk-free, but we believe inherently wrong, solution is to stop making overseas grants. A better solution is to carry on, but to consider what you should do to withstand a future challenge. The key watch-word is documentation. Documentation to show how the decision to make the grant was reached;

documentation to show that the grant reached the intended recipient; documentation to demonstrate that the grant was used for the charitable purpose as intended.

This link above takes you to our recently updated briefing paper offering practical advice to churches wanting to make payments overseas.

Visit stewardship.org.uk/blog for links to all the briefing papers mentioned

Stephen Mathews, Head of Accountancy and Consultancy Services.

Struggling to keep up with payroll changes? Worried your church or charity is not paying staff correctly? Our Payroll Bureau team can help lighten the load. Visit stewardship.org.uk/payroll-bureau to find out more.

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If you have a question you would like addressed in a future edition of Share, please write to us at editor@stewardship.org.uk

Q: Our church treasurer looks after every aspect of our church finances. Is it wise to manage all our financial requirements through one person?

The role of church treasurer is not easy to fill and if your church has a competent treasurer then the temptation is to leave all financial matters in their capable hands. However, there are several reasons why this might not be the wisest course of action.

Firstly, the role of treasurer can be an onerous one. Charity legislation and financial requirements continue growing and simply keeping up-to-date is a real challenge. Carrying that workload alone can be stressful and may result in errors that might otherwise be avoided.

Secondly, there is the issue of succession. Should the treasurer be struck by the proverbial number 7 bus what happens then? All the knowledge and established procedures go with them to glory and the role seems ever more daunting.

Thirdly, and less palatable to consider is the risk of misappropriation of funds. Money has real power and leaving its management to a single person will inevitably bring a level of temptation. The Bible teaches us to do right in the eyes of God and of man. Reducing that temptation by sharing responsibilities is wise.

Ideally, finance is a team game. Building a finance team will: lessen the load on one person, remove some of the mystique, provide succession planning, provide reassurance to the church and external parties alike, and dare I say even make church finance fun. The briefing paper, found at the link opposite, offers more practical tips.

Q: We are a small church without our own building. We have an opportunity to take out a 10-year lease on a suitable building. From a financial angle, what should we think about?

Ten years is a long time frame, and much can happen to a church. So the basic question is one of affordability; not just now, but over the whole duration of the lease.

Entering into a lease produces a binding contractual obligation for the church for the entirety of the lease and may have a sting in the tail in the form of dilapidations (a requirement to return the building to the same state as when the lease started). Whilst lease repayments may seem affordable today, the church must address the issue of affordability into the future. This is particularly true for small churches perhaps heavily reliant on donations from a few families.

Issues like this inevitably create a tension between trusting in God for His provision, and the seemingly more mundane ‘worldly’ issues of planning, understanding risk, and sound financial controls. God will always be the provider, but the story that Jesus tells in Luke 14: 28-30 of the man who starts building but then runs out of money is a sobering one. The conclusion of the story is that the man is ridiculed; the consequences for the church and its leaders in the event of a default on the lease repayments might be more serious.

Visit stewardship.org.uk/blog for links to all the briefing papers mentioned

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