Ever present God,
be with us in our isolation,
be close to us in our distancing,
be healing in our sickness,
be joy in our sadness,
be light in our darkness,
be wisdom in our confusion,
be all that is familiar when all is unfamiliar,
that now our doors reopen
we may with the zeal of Pentecost
inhabit our communities
and speak of your goodness
to an emerging world.
For Jesus’ sake.

Amen

  From Gloucester Cathedral

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A Prayer for the World

Keep us, good Lord,
under the shadow of your mercy.
Sustain and support the anxious,
be with those who care for the sick,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may find comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us from your love
in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Any church leader will tell you, one of the hardest things to do
is request money from church members. I can remember being
on the other side and thinking “typical. the vicars looking for money again!”
and “Why am I being asked – I give regularly already?”Furthermore,
you all know the reasons for giving to your church.
That what we have is already God’s and we should give
the first part back for ministry and then God lets us use the rest.
That we should give joyfully and sacrificially just as the
widow did when she gave much of what she had
even though it was a mere mite. And you know that giving
to your church is not the same as when we give to charities we support.
The mission of our church is not just another on the list.
Our Treasurer,Charles has looked at our finances and
calculated that the impact on our church will be severe.
He has estimatedwewill be in a deficit of between £13,000 –£22,000,
depending on the length of the crisis.
You can see his full report here

So, in this time of crisis if it is within your means to do so,
can I ask that you give an extra gift this year so we
can be sure of our ministry going forward.
If you usually give by way of the collection can you
consider setting up a standing order through your bank (help here)
for your regular giving or put your contributions aside
for when we are able to meet together again. For those of you
who have increased your giving recently, thank you.
If you haven’t reviewed it for a while, may I ask you to do so.
I am sure the Lord will bless ourfaithfulness when we come through this.

God bless Rev Clive Beazley-long

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A Message from Our Treasurer

An Important update on St. Paul's current Financial Position

pdf | Word | Full Text

Full Text

Like many charities, St. Paul’s church is likely to have a reduced income this year because of COVID19. Fortunately our church has enough to manage this year despite the reduction in income. Other charities are not so fortunate and have an immediate need for financial donations. For instance, local charities that normally rely on income from charity shops are in desperate need of cash. In particular, the Greenwich and Bexley Hospice currently has an emergency appeal.

In 2019, a third of our church’s income came from hall rent. Most of our hall rent is paid on a school term basis. The rent mainly comes from preschool and uniformed organisations. At the moment I am assuming that we will lose a term's rent, so about a third of our total for the year. For a single term we would lose about £11,600.

We still normally collect about £10,000 a year in cash collections. If you could make individual donations by bank transfers instead it would help your church. However, in the next 3 or 4 months, we could lose another £3,000 because we are not having services.

However, all of our church buildings are closed, so we won't have to pay for gas, electricity or water for the next 3 or 4 months. We don't pay much for gas in the summer as the buildings don't need heating, but we may save £1,500 on electricity and water. Also, the church does not currently have a cleaner so we will have a saving on our wages bill of another £1,500.

This year we had budgeted for a deficit of about £1,000. It looks like our deficit will be closer to £13,000. Of course, if churches are not allowed to open until 2021, the loss will be up to £22,000.

Some of you who pay weekly or monthly standing orders have already increased your giving. Thank you! Some of you have lost some or all of your income as you cannot work because of the restrictions currently in place. You cannot support your church financially at the moment and we understand that.

That leaves the rest of us. If you don’t make a regular standing order to the church already, please could you consider starting one? If you cannot commit to regular giving, could you make one off donations to the church using online banking? If you are already making regular payments to the church, are you able to increase them?

If you cannot access online banking, please could you put money aside for your church and let us have your gift when church services resume. You could also send a cheque, made out to “St. Paul’s Church” to:

Charles Brooke
St. Paul’s Church,
Mill Road,
Erith,
DA8 1HN

To start a new standing order or to make one off payments, you will need the following details. NatWest and other banks have recently introduced “Confirmation of payee”. This means that for new standing orders and online payments to the church, you need to use the exact name of the church account. Someone at the banks has not thought this through, as they also restrict the number of characters of the account name you can enter online to 18 characters. Our account name has 19 characters. I hope that the first 18 will do!

Account name:           St Pauls church PCC

Account number:       66526434

Sort Code:                   60-15-28

Reference:                  Your name

If you use your name as a reference and have filled in a Gift Aid form, we can claim tax back from the government.  If you are already making regular payments via bank transfer but have not signed a Gift Aid form, and would like to do so, please let me know and I will post or email one to you.  We can claim back 25% of whatever you give from the tax-man, at no cost to you.

Charles Brooke

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Spring Harvest on Line

All you would need to know about how to access
for free Spring Harvest resources

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Spring Harvest Programme

The programme listed above will appear on our
YouTube channel as a Premiere or a Live Stream.
In addition, all of the Playlists are there at all times to browse
and watch as you please.
All sessions have captions which can be switched on,
BSL for some talks is available in a playlist.

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