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Crestwood Church Blog

State of the Union - Summary

One of our aims at Crestwood is to try and fulfil the command of Christ: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt 28: 19). We plan to do this by planting other churches.

Although planting a church is probably 1-2 years off, we need to do some things before a new church can start to become a reality.

First of all, we need to ensure that Crestwood is strong and
self reliant, in two key areas:

1 - Leaders

While there are many jobs that everyone can be involved in, we also need people who can lead, and are willing to take on responsibilities for certain areas. These leaders may range from the eldership, with responsibility for the entire church, to others with smaller areas of responsibility, or departments.

Department Leaders could organise any number of things. A few examples might include the practical aspects of organising the setting up/taking down of meetings, organising publicity, dealing with storage, arranging missionary support, preparing youth and children's meetings, social events, etc.

2 - Financial

Each year we need to finance the church. Here's a quick summary of where money goes at the moment:

£5,000 a year to hire the Dingle Community Centre
£8,000 for a 40% church worker's salary
£4,500 for other expenses, including: publicity, groups and activities, external preachers, licences, insurance and FIEC membership
We also need funds to support churches and missions overseas, mostly in the third world. We would like to send about 10% of our income (about £1500) to Christian organisations abroad.

This totals about £19,000 per year. Although a church can survive through voluntary work alone, it's very difficult to run a church and keep it growing effectively and becoming stronger, without anyone to devote their full time. At the moment we provide a part time salary (40% - or two days work a week). Our aim is, to have increased that support to a full 100%, before next year.

What are the implications for us financially? It means that we need to have an income of something approaching £3,000 a month to support a full time worker. Last month we raised £2,000, so we are heading in the right direction.

Pray that God would provide leaders to rise up and serve the church and for enough funds to support all the work that is being done.

Labels: Crestwood, Future, Update