Church building, building the church

I've been spending quite a lot of time recently applying for grants and consulting the websites of grant awarding trusts.

There are two types of trust we are interested in: those who gives grants for church buildings and those that give grants for building the church.

For the church building we need grants for St Anne's to make it watertight and carry out urgent and vital repairs.

St Anne's is not a listed building and in many ways that it is advantage, but it comes with a built-in disadvantage too, because most of the (small number of trusts) that give grants for church repairs concentrate on listed buildings of architectural or historical importance.

That limits our options for St Anne's but we have located a few possibilities and these are being actively pursued, with one application already in and a couple more to follow.

There are even fewer trusts that give grants for building the church - for reaching out into the community with the Gospel with a view to bringing people to active faith and building up the body of Christ.

For us in Bermondsey we are particularly seeking grants for our new Urban Missioner, a full time member of our staff whose particular focus will be on mission and outreach. The Diocese are generously supporting the project with half a stipend and rent-free accommodation, and we have applied to three trusts for grants towards the other half.

The applications are in, all we need to do now is pray...