Interest free loans

Over the next few weeks, I am going to write blogs highlighting some of the topics discussed at our vision night on the 10th September (you can watch the video of the online portion of the vision evening here). In this blog I want to say a bit more about interest free loans, why we are asking for them and the mechanism for anyone wanting to explore the possibility of giving one.

For 2023 our trustees approved a deficit budget, with our projected expenditure being around £180,000 greater than our projected income. The deficit is primarily a result of the costs associated with the warehouse we bought in Farnborough, and the rental of the warehouse we have taken over in Windsor, both of which we have taken on trusting God for growth on both of those sites. We have reserves to cover the deficit from a house we owned which we sold last year, so we have the resources to cope with the deficit, but we are looking to do all that we can to eliminate the deficit as quickly as we can.

One way we can reduce the deficit is to save money on the interest payments on the mortgage which we took out when we bought the Farnborough building. The interest rate on the mortgage is currently 7.5%, so every £100,000 in interest free loans would save us £7,500 a year in interest payments. If we could cover the whole mortgage, we would save around £67,000 a year. 

If you would be in a position to make an interest free loan of £5,000 or above, for at least two years, please would you consider making a loan to our community. I want to emphasise that this is something which we have done a number of times in the past, and it has always worked well with everyone getting their money back when they needed it. If you would be able to help then please email our accounts team at accounts@kerith.church and they can give you more details. So far we have received around £100,000 in pledges which will save us £7,500 a year which is amazing, but it would be great to add to that and for us to make an even bigger dent in our deficit. Thank you.

Whether you can help in this way or not I want to encourage all of us to have no anxiety over our church finances. God has faithfully provided for us as a community for over 140 years, and he isn’t about to stop now! We will continue to do all that we can do, whilst we trust him to do what only he can do. If you are ever free at 8pm on a Monday night it would be great to have you join the group of us who pray every week for our finances. You can sign up on our website which will then trigger you getting sent the zoom link to join us. Hope to see you there!

Photo by QuinceCreative