2019 Vision Fund Gift Days
Our next Vision Fund Gift Days are coming up on Sunday 30th June and 7th July. We would love to raise another £100,000 towards the costs of funding expansion on all of our sites. Please be thinking and praying over the next couple of weeks about what you would like to give.
In the coming weeks I’ll post details on exactly what we’ve raised so far and what it has been spent on, but in the meantime here are some of the highlights of what we’ve already done and intend to do on each of our sites.
Bracknell
On our Bracknell site we’ve paid off the mortgage on the K2 House, leaving us debt free as a church. We’ve also examined the possibility of extending our buildings, but concluded that the cost doesn’t represent good value for money when we look at how much extra space we’d create.
We are still trying to buy the land next to K2 from the cricket club. Once we know whether that is possible or not we will build a walkway through from the Kerith Centre site to the college car park, and put a Foodbank storage area by the K2 house (we are currently paying to store Foodbank food offsite). Plans are also progressing to upgrade the kitchen in K2, improve the toilets in the Kerith Centre and redevelop the K2 house for office staff and ministry use.
Blackwater Valley
We spent money examining the possibility of partnering with Sandhurst School to build a permanent home for our site on the school grounds. In the end we concluded that this wasn’t going to be feasible, which led us to move to the Village Hotel in Farnborough.
The vision fund has paid for all the equipment needed to facilitate our move to the Village Hotel, including the purchase of a van and all the audio equipment required.
Going forward we need to work with the Village Hotel to improve the projection and permanently install some of the audio equipment in the hotel to make weekly setup simpler. We are also beginning to look for a home for social justice in Blackwater Valley.
Windsor
Up until the end of 2020 all the costs associated with our Windsor site, including staffing costs, building hire and equipment costs are being met from the Vision Fund.
Our Windsor site has run out of space for kids work on a Sunday which is very quickly going to limit our growth. We are applying for planning permission to put a portkabin on the gospel hall site, as well as drawing up plans to redevelop the existing gospel hall to make it work better for us.
West Wight
As with Windsor all the costs of our West Wight site are being met from the Vision Fund up to the end of 2020. Ben Britton and Dan Wells come on staff at the beginning of September, and the West Wight site starts meeting every Sunday from the 15th September.
It’s all about people
Behind all of this is the desire to see people find their way back to God. That is happening in increasing measure on each of our sites. By investing in the Vision Fund you are investing in seeing lives transformed by the power of the gospel.
We plan to close the Vision Fund at the end of 2020, at which point we think we will move to a model of individual sites taking up offerings to fund projects on their sites. We will probably from time to time still have gift days across all our sites to fund starting new sites.
Thank you for being willing to consider how you can play your part through giving to the Vision Fund. As always there is no pressure on anyone to give, this is just an opportunity to invest in the growth of God’s Kingdom.
Blessings,
Simon