St John's, Birkdale

St John's Birkdale (photo courtesy of Mr J Wright) is located in a residential suburb on the edge of Southport. The beautiful church was built in 1895 and the congregation have cared for it and introduced some sensitive reordering to the interior. St John's sent a team of people to the launch of Giving in Grace at Aintree Racecourse in March of 2005 so they were able to get their Giving in Grace programme underway pretty quickly. The jolt the church needed was an explanation of an increasingly unsustainable financial position. Since 1998 reserves had been used on an annual basis and the downward spiral could not continue for ever.

An initial proposal to the PCC that the church should get involved in this Diocesan initiative met with little or no opposition. Provisional plans were laid to run a programme in the early autumn of 2005 and that the Harvest Festival would be the response date. A Planning Group was chosen following the advice on the web site. The planning group suggested a target figure in the gift array of £180. The PCC were unanimous in their personal support of the programme making a PCC pledge prior to the invitation to the congregation to demonstrate their leadership and support.

The planning group followed the Timetable section of the web site. very closely and did very little "tweaking" to the programme on the principle that you don't reinvent the wheel. However, they did make very creative use of social events as part of the programme. Invitations were sent out to the church members on a differentiated basis - Core, Congregation and Fringe to three separate meals. At these meals a short presentation was made and the programme literature (the letter, brochure and response card) was handed to those who attended. Invitations were also extended to a wider group, mainly families, who attended rarely but were supportive and appreciative of the work the church was doing with children. The meals cost just £1.20 each and some 80 people attended.

Prayer was an important element of the programme. The church prayed at all services, in home groups and at mid week meetings. The response was excellent. The target of £180 in the gift array was just exceeded which was a real encouragement. The uptake of standing orders was encouraging with 12 people or families planning to give in this way. Eight new Gift Aid declarations were made and seven people requested planned giving envelopes. The overall level of response from the church was also most encouraging. Giving in Grace has enabled the church to balance the books and to rebuild some of their reserves after many years of borrowing from reserves to cover the shortfall in income. The church also planned in its case statement to develop their outreach ministry. That is now on the agenda for a leadership team focusing on ministry and mission and not limited by resources.

Postscript
St John's has a good range of organisations - Brownies, Guides, the Little Fishes toddler group, Mothers Union, Ladies Group, Fellowship Link, a Lunch Club and a kids Gap (God and Play) to name just a few. An exciting recent development is a new Sunday Service called 4U2. Good coffee and biscuits are available on arrival at a cafe style service which involves no singing. Prayer requests are made, there is a bible reading from the lectionary, some background explanation and then a led discussion on the passage. Children join in at the end and lead in choruses etc. This is a new and exciting development and at the moment around 25 people share the service together.