Category Archives: Giving and Fundraising

Giving and Fundraising, music, St Mark's Church

Music Extravaganza for Christian Aid at St Mark’s | 21st June

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On Friday, June 21st we are holding a Music Extravaganza at St Mark’s in Upper Hale —an evening of music, dance and singing, all in support of Christian Aid, a charity which works with some of the most marginalized communities across the world.

Doors open at 6.30pm and the concert starts at 7pm.

Among the performers are:
John Bush

A multi-talented musician who performs both contemporary and classical music along with fellow musicians. A fun performance can be expected, with lots of audience participation.

Church Choir

The resident choir of St George’s, St Mark’s and St John’s combines to sing a mixture of popular hymns and songs.

In Accord

A Guildford-based ladies a cappella group performing a mixture of songs from sea shanties to Beatles and more.

Kerala Girls

A group of young ladies with traditional dress performing dances from the Kerala area of India. They rehearse at St George’s Church on Fridays.

Olivia Jasper

A young soloist who was brought up in Farnham and is a member of the church. She is returning to support the concert with some beautiful solo singing.

Paris School of Dance
Tap dancers from a well established dance school which rehearses at St George’s every Thursday.

Tickets (£10) are available on the door or from Sue Lampard on 07596953138. Under 12s free. There will be drinks and nibbles available and a raffle on the evening.

Children and Youth, Giving and Fundraising, music, outreach, Social Events, St George's Church

Come to the Parish Fete!

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Come to our fete on Saturday, June 8th, 12-3pm, at St George’s Church, Badshot Lea, for an afternoon of games, stalls, tea, cake, prosecco, tombolas, a raffle and entertainment.

Farnham’s Town Crier will open the fete at noon, and visitors can browse the craft stalls, try their luck at the three tombolas (chocolate, bottle and household goods), play Splat the Rat, search for the hidden treasure, have a game of table football, guess the weight of the cake, raise a glass at the bar, and enjoy a barbecue lunch followed by a cream tea. There’s lots more on too, including a lucky dip for children, a craft area for little ones, a grand raffle with a first prize of £100, live music and displays by Farnham and Aldershot Karate Club, Badshot Lea Village Infant School and the Paris School of Dancing.

Come and join the fun!

Discipleship, gifts, Giving and Fundraising

What does generosity mean for us?

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“Our days are happier when we give people a piece of our heart rather than a piece of our mind.”

No-one seems to know who said this, but it is wise advice and it fits in beautifully with the focus of the next week in the parish – Generosity.

Every year in the parish we hold a generosity week, and this year it will take place over the eight days between two Sundays – September 10th and 17th. The first is Generosity Sunday and the second is Gratitude Sunday. Generosity and gratitude are intimately linked.

What do we mean by generosity?

Generosity means giving. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a willingness to give help or support, especially more than is usual or expected”. The Bible emphasises its importance again and again; in fact one source suggests that ‘giving’ is mentioned more than 1,500 times in the Old and New Testaments, though I did not try to count.

This giving can mean many things. Money, time and service are three that often spring to mind but there are more, some of which are discussed below.  Giving, of course, can come from a sense of obligation:  I am commanded to give (by the Bible, the Church, an appeal) and therefore I must. This can be good for self-discipline, which has its place, but on its own is unlikely to lead to sustained giving. Obligation can lead to resentment, and resentment is a bit of a generosity-killer.

So how can generosity be kept alive?

Love God and love your neighbour

Christian generosity is a response to God and to the commandment to love God and love our neighbours as ourselves. If we love our neighbours as ourselves then we will want what is best for them, we will want to share.

This can be tough as we may feel, particularly in hard times, that we haven’t got enough to share if we are to look after ourselves.

A grateful shift of perspective

Maybe one way of helping us here is to consider what we have to be grateful for. Research has shown that this is actually good for our health and gives us a more positive outlook on life. A useful daily exercise this week could be to think of 10 things we have to be grateful for. The exercise can help shift our perspective, making us less anxious and therefore more willing to share.

Focusing on a loving God can also inspire generosity. “We love because God first loved us”, wrote John in 1 John 4:19. God is a loving parent whose love can spill over into God’s children and out to others.

How, though, can we see God’s love for us? We can think about the times we have seen God’s love in our lives. And we can think about Jesus told people not to worry. He said: “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you.” (Luke 12:27-28, NRSVA). I know that we often fail to do this but trying to do so can help us.

How might we be generous?

Giving money, time, service are starters for being generous, and incredibly important, but generosity is also an attitude of mind which involves the way we think about and treat people. Do we look on other people in the best light, believing that they too are humans trying to make sense of life, just as we all are.

There is a phrase in psychology called ‘unconditional positive regard’ which involves showing complete support and acceptance of a person no matter what that person says or does.(Note, this doesn’t mean accepting all behaviours or colluding with them, or allowing people to overstep boundaries, it means simply accepting the person). Trying to show this helps us look far more kindly on others than we might otherwise do.

Generosity involves the time we give to other people, the attention we pay them and the way we speak to and about others, both in person and on social media which can be a place of great cruelty as well as great support.

Generosity also encompasses how we treat people who we do not understand or who do things we cannot understand, who seem different, ‘other’.

It also encompasses how we treat the planet. Do we treat it just for our own benefit or do we think about how our actions affect others, including those not yet born.

An attitude of heart

Generosity like this comes from an attitude of heart and mind.

I think that it is also linked with what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13: ‘If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing’. (NRSVA). It is linked to our perspective and changing our perspective may take time and sometimes it may feel costly.

I’ve been using a ‘Stages of change’ model to think about how we can change habits so that we move from thinking about changing habits, to preparing to do so, to actually doing it, to maintaining the changed habits, and I believe it can be used to help us become more generous.

So, we might think we want to be more generous then prepare to be so by, perhaps, talking to others about what we could share, or why we have enough  or what we could do; or maybe by learning about what is going on in other people’s lives, or forming some sort of relationship with others which is actively focused on trying to learn about them.

Then we could take action in whatever way seems appropriate, which may be in giving of time, money, attention, service. It will be different for different people. When we do things enough times it becomes natural to us and then that becomes an ingrained habit. So generosity can become part of the way we see the world.

When generosity becomes a part of the way we see the world, then we will have bigger hearts to give pieces of to other people, and the world will be a happier place.

Stella Wiseman

Giving and Fundraising, music, St George's Church, St John's Church, St Mark's Church

Hiring out our churches – why we do it

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Lesley Crawley explains.

I recently heard a talk by the Reverend Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and he talked in a very practical way about funding church ministry. There have been various models over the centuries:

The Benefactor – often the Lord of the Manor would upkeep the church and pay for all that was needed. Very handy if you can find yourself a benefactor, but on the other hand perhaps one person could have too much sway – I guess everything, including the vicar’s sermons might have to please the benefactor.

Stewardship – the way that free churches have always organised themselves. If there are 10 people in a church and they give 10 percent of their gross income then they can afford a minister. That is fine for a house church where people meet in houses, but to get a building then a few more people need to give 10 per cent of their gross income! Anglican churches encourage Stewardship too, but rarely can people afford to give quite as much as that, or perhaps there is a different culture around giving amongst Anglicans – the Church of England recommends five per cent of our gross income.

Again, it is very handy to fund the church this way, but perhaps there is an issue that it only involves the church congregation. After all, as Anglicans, everyone in the village is part of the church. Everyone has access to the church building for services – baptisms, weddings and funerals, and for prayer; everyone is part of the ‘cure of souls’ that the vicar promises to look after. Perhaps, therefore, everyone in the village can have a hand in funding the local church. Stewardship alone might be rather inward-looking.

Social enterprise – this involves the community. It can be aspirational, for instance employing only the homeless, but at the heart of every social enterprise is the need to make money. Churches do various things – run preschools, offer themselves as concert venues, sell merchandise, and run cafés. In our case, we hire our churches out as venues for parties, meetings and clubs. Social Enterprise makes the church a seven days a week building, increases by a factor of 10 how many people come through the doors, and brings us into conversation with a huge range of people.

Who are we in conversation and partnership with? Well, lots of people, we can’t list them all but here are some examples:

We have particularly strong links with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association and now have an interfaith women’s group with them. Stella has been asked to speak at their Itfars (the fast-breaking evening meal which Muslims have during Ramadan) and they are keen to help where they can with community initiatives, eg the Warm Hub. They have joined in our flower festivals, craft markets and the poetry festival. We get a lot of bookings from them at both St Mark’s and St George’s.

The Syro-Malabar Church hire St George’s every week to teach Kerala dancing and took part in our concert for Christian Aid.

Magikats teach students at St George’s every Tuesday and kindly donated £100 for Father Christmas presents at the craft market.

Florescence is a small floristry business at St Mark’s and has sponsored the flower festival.

Alder Valley Brass Band have hired St John’s and St Mark’s and have played at some of our events.

The Badshot Lea Ladies Group brings people from the village into St George’s who might not otherwise feel part of the church.

Baby Ballet have been regular hirers at St George’s for several years and have danced at our parish fete.

Honryu Martial Arts has just started hiring St Mark’s and the leader is keen to help support the church’s work with young people (he’s a counsellor and uses martial arts to support people with behavioural problems).

Luke from Guildford Tai Chi, who books St Mark’s on a Wednesday, took part in the embodied worship series, giving us a free session.

Stella has worked with Right at Home on some memory workshops at their Sunflower Café (for people with dementia) and they have booked St Mark’s and St George’s for various activities. We have a great relationship with them and look forward to more partnership working.

Several groups have donated raffle prizes.

The relationship with the Badshot Lea Working Men’s Club (WMC)is now excellent and we help each other out with parking. They often pay to use our car park. There is a group of older people (mostly in their 80s+) who meet at the club who are very grateful for the car park. Several of them came to the Jubilee tea party last year. Stella has been asked to baptise the son of one of the women who works at the WMC.

In addition to all this, I strongly believe that God gives us everything we need. For years we scratched our heads, wondering how to pay our way, and thanks to God’s mercy, our buildings, members of our congregation within them and Stella running our Social Enterprise, we now can pay our way. We need to do ministry and fund ministry. Hiring our buildings is a mixture of both.

More than anything, our community must experience the church as a blessing. Our hospitality is a reflection of the hospitality of the God we serve. Not long ago, Stella received this email:

I wanted to extend my sincerest gratitude for providing your hall as the venue for my baby’s first birthday party. The event was a great success, and we couldn’t have asked for a better place to celebrate this special day.

Your hall’s facilities and ambience were perfect for the occasion, and our guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Your assistance and support throughout the process made the planning much easier, and I truly appreciate your kind cooperation.

Once again, thank you for making my baby’s first birthday party memorable. We are grateful for your generosity and hospitality.

The community are blessing us through this ministry; not just with their money, but with their gifts such as music and dancing, allowing us to share in their ministries and their communities, giving to us out of their expertise. Hopefully, we can offer more than our space; we offer our hospitality, and our faith. For everyone in our villages, we have space that can honour you for us, every relationship is a taste of Christ.

Rev’d Lesley Crawley

Pictured top is St Mark’s Church set up for a party