Tax Time, SRE and Giving

We don’t talk a lot about giving and money at Christ Church St Ives and it would be fair for you to say - everything must be fine! Or perhaps, I thought that some big church institution must fund the work. But neither of those things are true. Our church members fund the vast majority of our gospel work. 

We occasionally apply for small government grants - and recently we were successful in obtaining about $9000 for a security upgrade. On top of that, sometimes there are small amounts of money that come in for specific projects but this year, as with most years, more than 95% of our $2 million budget has to be funded by us. 

Now $2 million sounds like a lot - so what do we spend money on? The vast majority of our expenses relate to staff and for our full-time ministry staff, this includes housing. We also give 11% of our giving to mission (both inside and outside Australia), we spend money on building maintenance and improvement, ministry operations and there are charges from the Sydney Anglican Church. So some of our giving goes to support the purchase of land and other missional projects within the Anglican Church in Sydney.

Now the majority of giving to church is not tax-deductible but each year in June we have a special appeal for SRE (Scripture) that is tax deductible. We do it at this time of year because it is tax-time and many people are looking for opportunities to manage their personal or business finances. You might have noticed like me that emails have started arriving in your inbox inviting you to give to various organisations - let me encourage you to consider all those generously. But can I also let you know that our SRE appeal will begin on June 9 and we will be seeking to raise more than $100,000 to support the work of SRE in our schools. 

As you consider this opportunity, I am so pleased to be able to announce today that we have appointed Jo Anne Kim as our next High School SRE teacher. Jo has been in Children’s and SRE ministry for 20 years and has a wealth of experience both as a teacher and as a compliance and safety trainer in the Presbyterian Church. She is so keen and starting tomorrow she will be jumping into JOLT where she hopes to enhance, facilitate, and empower the students with biblically creative activities, teaching and resources that will offer overall well-being in the students’ faith journey. From next week she will be in the classroom educating young people who opt in for SRE in the Christian faith. 

Jesse, Pete and I are really excited about this appointment.   

There is lots of wonderful Gospel work happening at church right now so can I encourage you to be a good steward of all God has given you and to respond to God’s generosity to you by being generous to the work of his glorious gospel. This act of worship will enable the Gospel to continue to go out. 

God is gloriously at work so let us continue as we have begun, that the name of Jesus may overflow more and more. We are told in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 

For all the options on how to give and more information you can head to www.christchurch.com.au/give. If you would like to talk about how to think about your giving, please chat to a member of staff.