In November, Katherine gave an important update regarding the finances of St Mungo’s: reviewing the income and expenditure from the year ending 30th September before looking to the year ahead. If you missed it, please have a look at the recording here…
In summary, our budget last year included a deficit of £192,000, reflecting the decision made by Vestry during 2022 to use our available reserves to fully resource our Vision to Be Love in the prayerful hope and expectation that we would see God’s Kingdom and St Mungo’s grow and flourish as a result. Our hope is that as we see our congregations grow, that this would result in our income growing sufficiently for us to bring our income and expenditure back into balance, allowing us to continue this Vision in to the future.
We have been overwhelmed by your response, thank you! Both our regular and one off gifts were significantly more than we expected last year, and this was the most significant element of ending the year with a deficit of just over £50,000. This means that instead of already investing half of our available reserves, we have only needed to invest a quarter, which is wonderful.
Looking to the future, the Vestry has been considering what our congregational giving needs to grow by, in order to continue to sustain our current vision, and the answer is 7.5%. At first glance, this looks like an unrealistic expectation, however Katherine outlined four reasons why she believes this is a realistic, if challenging, aim. Firstly, the abundant generosity of God, which is where we started the year’s teaching in our morning services. Secondly, we have a vision for growth, and as we each live out our vision of Being Love, then we can look forward to our congregations growing, and consequently our income. Thirdly, we are each on a journey of discipleship and as we grow in our individual discipleship to Jesus then that will impact all of our lives, including our finances. And lastly, we have already seen this level of income growth during 2022-23: our monthly regular giving has grown by 7.7% since Sept 2022 and our one off gifts have grown by over 8% compared to 2021-22.
Katherine finished by asking everyone to continue to pray for the finances of St Mungo’s, to have a look at the updated giving leaflet and to continue to regularly and prayerfully review their giving. And by thanking everyone for their faithful and generous giving over the past year. If you have any questions, please contact Katherine on Katherine.Burnett@stmungos.org