Financial Support -
Where Does All The Money Go?

"The offering will now be received."

What thoughts go through your mind when you hear these words at some point during a service? Do you wonder where the money goes? What happens to the money we gift to the church?

The short answer is that it goes to enable the mission and caring work of the church locally, nationally and internationally but those words cover a great variety of things! How is our money spread around that work?

This money is used

• to provide ministers in congregations that can’t afford the full cost of having a minister (Ministry)
• to help congregations pay for major repairs to their buildings (Central Fabric Fund)
• to provide an extra minister or a deacon or a youth worker in very large parishes where more than one full-time worker is required (National Mission)
• to build new churches in new communities (New Charge Development)
• to develop Christian Education resources for people of all ages (Parish Education)
• to support the teaching of Religious Education in schools and the work of school chaplains (Education)
• to care for people who are elderly or disabled or have special needs (Social Responsibility)
• to work with partner churches, usually in poorer parts of the world, providing skills that are needed by these churches (World Mission)
• to develop relationships with other Christian churches and promote the unity of the church (Ecumenical Relations)
• to provide the Church of Scotland website and other modern methods of communication to inform people about the work of the church (Communication - and outreach)
• to provide facilities for making Christian comment on national and world events (Church and Nation)
• to train ministers and deacons for service in parishes throughout Scotland (Ministry)
• to provide chaplains for hospitals, prisons and industrial mission (National Mission)
• to pay for the General Assembly and the service departments that support the central admin of the church (General Purposes)

Wow! Our money is spread thin but does achieve an awful lot! And yes! What it achieves does take much more money than the fund provides. So what makes up the shortfall?

The Boards and Committees of the central church use investment income (sometimes capital – as the Board of Social Responsibility has had to do in recent years to bridge the "care gap") and income from other sources, like legacies, to sustain all this work. So you can see that St. Michae'ls contribution to the Fund is important, is needed and is VERY much appreciated. By our gifts through the Fund we are sharing in the wider work – and influence – of the Church of Scotland; sharing in national projects; sharing resources with less well off congregations; and most importantly of all, sharing in the ONE mission of the world church.

What a responsibility! What an opportunity! Think about all that your gift is enabling next time you hear these familiar words :

“The offering will now be received”

and pray often for all the facets of that work : that none of it will have to be cut because we didn’t meet our target.

Remember above all that "God loves a cheerful giver!"

If you would like to make a donation in support of the work and life of St Michael's, you can do so securely using the PayPal link below. A separate page outwith this website will open.