SRE Appeal Update

Well, last month we held our SRE Appeal and we were praying that $100,000 would be raised to support the work of SRE or Scripture in our local schools and we were overwhelmed with support. What is SRE? It is a beautiful ministry that takes Bible teaching into local schools helping young people integrate all they are learning into a Christian worldview. It gives them a moment in a week to grapple with deep existential truths alongside their school education, deepening their understanding of themselves and the world.    

As a reminder, in our local primary schools we have Lauren Dewhurst and her teams working tirelessly to prepare engaging lessons and educate the children in the teaching of the Bible. In our local high school we have Jo Kim who teaches in class from Wednesday to Friday and a team of volunteers who assist with JOLT and other opportunities during a term.

Well, I said we were overwhelmed with support and we were. Praise God that in response to the Appeal we raised $160,953 to support SRE. Isn’t that amazing. Your generosity has excelled and we praise God for the support you have given to this work. 

Now this does create for us a little challenge as only a small range of very specific church activities can be paid for with tax-deductible funds so we have paused tax-deductible giving for now while we assess the situation. We will also turn now to the ongoing challenge of increasing regular congregational giving as we are still about 8% behind budget so we will hear some more about that in due course. 

But the message today is thank you. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your response. 

Please be assured that as we build towards 3000 wholehearted disciples of Jesus we are striving to be careful, transparent stewards of every generous gift given. So with this in mind, as always, if you have any questions about how finances are handled at your church you can reach out to me or the Wardens (wardens@christchurch.com.au) and you can find all our 2024 accounts and audited financials here.  

Thanks for your generous response to the appeal.