Last Tuesday’s meeting of the PCC found us grappling with a number of important issues for the church and a number of decisions to be made. At the meeting we:
Heard that our charity for which you have been voting will be the Jacaranda project (care for abused girls in Swaziland) and we also agreed to provide a leaflet of daily prayers for every member of the congregation for use in Advent.
Decided to terminate our contract with Chubb for the provision of fire extinguishers in the church and church hall which is currently costing us in excess of £400 per year. We can buy a set of extinguishers from the Church Purchasing Organisation with a contract for servicing which will turn out to be considerably cheaper than renting them from Chubb.
Heard that we have had a number of large expenses recently that have left our reserves somewhat depleted. However, we are hopeful that these will be replenished throughout the rest of the year. We have managed to pay 52% of our parish share for the year so far. The PCC were pleased to learn that we only have to sell another 6 copies of John Hodgkinson’s book to cover the full cost of printing – the proceeds from any further copies sold will go towards church funds.
Agreed that, following the voting on the use of the bequest money, our first priority will be to replace the surface of the access path, our second priority will be to decorate the main part of the church hall. We are currently getting quotes for both these pieces of work. The PCC agreed that some of the other suggestions could be tackled by the congregation (painting of railings around the pools, replacement of covers on the servers’ benches, painting of the recessed brickwork around the bottom of the exterior of the church). We also agreed to put a baby changing unit in the disabled toilet and to investigate the replacement of the acolyte candles.
Received the quinquennial report on the church and church hall (this is a statutory report that has to be done every five years by an architect). Although we have been congratulated by the architect on the way in which we have maintained both buildings, we do have to look at rewiring of the church within the next couple of years. The cost of this is likely to be in excess of £10,000, which will be a real challenge to us – prayers needed on this! We also looked at some recommendations from the Bishop of Grantham following his visitation last November – these we felt were either inappropriate, or already being tackled.
Agreed that the provisional date for our Parish Development Day will be Saturday November 2nd.
If you would like any more information on any of this, please do speak to any member of the PCC.