Your PCC has a faith-filled vision for our church to become free of our Community Centre Loan. We believe it’s time to pay back our debt, which will enable us to walk freely into all that God is calling us to do in the future.

As a church we’ve been self-sustaining financially, with the help of grants. Each year we play our part by supporting the wider church as well as employing a range of staff fundamental to realising the vision of SJC.

In 2011, a loan from Chelmsford Diocese of £325K enabled us to complete the building of the Church Community Centre, of which £149,000 remains outstanding.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be talking and praying about how we can become free of this debt as soon as possible. Please join in praying for SJC that we might ‘finish what we started’ in paying fully for the building of the Church Community Centre, thus becoming debt free as soon as we can.

The Church Community Centre opened in February 2012, replacing the small church hall and was designed to meet SJC’s ongoing needs and future growth, while complementing the existing church building.

SJC utilised a £325K loan from Chelmsford Diocese (repayable over ten years) to finish paying for the original construction, which cost about £1.2M in total. Alongside this loan, generous giving and fundraising, costs were met through a grant of £287K and personal loans from church members of approximately £120K (of which all have been repaid).

However, due to an unexpected need to replace failing boilers in the church, in October 2019 SJC asked the diocese for a year’s ‘debt holiday’ in order to raise our monthly income levels to cover our expenditure.  We currently owe £149,000, which once the loan repayment restarts in October 2020, will take 4 years to repay in full.

The office team have been working hard to maximise the Community Centre income in order to furnish the loan repayments of £37K per year plus interest. The congregation have been regularly informed about the ongoing financial position of the church.

The CCMC (Community Centre Management Committee), a PCC sub-committee, continues to work very hard to develop the building around a missional ‘kingdom’ business model, determining whom the facility is hired to, with the following vision:

“To bless the local community by providing a facility that encourages a healthy lifestyle, promotes family life and provides educational opportunities.”

We would love to see the Community Centre continuing to flourish under this vision, but the PCC feel that the church must unburden itself from the current financial restraints that remain with the loan so we can continue to develop other areas of mission in the future.

LET’S WORK TOGETHER AS ONE TO BECOME DEBT-FREE AS SOON AS WE CAN!