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Kensington Temple's accounts for the year ended 30th September 2009 have recently been finalised and Revival Times asked KT Finance Director, Jonathan Gwilt, to share with you some of the key financial highlights of the year.
The total donations made to the Church have risen by almost 5%. This has been made possible not least by the very generous giving made towards the KT Restoration Appeal, which reached its target of £700,000 in November 2009.
The total income of the Church over the last six years is illustrated in Chart 1. This shows that much of the extraordinary increase in income levels achieved in 2005 have been maintained in the years since then. This has been the case despite the effects of the recession in the wider economy which has affected many individuals, businesses and charities alike, particularly since the autumn of 2008.
Approximately 70% of the Church's income is received in the form of donations (or 'Voluntary Income'). Of this total, around 75% is given under the Gift Aid scheme which means that for every £1 given to KT, the Church is able to recover just over 20 pence. The national average for charities is that only 33% of donations are made under Gift Aid - which means that KT more than doubles this! In 2009 alone a further 750 new Gift Aid declarations were received, thank you!
The remaining 30% of the Church's income comes in the form of "Generated Income" which arises from a number of sources: Encounters, Training, Dovewell, Coronet, Nursery, Events etc. These activities enable the Church to engage with the wider communities of London and provide valuable additional revenues to help the Church extent its wider ministry. Every time you attend one of our training courses or an event or seminar or go on an Encounter weekend or purchase a product from the Bookshop or support the Nursery or the Coronet you are releasing the Church's ministry in a wider context and helping the church to further its primary objective which is to extend and spread the Gospel to all.
We hope that you find these income statistics encouraging. They are made possible only by the faithful and generous giving each week of the tithes and offerings of congregational members and friends like you. Thank you so much for your faithfulness and on-going financial support which finances and enables this ministry to continue to operate and reach out to others in so many different ways.
Turning now to how the church's income has been spent, expenditure has continued to be tightly controlled and directed towards activities achieving the greatest effectiveness, whether they be the more visible 'front-line' services and ministries or the vital support functions that help to administer them that operate in the background. A breakdown of how each pound of income has been spent is illustrated in Chart 2.
As in many previous years, approximately one-third of the church's financial resources continued to be invested in the ministries of personnel who serve and give of their time across a broad spectrum of the church's activities from four different locations. These staff lead the delivery of the church's ministries but their efforts are supplemented by a tremendous array of very talented and committed individuals who volunteer many thousands of hours of their time as a service to the Lord (in cell groups, during services, on encounters and in leading or participating in many of the groups which operate "behind the scenes") to ensure that the very fullest delivery of Church's ministry service is achieved. Just over a quarter of the church's resources were needed to cover the cost of accommodating the church's ministries in various buildings across the city and beyond. The significant decline in this amount compared to the 2008 level has been the result of the sharp fall in interest rates on the loans used to acquire properties in recent years. It is particularly pleasing is to see that a much greater proportion of this cost is now being invested in properties which the church now owns, rather than rents, as was the case until 4-5 years ago. Whilst some of the financing of this is costly during the financing period, it is leading towards the building up of substantial tangible property assets over the medium-term which will greatly strengthen the Church's base from which it conducts its operations.
Finally it is worth highlighting that KT tithes on its general donated incomes - approximately 9% of total expenditure (over 10% of donated incomes) has been appropriated in the form of donations to support other ministries and the wider Elim movement.
Kensington Temple is a part of the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, a charity registered in England & Wales (registration number 251549) and Scotland. Full details on Elim can be found at: www.elim.org.uk, www.charitycommission. gov.uk or www.guidestar.org.uk .
KT's accounts and those of its satellite churches are submitted each year to Elim Headquarters for consolidation in to Elim's full published charity accounts. Although KT does not file its own separate charity accounts with the Charity Commission, KT's accounts are audited each year by a large external firm of auditors, Mazars LLP. Its accounts are also checked by Elim's auditors as part of the process by which KT's accounts are consolidated in to the accounts of the full national Elim charity.
