We are raising money for St Matthew’s Church in Burnley.

Starting on Sunday 21st July and finishing on Tuesday 23rd July a small group of us are going to walk over 30miles from St Matthew’s Church in Burnley to the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield.

As a group we are aiming to raise £100 for every mile we walk. This is an ambitious target but we hope we can do it!

Churches along the route have kindly offered to open their doors so that we can stop in for meals or to stay overnight. All of the money raised via this campaign will go directly into church funds and will not be used to cover the costs of the walk.

We aim to have our church building open every day of the week for a variety of services and activities. We run a weekly Toddler Group and Lunch Club open to all in our community. We hold regular church services and welcome hundreds of people a year for key moments in their lives including Christenings, Weddings and Funerals. We work with several local schools as well as visiting elderly and isolated people in their homes or in residential care homes. Our Church Hall is home to 6 Uniformed Organisation groups who all provide superb opportunities for children and young people locally.

Each month it costs a lot of money to keep our church open. We have to pay all the usual bills - gas, electric, water, insurance etc. as well as paying for essential maintenance on our church building and church hall. Each month we also pay a set amount to the Diocese of Blackburn which ensures that we have church leaders, safeguarding support and lots of other important advice and training. On top of this there are also the running costs of all our services and activities.

Many people think that the Church of England is funded by the government, this isn’t true. We don’t receive any regular payments from the government. We do work hard to apply for grants and we have recently been awarded almost £20,000 in grant funding which will enable us to replace our broken (and temporarily patched up) boiler. We have a Community Fund that helps to cover the costs of some of the activities we run and we also receive lots of generous donations from people in our community and support from other churches.

BUT there is still more money going out that coming in. This year we have been £1000-2000 short each month and we have had to use money from our reserves to pay the bills. The money in the reserves is now almost gone so it’s important we do more. Every little helps so whether you can donated £1 or £100 we are very very appreciative.

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