Our beautiful village church has been at the heart of our community life for over 800 years and still attracts a lot of affectionate support. We are enormously grateful for all your support over so many years.
However, we are now facing the greatest financial challenge in our recent history and we desperately need your support once again. We are therefore looking for new supporters and asking our existing supporters to consider whether they might be willing to help us further.

Why is this Appeal Necessary?
Until now the church has lived on a combination of its historic wealth and generous community giving. For many years now, we have been eating into our reserves and they have now been completely used up.
That means that from 2010 our church will depend entirely on regular giving. We have not been in this position before and as we have been running a yearly deficit of almost £4,000, we face a huge challenge to keep afloat this year.

What have we done so far?
Firstly, we have increased the giving from our regular congregation. A Stewardship Campaign last year yielded a number of new regular givers and some increased generosity from existing donors. However, since most of our regular attendees are retired, it is unrealistic to expect them to fund the deficit without wider support.
Secondly, we have cut costs. We now clean the church and maintain the churchyard on a voluntary rota basis and have cut out as much expenditure as we can.

What has the church ever done for us?
Sadly, not so many people join us regularly for Sunday worship currently, but over the course of a year, we serve a huge proportion of the parish.
Most people still look to the church at important stages of their lives – Christmas, Easter & Harvest, not to mention weddings, baptisms and funerals. Even when local families have their funerals at the Crematorium, most still want our local clergy to take the service and many of us have loved-ones laid to rest in our churchyard.
We also support the local church school and many generations of our families have benefited from church subsidised education and the contribution our clergy and congregation make to the life of the school.
Many of us have also enjoyed our Lent & Advent lunches and village events.
We also work for you in other, unseen ways, praying for you, visiting the needy, sponsoring a child in Africa on behalf of the community and engaging in local activities. You may not notice us, but we’re very active and you’d certainly notice the difference if we weren’t there!
Of course, it goes without saying that if we want the church to be available when we need it, we need to keep it afloat in the meantime! The amount we can do depends on our collective generosity and your giving directly helps provide these services in our community.

What is Required?
This year, we estimate that our costs will amount to £14,200. At current levels, our income will only be around £6,000, leaving a target of £8,200 to be raised through fundraisers and new giving. With this in mind, it is not overstating the case to say that we face a very real threat of closure if we cannot increase our financial support.
We are hugely grateful for the support we get for our fundraising events and we try very hard to provide a range of activities with
broad appeal for all ages and tastes.
However, income through fundraisers has been diminishing in recent years and, like any charity, we rely primarily on regular giving to keep afloat.

How Can You Help?
Here is our dream wish-list in order of preference, but we will be grateful for anything you can do to help us:
• giving regularly is the best way you can help us. (You don’t need to attend regularly to do that, but if all our wishes could come true, we’d dearly love to see you too!)
• helping us with cleaning, churchyard maintenance and organising events.
• One off donations are also always gratefully received.

Your Response
If every adult in the parish gave £2.00 per month, we would be fine. Sadly, that’s probably not realistic, so we are reliant on a smaller number of people to be as generous as they can be.
Would you be willing become a donor or to increase your current giving in some way? This Link explains how you can give and contains the relevant financial forms. If you can help us, please print off and complete the relevant form and return it to: Hazel Rudd, Treasurer, Dunnikier, Kirkbampton, Carlisle CA5 6JB.
All responses, including personal details and amounts given will be kept confidential and seen only by the Treasurer.

Contacts for Queries
Please contact any of the following:
Canon Gill Hart, Rector – 01228 576324
Rev’d Stewart Fyfe, Curate – 01228 712139
Hazel Rudd, Treasurer – 01228 576630
We really do appreciate your support and hope to continue serving this community for at least another 800 years. May God bless you all. With grateful thanks,
Canon Gill Hart
Rector,
Benefice of the Barony of Burgh