Dear Church Family, thank you for your love and gospel generosity! You have given by grace, and we can all be grateful.

Being a Member of Reforming Church means you’re much more than a member of a club - you are a partner in the gospel (Philippians 1:4), a fellow-worker (1 Corinthians 3:9), a recipient and giver of grace (2 Corinthians 8:9).

This has real tangible meaning for a gospel-centred church. It means that our generosity starts in the heart that has been change by the gospel of Christ, the gospel of grace, the gospel of God’s generosity toward us in Jesus. We get to be part of that.

This has been our history, so what now for our future? What could this now means for us, dear church?

It means that we get to think about generosity, we dream with joy. We imagine what we could give with joy in Jesus who gave all for us.

As a Member or connected congregant of Reforming you will have earlier this week received a letter from our dear brother and Board Secretary, Cameron Spink, about the need for us to prayerful consider our giving to our church. We’re thankful for our Board of Management who carefully steward our finances and facilities, to facilitate and fund our church’s gospel ministry and generosity to other ministries.

Cameron’s letter outlined the situation we have been facing for some time, and we need you to pray and consider how you could regularly give toward our church’s ministry. Most of our church’s budget goes toward supporting pastoral staff in their ministry of counselling, caring, speaking, teaching, equipping and preaching the gospel to you, for you, and for many others of Reforming and friends.

Now what will this mean in how we give, or more precisely, how much we give?

Well, if generosity starts in the heart - and particularly the heart of our generous God, see what that means for you. Yet if you would like a guide, then look out for our next read/listen/watch article to help you in that - where we talk about why giving 10% is to church first is a good starting guide (not law, but out of love), and how being generous over that to other ministries is good for our hearts. We’ll also see in further articles how Members and Congregants giving 10% of whatever God has given us, means our church could meet the gospel ministry budget we need to meet.

The reality is that we as a church can’t ask “graduates” of our church. We can’t ask other churches. We can’t ask Christians from around Australia or the world. We as a church can only, and rightly so, ask the small number of Members and Congregants we have for the funding to enable our ministry to continue. Please support your church who supports you.

Of course, we as Members and Congregants are the first recipients of this ministry and our only partners in the gospel. So that for our church, God-given generosity starts in our hearts.

To partner together:

Feel free to put your giving in the blue bag, or you can give online through direct deposit.

Giving to Gospel Ministry

Bank: Bendigo Bank

Name: South East Bendigo Presbyterian Church

BSB: 633 000

Account Number: 147 480 297

Giving to Renovation of Reforming House for Gospel Ministry

Name: South East Bendigo Presbyterian Church Capital Account 

BSB: 633 000

Account Number: 164 539 637