After storm damage left St George’s Church, Wembdon facing a major roof repair bill, the PCC quickly began exploring ways to raise the money needed. The challenge was significant, but members of the church came together, combining their ideas, energy and skills to do what they could. Sue Pow, PCC Secretary, and PCC member Katherine Cannell say they have been delighted by the response from both church members and the wider local community.
Prayer was at the heart of all they did, as Katherine explains, “The whole project began with prayer, and throughout our fundraising journey was soaked in prayer.” She also offers encouragement to others facing similar challenges, “Everything counts, the little things as much as the bigger projects. It all mounts up. We asked for ideas and weren’t afraid to use the contacts we had. We were overwhelmed and encouraged by the different ways people offered their support.”
Here, Sue and Katherine share in their own words, the story of their successful fund raising for repairs to St George’s Church roof.
Our church was founded in the 13th century in the village of Wembdon, near Bridgwater. The current building dates from the 14th and 15th century but was largely rebuilt in 1868 after a fire. It is a Grade II listed building with simple timber roofs to the nave and aisles, with a plastered and coffered chancel ceiling.
St George’s Church roof was damaged during the two winter storms of October and December 2024. A section of the nave and chancel roof was damaged by fallen trees and the work on this has been carried out under our insurance. Our church organ was so badly damaged that it has been removed as it is beyond repair.
On closer inspection to the chancel roof and barrelled ceiling, urgent remedial work was required to be carried out as widespread areas of delamination and beetle attack to the laths were discovered, which posed somewhat of a Health & Safety risk to the users below. This unfortunately did not come under our insurance. Due to the safety issue, the chancel area was now not able to be used by our worship/music group on a Sunday morning, and for the last 18 months they have moved to a corner of the South aisle.
We launched an appeal in July last year to the congregation with a mid-week Time of Prayer leading to a Gift Day on the Sunday. As we did not know the actual cost, we set a target of £80,000 by September. The Gift Day raised approximately £71,000 including Gift Aid. This was an amazing response and we gave thanks to God for this generous start to our Fund Raising.
This was followed by a very much ‘home grown’ enjoyable community concert raising a further £750 which followed an afternoon cream tea in our Parish Centre raising £200. To help raise additional money we have sold a quiz, a recipe book with favourite recipes from members & friends, an opportunity to ‘Buy a Tile’ for the roof and selling some notelets depicting old photographs of Wembdon Village.
In August we had reached an amazing £78,500. Members of the church were invited to write a prayer on a ‘tile’ as we continue to wait for the work to begin and to know the actual costs.
Over the following months several significant generous donations were received from church members and community giving a total of £91,000.
In January the work began and we learned the cost of the work would be £131,000 incl VAT. Unfortunately we were unable to claim back the VAT as the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme had closed and the replacement Places of Worship Renewal Fund had not yet opened. We were therefore presented with a deficit of just over £30,000.
A couple of members from the congregation started researching and applying for grants that would cover repairs to church roofs. These turned out to be quite limited but we were extremely grateful to receive in total £19,100 from this route.
We launched a Just Giving page on our church website which raised over £7,000 and we have also organised and run a fashion show from a local boutique which was extremely successful. With several more recent generous lump sum donations we achieved our target of £131,000 at the beginning of May, all the time giving thanks to God for His goodness towards us in enabling the reaching of our target in under the year.
The work to our church roof is due to be finished in June and we have a celebration church quiz organised for church family and community as a public way of saying thank you. Once the new organ is in place we shall have a celebration service and grand reveal of the renewed chancel roof.
We also thank God that our weekly services have been unaffected by all the building works, as the chancel area was shut off completely, and this has enabled the vital Christian Ministry to continue week in and week out enabling us to Make Jesus Known in our local vicinity.
At the start of the campaign the video below with Revd Ed Moll was shared online. It helped spread the word. Throughout the course of the fundraising, regular updates on funding and progress on the work, together with photo updates and a PowerPoint giving funding details was shown on the screen in the church every week sharing all the progress with the church community.
Katherine and Sue are happy to share support and ideas with other church communities who may be interested. You can reach them via email. katherinecannell@googlemail.com or hydeparkpows@yahoo.co.uk