"All things come from You, and of Your own do we give You"
Our Stewardship Campaign for 2025 runs over 6 Sundays from 11 May to 15 July. For a short time in each of our regular services at the Abbey, we will be thinking about the different ways that we can respond in generosity to the incomparable generosity of God, in order to build up our ministry of Living, Loving and Serving in the community of Romsey.
The campaign visited St Swithun's on 18th May.
The programme at the Abbey is:
11th May Parish income and expenditure
18th May (Joint service at 10am, followed by APCM) Parish Giving Scheme (PGS)
25th May "Give to Go Green" appeal to replace Halogen Service Spotlights with LED Spotlights
1st June Gifts in Wills
8th June Supporting mission and charities
15th June Thank you!
A copy of the Stewardship Leaflet is here
A copy of the response form is here
Week 5: Mission and Giving
A part of the parish's Christian Stewardship, the PCC has a policy to allocate between 5% and 10% of unrestricted income to a range of local, national and internationsl charities each year. The charities are researched and recommended by the Mission and Giving Group who also provide information about them through Open Door and the Group's noticeboard in the Abbeye through the Charity of the Month.
The Stewardship series on 8 June (the Feast of Pentecost) featured SAT-7, one of our selected charities which promotes the gospel in the Middle East through satellite broadcasting. Dr Terence Ascott from SAT-7, spoke during the service. "The Middle East Prayer Experience" runs in the Abbey until 23 June.
The film Dr Ascott showed about the work of SAT-7 is here and his slides are here.
Week 4: Giving in Wills
At the shorter Eucharist on 1 June, we watched a vdeo from the Church of England on gifts in wills and how legacies large and small can help the ministry of the church. A link to the video is here
The Church of England also provides free support to those wishing to write a will, whether or not they wish to leave a legacy to the church. The Diocese of Winchester offers a number of FREE wills through two will-writing partners, Farewill and Batt Broadbent.
"There is no obligation to leave a legacy gift through this scheme however both providers will enable you to leave a legacy to your chosen parish of you would like to do so. All free wills are provided on a first-come-first-serve basis. If you require further support, do not hesitate to get in touch with stewardship@winchester.anglican.org."
Alternatively, the Church of England link to Farewills is here.
For more information about leaving a legacy to the PCC of Romsey, see our Legacies page.
Week 3: Give to Go Green
On 25th May, Rogation Sunday, we turned our attention to capital projects and in particular the first significant step on our road to reduce our environmental impact, in line with the Church of England's target to reach Net Zero Carbon by 2030. We are planning to start to replace our 12 concert lights and 72 halogen spotlights with equivalent LED lights, together with a new, flexible control system, which should eventually reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from our lighting by over 2 tonnes per year. To fund this we are running an appeal which will be widely publicised in the town.
Under the Church of England's Give to Go Green Scheme, any money donated during the appeal over the next six weeks will be match-funded by the Church of England up to a maximum of £10,000.
For more details see our Give to Go Green page, which also has a link to donate to the appeal..
You can see here a video explaining the context and showcasing examples from churches arund the country who have started on this journey.
There is information about other streams of work that will be needed on our journey to Net Zero Carbon, provided by the Abbey Net Zero Carbon Group. on the noticeboard in St Lawrence's Chapel.
Week 2: Regular giving
On 18 May, we saw a short video explaining the Parish Giving Scheme, which is organized by the Church of England to support regular giving to parishes.
Here is a link to the PGS video.
You can contact the Parish Giving Scheme
- via their website PGS Contact
- by telephone 0333 002 1271
- by email info@parishgiving.org.uk
For more information see our regular giving page.
If you are interested in any volunteering roles, please see our Join in page for information. It would be helpful if you could also complete the response form for this campaign so that we can measure the impact of the campaign.
Week 1: Parish Income and expenditure
At our services on Sunday 11 May, we launched our Stewardship Campaign 2025. We rely on the extraordinary generosity of our church members to maintain our ministry in this community.
Here is a link to the 3-minute video shown at the services at the Abbey which demonstrates the depth and breadth of our ministry and the advances we have been able to make in recent years, thanks to that generosity.
At the 9.30 service at the Abbey, the Revd Georgi Thompson-Leask, Winchester Diocese's Stewardship adviser, answered questions on the Common Mission Fund.
Q: Romsey contributed £157,000 to the Common Mission Fund in 2024. Where does this money go?
A: 100% of CMF payments from parishes supports current ministry in our parishes.
The total income of 236 parishes in the Winchester Diocese in 2024 was £27m. Of that, 30% was paid to the Diocesan Common Mission Fund (CMF). The Diocese also has income from service fees, investments and grants.
The Diocese expenditure on current clergy costs and support for ministry in schools came to £9.4m, of which £8.6m came from parishes (CMF).
The slldes here show more detail.
Q: Many regular givers use the Parish Giving Scheme (PGS) to make monthly or other donations to the parish. How does Romsey parish compare to other parishes in the Diocese using the scheme?
A: Across the 217 parishes in the Winchester Diocese using the PGS scheme, average weekly giving from donors is £17.72. Romsey ranks 98th, with average regular giving of £16.38 per week.
If you have any questions about income and expenditure in the parish, please send to our Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee, liz.wagner@romseyabbey.org.uk.
