Finance was a big issue. From the start HARVEST has paid its way. That was always part of the deal. The Stipend (Salary) for Kerry would come from the Church Commissioners via the normal route, as for any other office holder in the C of E, and not therefore the employee of the local Congregation. However, the congregation were expected to pay an amount equivalent to employment costs, into the central Diocesan funds, plus a calculated amount to cover services provided by the Diocese, plus shared costs and mission giving. That’s the same formula as for a Parish Church. It is true to say that HARVEST’s initially allocated bill was reduced by a subsidy from the Church Commissioners received by the Diocese (in the usual way). What we think is really important is the fact that no other Parish Church in the Diocese was ever expected to underwrite or subsidise us. We met our payments in full the very first year, and although we’ve come close, we’ve made it every year since, as well. In fact, at our first Worship gathering, we gave away money that we didn’t have (to two Mission and Aid agencies) as a kind of statement of intention.

At Easter 2004, HARVEST moved the location of its central Sunday Worship Gathering. Initially, we had met at Northdown Primary School, after the first few months of building sharing with the Parish Church of Holy Trinity, Margate. The school was within the original Parish, and by a complicated set of arrangements, Kerry’s final act as Vicar was to give himself permission to plant the new congregation within the boundaries. This arrangement was to be binding upon whoever could be recruited for the Parish Church role that Kerry was vacating. Indeed it was a necessary component of the agreed arrangement that unless an incoming Vicar could be recruited, who was prepared to work under those conditions, then the HARVEST permissions would not come into force. (We said it was complicated!)

The new venue, from 2004, at Christ Church University Thanet Campus (now known as the Broadstairs Campus) gave us a more central location. By this time there were Cell groups in Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Westbrook, as well as in Cliftonville and Margate.

During the first nine years of its life, HARVEST has been home to one hundred and eighty-three different people. For the purposes of record keeping, we do not use a measure of the number of people who attend the Sunday gathering. In line with our original aim, we count as members, those who join a Home Based Cell Group, and it is from there that our figures come.

Fifty-seven of that number were Founder Members, belonging to the original team that helped to establish HARVEST. Eighty-one people have come to faith, or come back to faith, through HARVEST’s ministry. Forty-five people joined us from elsewhere, at varying points along the way.

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