Story The Twelve Apostles: Welcoming Orthodox Christians to church
The Twelve Apostles is a Greek Orthodox church in Hertfordshire. The church’s congregation has grown significantly in recent years, as has demand for its food bank. So, the church is being extended with the help of a Charity Bank loan.
Social Problem
While there are several thousand churches in the UK, very few are Greek Orthodox. There are theological differences between Orthodox and Anglican Christianity, so it can be difficult for Orthodox Christians to find an appropriate place to worship.
Organisation
The Twelve Apostles is a Greek Orthodox church in Hertfordshire. As well as catering to people from a Greek heritage, the church also welcomes Orthodox Christians from other backgrounds, including people who’ve moved to the UK from Eastern Europe.
The church’s congregation has grown significantly in recent years, which meant it needed to hire event space to host larger gatherings. It’s also increased its community work, including opening a food bank which now serves 100 families each week.
The Twelve Apostles committee decided to expand the church to cater to the growing congregation and increase storage space for the food bank. It also wanted to create an adult baptism pit and a private room where parishioners can talk to the priest in confidence.
Loan
The church was struggling to access a loan so decided to use a broker, which introduced The Twelve Apostles to Charity Bank. Milton Rodosthenous, custodial trustee of The Twelve Apostles, shares, “Most banks don’t understand charities, whereas Charity Bank knows what it’s doing. That makes life so much easier.”
The church is keen to pay its debt off as soon as possible, so we agreed a loan that will allow for early repayment.
Impact
Work is now close to completion on the church extension. The Twelve Apostles is looking forward to welcoming more members of the Orthodox community and aims to double the number of people it can support through the food bank. The church also welcomed a very important visitor at the beginning of 2023. Milton explains, “The Patriarch visited us and blessed the extension. He’s the spiritual leader of the whole Orthodox community – our version of the Pope. He only visited two or three UK Orthodox churches during his stay, and he also visited King Charles, so having him choose our church was a pretty big deal!”
“When a property is owned by a charity, loan providers aren’t interested. Without the loan, we couldn’t have built the extension, so I’m really glad we found Charity Bank!”
Milton Rodosthenous, custodial trustee of The Twelve Apostles church
About Charity Bank
Charity Bank is the loans and savings bank owned by and committed to supporting the social sector. Since 2002, we have used our savers’ money to make more than 1280 loans totalling over £500m to housing, education, social care, community and other social purpose organisations.
Nothing in this article constitutes an invitation to engage in investment activity nor is it advice or a recommendation and professional advice should be taken before any course of action is pursued.
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