£10 per member per month

A subscription of £10 per member per month for full members from January 2003 is £120 per annum and will allow us to raise the extra £110,000 we need to do everything on these two pages in 2003. £120 is not much if you put it alongside a GMC sub of £290, BMA sub of £320, College sub of £170 and MDU sub of over £2,000! Members of CMDA, our sister organisation in the US, pay over twice as much. Of course it is a hefty increase on our present full subscription of £75, but put alongside the fact that many of us earn between £50,000 and £100,000 per year and that many of us have homes valued at over three times that, we do not believe it is unreasonable. Students, retired folk, missionaries and juniors within five years of graduation will be exempt from ANY subscription increase.

Of course we would love you to give much more than £10 per month if you are able. Many already do, and we are immensely grateful. In fact well over half of our annual running costs come from donations over and above subscription. Even at the revised level subscriptions will not even cover half our running costs. So if you are already giving to CMF above subscription please continue to do so at the same level or above, and if you are not please do consider doing so.

CMF is a 'high turnover, low asset' charity. Our entire reserves amount to no more than 3-4 months of our annual turnover, so all that comes in is spent in ministry. We are not saving up for a rainy day, because we believe 'the days are short', and we are convinced that it is good stewardship to function like this. It keeps us looking to God to supply our needs.

New Associate General Secretary
- £45,000 per annum

CMF General Secretary Peter Saunders' job description has changed considerably over the last three years with the growth in CMF activities and he needs to be freed up from many of his current office-based duties to become more active in supporting staff, training, speaking, writing, media work, 'networking', developing new projects and generally overseeing the process of growth and change. In short we would like Peter to 'get out more'. The appointment of Giles Rawlinson as Chief Administrator in February 2000 has already had the effect of freeing Peter up from most of the office administration that does not require a medical qualification to perform, and he has also been able to pass on the oversight of Nucleus, the national students' conference and other student events (including Confident Christianity ) to our new Student Secretary Mark Pickering. But we believe there is still enough routine work requiring medical expertise to require two full-time medically qualified staff in the central office. A new associate general secretary (see p4) will also be able to share in Peter's 'field' activities. If this appointment is not made soon then most of the developments on this page will have to go 'on hold' and we believe that would be a lost opportunity.

Merger with MMA Healthserve
- 'Cost neutral'

MMA Healthserve, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year (see p7) has worked closely with CMF for many years in mobilising Christian health professionals to serve Christ abroad. Our Overseas Support Secretary Peter Armon is jointly employed by both organisations. We now believe that the cause of healthcare mission will be far better served by both organisations merging and the MMA-HS Council is working steadily towards this end. MMA Healthserve, which is currently based half an hour away in Shadwell, would cease to exist and fuse with CMF's overseas department in 2003, but the Healthservename would live on and some members of the MMA-HS Council would join a more multidisciplinary CMF Overseas Support Committee with many more resources available for mission. This will enable much closer working with Christian nurses, therapists, managers and other healthcare professionals as well as saving a huge amount of duplication and greatly simplifying administration. The cost of the merger would be primarily borne by MMA-HS, and Peter Armon would then be based at Partnership House.

More Space
-'Cost neutral'

All this change requires new space that until now has not been available. But now the ACC (Anglican Consultative Council), with whom we share the 5th floor of Partnership House, are definitely l e aving. They have signed a lease on another property in London and expect to be departing in toto between September and December 2003.

ACC currently occupy more than twice the amount of space that we do, so there would be ample available to allow for the merger with MMA-HS. We think we only need another 500 sq ft, at an annual cost of £16,000 pa, but we don't expect to take on this cost until the end of 2003 and believe that much of it would be met as a consequence of the MMA-HS/CMF merger.

There would also be ample space for other Christian healthcare organisations to move in alongside us, if they so chose. Other potential tenants are currently being contacted. We have long dreamt of several Christian healthcare organisations coming together to share space under one roof. Might this dream now be coming true?

New Database
- £7,000 per annum

Our old Pick Database was installed in 1997 and is based on the 'pre-windows' DOS system. It has served us well, but is increasingly creaking with the strain of growth and we have needed to spend more and more money upgrading it to deal with routine office administration. We would like to upgrade to Oracle, a 'state of the art' database system already used by over 70% of businesses worldwide. Miller Technology who manage our current database, and who understand our work better than anyone, would manage the change for us at a considerable discount on commercial rates. Their clients already using Oracle include the British Medical Association, The Royal Society of Medicine, the Royal College of Midwives and several of the country's largest trade unions. The upgrade would allow us to streamline greatly our membership system, improve handling of electronic correspondence, answer complicated queries, allow a transition to direct debit and online conference bookings, enhance considerably our ability to contact and link people and create an effective Christian medical cyber-community. The extra cost for new hardware and software, installation and maintenance can be spread over several years meaning an additional cost of only £7,000 pa over current computer costs.

More Media Involvement
-£12,000

With all the ethical challenges that currently face us, and with the ethical slide within the British Medical Association, Christian doctors have a huge responsibility to be a public voice for Christian values in healthcare. First CMF needs to speak out as an organisation; and during 2002 we have had a very fruitful relationship with a Christian Media Consultant Iain Taylor, who through the Evangelical Alliance Press Office, has enabled us to make 15 press releases, take part in over 20 television and radio interviews and led to over 50 quotations (some up to 500 words each) in Church and national newspapers. We want to continue and increase this activity.

But even more important than this is enabling more CMF members to get on the media in their own right. Over the last two years CMF has provided professional training in television and radio at subsidised rates to over 90 members, many of whom have gone on to take up media opportunities. All this has meant an increasing number of media enquiries to the CMF office and we want to build on this in 2003. This will cost £12,000.

The Saline Solution
- £5,000

The Saline Solutionis an excellent course for integrating faith and practice, that is specially tailored to general practice but suitable for all doctors who want to be better at meeting patients' spiritual needs. A pilot conference has already been held, and we are now adapting the material with a view to running a series of day conferences next autumn. The expected cost is £5,000.

CMF Voluntary Ministry
-£4,000

We would like to create more opportunities for junior doctors and retired doctors to work with CMF parttime in a voluntary capacity; either to help launch new projects or to work alongside our regional Staffworkers supporting students and junior doctors. This is a wonderful opportunity, for younger doctors especially, to get experience in Christian ministry whilst at the same time doing training in theology, Bible teaching and medical ethics.

Such doctors would raise their own support, most probably in part-time medical work alongside a voluntary CMF post, but we would cover expenses incurred in work with CMF and also (for junior doctors) offer help with ministry training through the UCCF relay training programme.

2003 Budget Deficit
- £37,000

If we kept subscriptions at £75 per annum and did none of the things on these two pages, we project that we would finish 2003 with a deficit of £37,000. This assumes that we receive no legacies in 2003 (we receive d legacies of over £50,000 in 2002). So we have allowed for this in our calculation of needs for 2003 .

Total Needed
- £110,000

£110,000 may sound like a lot, but it is actually substantially less than 20% of our current income, and will be completely covered by raising the full subscription to £120 (£10 per member per month ), provided that donations continue at the same level. Let's go for it!

2002 Finances

As noted above, demands on CMF's resources continue to grow, and we predict that the 2002 accounts of the Fellowship will show a deficit in the order of £20,000, after the last two years of surplus. Income is almost exactly in line with the budget for the year, and has also been boosted in the last quarter by a very significant legacy (how is your will? Would you consider making a CMF a beneficiary?). However expenditure has been £50,000 ahead of budget in areas of both ministry and administration, as CMF responds to needs in the UK and overseas. The 2003 budget can only be balanced by an increase in subscription for those in full time medical employment (detail on these two pages).

We plan to introduce giving by means of direct debit as soon as practicable, to streamline further the subscription and donation process. Would you consider supporting CMF by means of a direct debit? Watch this space!