Bats in the belfry and pennies from heaven?

It's been an interesting few weeks in the progress towards our new church/community centre building...

Having applied for Planning Permission a couple of months ago, and perhaps surprisingly had no opposition from our (residential) neighbours, we were all set for the Planning Committee to consider our application on 10 Dec, until the Council's Ecology Unit sprung into life 9 days ago, having decided to require a bat survey of the site!

Our Architects responded remarkably quickly, with the outcome that less than a week later, the Council's recommended 'bat consultant' had carried out a survey and reported that there was no evidence of bats, and furthermore for various reasons the buildings and the trees were very unlikely to host bats! So we're hopefully back on track a month later for the January Planning Committee.

We're also coming up to the fifth Sunday when we're asking our congregation to bring their pledges towards a target of £850K - having already given £650K, and in the context of a total project cost of around £4M. As at yesterday those pledges had reached £295K, so it will be interesting to see how we do tomorrow morning where the balance is concerned! But given that less than a quarter of the church has pledged so far, the target looks within reach...