Letter: Not for the highest bidder

Your article "Need a doctor? Go to church!" (29 June) implies that churches' primary motive in opening up their buildings to the community is financial.

In 10 years, we have awarded nearly pounds 6m in grants to more than 200 churches for building and re-design projects. Far from being lucrative, many facilitated activities such as play groups, youth centres, job creation schemes and pensioners' lunch clubs that require continued investment in time and resources.

The congregations involved are finding ways to make faith credible and relevant to those for whom the church previously had no significance. Rather than signalling a "weakening of the religious impulse", their actions are a re-energising of worship through engagement with the real needs of the community.

Angela Sarkis

Church Urban Fund London SW1