The £12 million comes from the Renewal and Reform program, which aims to grow the church’s attendance among all classes, races and generations. 

Some of the money will be going towards sports clubs in deprived areas to help alleviate crime and spread the gospel.

One church that will benefit from the money is Christ Church Anerly in South London, who are already running a Christian boxing club for 13-19 year olds and an evangelistic Bible study for ex-offenders.

The pastor there, Rev Matthew Fitter, told Premier he has conducted two funerals for victims of knife crime in his area and that was what persuaded him the boxing club was worth doing.

“The reason that convinced us to go for it is it is definitely distinctively Christian. So, we have a professional boxing coach who comes and does the actual boxing, training, the fitness, the boxing moves, all of those things. But then for the last 10 minutes of every session we have unashamedly Christian content where either an ex-offender, or somebody, shares the difference that Jesus has made to them and so for me, the way that I’m comfortable with it is because it is definitely Christian, both in the way that we set it up and also in the way that we run it.”

The pastor explained how the Christian content had been received by those going to the boxing club: “They’ll have done an hour and 20 minutes of fitness and…

Shohfah-El Israel, whose birth name is Ajibola Shogbamimu, was convicted by a jury at Reading Crown Court of killing Joy Morgan after spending time alone with her – against strict church rules – in December.

The 20-year-old midwifery student’s body has never been recovered, despite extensive police searches of hundreds of acres of land in Hertfordshire.

Israel was convicted by a jury of eight women and four men on a single count of murder.

He lied to the police when he was arrested, saying he had dropped Ms Morgan off at her student accommodation in Hatfield after a celebratory dinner at the American-founded Israel United in Christ Church they attended in Ilford, east London, on December 26.

He later admitted he had in fact spent two nights alone with the University of Hertfordshire student in his Cricklewood flat, but claimed his lies were due to concerns about having broken church rules banning women from being alone with men other than their husbands.

After killing Ms Morgan he attempted to cover his tracks by removing her number from a church Telegram group chat, the court heard, and even kept up the pretence by going to her student house share under the guise of checking on her in the days after she apparently went missing.

A signal from Ms Morgan’s phone, which has never been found, was detected in Israel’s car in the Stevenage area on December 28, at which…