What is stewardship? 

Christian Stewardship begins with the notion that all of life and its gifts find their source in God. In response to God’s love or us and generosity to us, we faithfully return a portion of that gift to God in the form of time, talent and treasure.

Offerings are made as an expression of faith and generosity and our gifts are ultimately identified with Christ's self-offering for our salvation. Your gifts help create stability and growth for the church’s service to God, congregation, Gospel, and community.

Stewardship references the ancient Israelite custom of dedicating the first ten percent of one’s income to the temple of God. Modern Christians consider the tithe a spiritual discipline of gratitude for all that God has given them. 

Why pledge?  

Pledging helps the treasurer, vestry, and priest plan ahead to support the ministries of the church. One might also think of it as an estimate of giving. Pledging is a spiritual act of dedicating your resources to God. It also provides documentation for the charitable tax deduction. Trinity doesn’t receive top-down funding through the diocese; we fund our ministries ourselves. Every pledge is unique to an individual or family's respective situation.

Some members are able to offer more, which is a gift to those in different financial positions, especially as we grow with young adults, and families with young children.

What if something happens and I need to decrease my pledge? 

We understand! We care about you, nothing about our Trinity community’s love, commitment, and support is conditional on this. Please let the treasurer know so she can adjust the budget. Be kind with yourself and know you are loved. If the church can help you, please let us know.

How should I give? 

Whether you give online, check, ACH bank withdrawal, or cash, we are grateful for your gifts—use whichever is most convenient for you. We use Tithe.ly, a secure service, for online giving. If you have any questions, ask Ashton McCachern, our treasurer.

What are Trinity’s plans for building financial health?

As you may know, we use a remote bookkeeping service that specializes in churches—this has been phenomenal for us, and has helped build up financial processes as our longtime treasurer, Betsy Laundon, retired and we elected a new treasurer, Ashton McCachern, and as we did not re-hire the parish administrator position. 

As Trinity regathered after 2020, we had an opportunity to reassess our commitments and ways of doing church—we’ve taken the opportunity to discern a number of things about our church culture and calendar, identifying a number of ministries and habits that we want to keep, cut back on, or sunset. 

Last year, a committee identified line items to cut or eliminate. As we’ve been going throughout the year, we’ve looked for ways to save money and continue reducing our budget; we’ve also found that other ministries need more investment— for example, we increased our children’s ministry budget and have seen beautiful growth there. Plus, we’re creative! For example, through the generosity of volunteers who cooked lunch and donated supplies, through the creativity of volunteers, we threw a sweet 3-day Compassion Camp VBS for less than $100.

We are open to partnering with organizations for space rental—please connect us if you know a good fit.

During our last stewardship campaign, we had a decrease in pledge income—a few people who usually pledged did not pledge or significantly reduced their pledge. We are thankful that we have also had 10 or more people begin giving to the church—this tells us we have a wider base of support and enthusiasm for our Gospel ministry. This is an encouraging sign and we are grateful for this new generosity. This is God’s church and it is your church—what you give affects our impact in the church and in the community. 

At 40 gifts of $75 a week, we would be back to a pre-2020/more sustainable budget; at our current budget, we are still growing in ministries and the ways we live out the Gospel and our faith, but this would allow us to do so with more long-term investment in our capacity. 

This year, we received a grant of $20,000 for improvements to our building—this is exciting! Elizabeth Harding and Sarah English are helping us to continue to refine our processes planning—we’re grateful for their expertise and generosity!

 

The Rev. Gail Goldsmith and Mary Tinsley, finance committee chair, and members of the vestry are available to answer any questions you have or to share in conversation about Trinity. We are so grateful for this church and for you.