Hi All,
Last Sunday we gave notice of our upcoming church AGM on Sunday March 23 after church. We’d love you to stick around for this important time in the life of our church family. We’ll have some formal governance matters to attend to, but we’ll also spend time in prayer – thanking God for the year that has been and asking him to be at work in our midst for the year to come. See the attachments below.
Another thing we talked about last Sunday was our church finances. On a basic level we can think of this as covering our expenses as a church, but at this stage we’re not doing that, as this graph shows us. The green line indicates the budgeted amount it will take each month to cover our costs, while the blue column shows the giving for January, laid over the red columns showing the monthly giving for 2024. Each of us needs to consider whether we’re in a position to contribute to the shortfall so that we can keep doing what we’re doing. However, while this is all true, I think there is a better way to consider it. Let me tell you what I mean…
God is so generous to bless his people with both motivation and means to pool our resources for the work of the gospel that we share in as a church. So please let me outline some of the ways that your giving supports great gospel ministry.
- We rent the facilities that we use for our Sunday gathering. This costs us about $250 per week to hire this space, which is pretty great value. We’re so thankful for to have plenty of room for church and lots of space for socialising before and afterwards, right in the heart of our local neighbourhood in Brighton/Hove. Perhaps you feel passionately about our local presence and would like to consider increasing your giving to help secure that?
- We hire facilities for Trinity Kids on Sunday and Trinity Youth on Friday. This costs us just over $300 per week to have a space for us host these vital ministries and that cost is increasing as the growing number of young people attending mean that we need to hire more space. If this is your passion, perhaps you can consider contributing toward this?
- It’s been a joy to share the gospel at Taste and See with dozens of people who had not otherwise heard it explained with clarity. Experience shows us that each course costs us about $1000 to cover venue hire and catering costs, depending on how many are attending. Would you like to increase your financial partnership so that we can keep running Taste and See?
- We’re excited to see churches planted across Adelaide, and to be in close fellowship with the Trinity Network of Churches. We contribute 9% of our budget to the Network and we benefit greatly from this fellowship. These benefits range from structural things like shared accounting resources, insurance, and accountability structures to ministry training and evangelistic partnerships to mention just a few aspects. Perhaps you might want to increase your giving as a way of expressing your commitment to the integrity of our leadership and our partnership in evangelism across our city.
- It’s a real joy to have Paul Merenda on our staff team as a Student Minister. I’m sure you’ll agree that we’ve been greatly blessed to have him with us. We contribute just under $1000 per month towards his ongoing training and development in ministry, and this is just a small contribution to raising up the next generation of gospel leaders. Would you like to give generously to enable us to do more of this?
- Of course, as the pie chart below shows, the biggest single ‘expense’ is the support of our pastoral staff: Matt Winter and myself. Matt and I (and our families!) are keenly aware of this and very thankful to God for this provision that enables us to be undistracted in our focus on gospel ministry while providing for the needs of our families. It’s our passion to see our church joyfully worshipping our great God together, God’s word faithfully taught, God’s people lovingly cared for, vulnerable members of our church safe-guarded, unbelievers invited to put their trust in Jesus, new Christians established in the faith, and most of all to see disciples of Jesus equipped for ministry in all of these areas.
Your giving enables all of this – and much more! Under God, your generosity has a profound impact. Can I invite you to ask God to remind you of the many and various ways that he has richly blessed you, and to lay on your heart the many and various ways that we can richly bless one another and our city as we steward the resources he has given us for his glory.
It will be good for us to talk and pray about this at the AGM on the 23rd. If you would like more information about how to give, please see our website. If you would like to discuss any of the detail, please don’t hesitate to talk with me or Matt or any of our Trinity Church Brighton Leadership Team: Mike Hern, Sue Pyke, Jane Unsworth, Stephen Watson, Paul Wight.
Most of all, please join me in praying that God will glorify himself in us as he makes our hearts to be more like his.
See you on Sunday,
Simon