Hello Church,
When we gather for our AGM after church on Sunday March 23, Trinity Church Brighton will be 19 years old. God has been powerfully at work through our community over these 19 years and it is a tremendous encouragement to consider the kind of church we want to be when we celebrate our 20th birthday, and then our 25th and 30th.
By God’s grace, TCB has had a generational impact upon the children and young people who are going strong in the Lord, as well as the older folk who have stood firm in Christ to the end of this earthly life. We remember the courageous households who stepped out in faith to plant Trinity Church Woodcroft a little over 5 years ago, and the faithful saints who remained to carry on the legacy of TCB. Speaking of legacy, there are five pastors serving in the Trinity Network of Churches who spent formative years of their ministry development at TCB, and many other leaders serving in churches and ministries near and far. The level of entrepreneurial endeavour for the sake of gospel outreach has been tremendous. To quiz you on this, which of the following venues has hosted a regular TCB gathering in at some point in our 19 year history: Mawson Hall, Somerton Yacht Club, Marion Bowls Club, McAuley Community School… The answer is all of the above! Many of us have fond memories of massive community carols services, or Christmas Gingerbread events. Our recent beach baptisms have been a tremendous encouragement.
All of this is to say, let’s keep dreaming of how God might glorify his Son in us and through us. All around us are suburbs full of people who are lost without Jesus. Let’s boldly consider how we partner together in this wonderful privilege and responsibility of shining as the light of the world in this part of our city.
We’ve described church finance as a particular expression of our partnership. I think it’s also helpful to see it as a vital tool in our ministry. I mentioned to someone the other day that we’ve got a great shopping list of ideas for ministry together if only we had the budget to enable it. They said they’d really like to see that shopping list, so here it is (it’s about as informal as a list scrawled in pencil stuck up on your fridge):
- Admin support worker who can do admin better than our pastors do – so we resource our volunteers better while freeing pastoral staff to do pastoral things.
- Increased pastoral input into Trinity Kids, with training and support for our growing team of fantastic volunteers.
- Budget to enable a junior youth outreach program as we see the growing number of upper primary kids God has brought to church.
- Increased funding to enable a better venue for the youth group that is soon going to outgrow the current venue.
- One-off investments in a new keyboard (the current one is as old as TCB is!), and upgrades to some of our AV equipment.
- Financial headroom to get creative with community outreach events.
- $20k per year to support a Ministry Apprentice, as we seek to raise up the next generation of gospel workers.
- Lease an office space to provide a weekday community presence and enable greater collaboration between staff and volunteers.
- A ‘seed fund’ to enable entrepreneurial thinking about our next church plant or expansion as we grow beyond the capacity of our current venue configuration.
I could go on, but I think we get the idea. We have the remarkable privilege, and weighty responsibility, of considering how we steward all that God has given us (time, talents and treasure) for his glory and the good of our neighbours. We do that generally as we are scattered in the world throughout the week, but we do it particularly when we gather as the local expression of the body of Christ. There’s nothing about this that is just going through the motions! If you’d like to know more, send in an email or get your questions ready for the AGM. If you’d like to give more, click here to get the info you need.
I’m looking forward to talking and praying about this with you at the AGM after church on Sunday March 23.
Your brother in Christ,
Simon