By The Rev. Dr. Anne McKee

Dear Friends, 

This week is Trinity Sunday, which isn’t very exciting on its face. It doesn’t have a special color like red, though it’s our last “white” Sunday for a while, before we go into green “ordinary time” all summer. And it’s not associated with any big event. Rather, Trinity Sunday is a celebration of the foundation of our faith – the many ways we know God, the many names God goes by in the Bible, the mystery that God is, in the Creator, in Jesus, and in the Spirit, all one God, but relating to one another in an overflowing love that we share, in the church. 

This is going to feel like an abrupt segue, but stay with me! Thinking about the Trinity this week has made me think about our church budget. It’s one budget, right? But made up of many different parts. Fountain City Presbyterian Church, as a whole, is one church, and we have a rich complexity inside us – those who are taking off for Belize this Saturday, those who are getting ready for a visiting choir in a couple of weeks, those who work in local mission, those who pray and teach. We relate to one another in love, and that love overflows beyond us.

Like our budget, right? About a year or so ago, the Session decided to unify the church’s budget. Instead of having lots of different pockets that people gave to separately- for choir scholarships, Belize, local missions, or education – the Session decided to have one church budget that will, on all of our behalf, support all the different ministries of the church. That was an act of love – that we could be one body, though we still are made up of many members. 

But here’s the thing – sometimes we forget that all those programs are still being funded by the church and depend on our gifts. We are still supporting choir scholarships, and still sending folks to Belize, so as members, we need to support the one budget, by increasing our general giving to include any special gifts we might feel call to make, or have made in the past. It’s easy to forget because we aren’t doing different appeals for different causes. But if we care about those projects and want them to keep being funded, that will depend on our gifts. 

If you have questions about any of this, please ask anyone on the finance team or ask me and I’ll do my best to answer. I promise it’s not as complex as the Trinity! But how we share our money with each other is just as foundational to our life as a church.