The Future Begins Today!

Dear Trinity Family,

It’s that season again — the time when we, the people of Trinity, turn our hearts and attention toward how we can support our beloved church in the year to come through our gifts of time, talent, and treasure.

Stewardship is a vital part of maintaining a healthy and thriving community. It’s about more than just financial giving — it’s an investment of our hearts, our energy, and our faith in the mission and ministry we share.

Below you’ll find a letter from our stewardship co-chairs, Bill Hackett and Cindy Westbrook. We are deeply blessed to have these two faithful leaders guiding us in this year’s effort.

Please take a moment to read their letter prayerfully, and to consider how you might support the ongoing work and witness of our beloved Trinity Church.

The Future begins today!

Peace and blessings to all,

Paul+

The World as We Know It… Is Ending

Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,

A week or so ago, the clergy of the Diocese of New Jersey gathered in Toms River for our annual Fall Clergy Conference—two and a half days of learning, reflection, and fellowship with Bishop French and the Rev. Gay Jennings, former President of the House of Deputies and member of the Presiding Bishop’s staff.

One recurring theme throughout our time together was that we can no longer live with a status quo mindset. “Business as usual” is no longer sustainable. The world around us is changing—rapidly—and these changes compel us to make intentional choices about how we live out our ministries in an ever-evolving society.

One of the phrases that framed our discussions was:

“The world as we know it is ending.”

In truth, that’s been the case since the beginning of time. The world is always changing. Yet, today, the pace and scope of that change are unlike anything humanity has ever experienced. Transformation that once unfolded over centuries or decades now happens in years, months, even weeks. New ideas, technologies, and global connections are reshaping our lives at an unprecedented rate.

So how do we live faithfully in such a rapidly changing world—anchored in the timeless truth of the Gospel?

With that question in mind, I invite you to join me this Sunday during our Adult Forum for a conversation shaped by six questions adapted from our clergy discussions. My hope is that this conversation will help us deepen our shared understanding and prepare us thoughtfully and prayerfully as we approach our Annual Meeting on November 9.

We need to be intentional, prayerful, and proactive as we discern together the future of our ministry at Trinity.

Here are the questions we’ll explore:

1. What do we need from each other?

2. What do you need from your clergy?

3. What do the clergy and leadership of Trinity Church need from you?

4. How can we best support one another?

5. What would be the signs of a strong community and a strong church?

6. What is our fundamental job as the Body of Christ?

The world as we know it is ending—and we have a vital role to play in what is being created anew. Filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered by God’s love, and sustained by God’s grace, we are invited to help shape the world that is coming into being.

And that, my friends, is exciting.

Forward in Faith!

Paul+

Hospitality

Dear People of Trinity Church,

Recently, I’ve been spending time with Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. One section that especially caught my attention is titled “Reaching Out to Our Fellow Human Beings.” In it, Nouwen reflects deeply on the biblical idea of hospitality—“one of the richest biblical terms that can deepen and broaden our insight into our relationships with our fellow human beings.”

Nouwen offers a powerful reimagining of what hospitality truly means. It is so much more than simply welcoming a stranger. He writes, “The Dutch use the word gastvrijheid, which means the freedom of the guest.”

Hospitality, Nouwen explains, “means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom undisturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories, and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can take root and bear fruit.”

Hospitality, then, is a way of liberation—for both the host and the guest, the one who welcomes and the one who is welcomed. It frees us from our preconceived notions, prejudices, and suspicions. It opens our hearts and minds to the possibility that something new and wonderful might happen in the space between us.

True hospitality says not, “Come, and you will become one of us,” but rather, “Come, and together we will discover something new.” It creates a space in which truth and grace, diversity and unity, can coexist. In that space, we begin to see one another not as strangers but as bearers of gifts to be shared—gifts that bless both giver and receiver.

In this particular season of our church’s life—and in our national life—may we practice this liberating, life-giving hospitality. May we rediscover the freedom that bears the fruit of love, community, grace, and healing.

Peace and Blessings,

Paul+

The Joy of Beauty

It’s that most wonderful time of the year here in Princeton, when the leaves begin to turn, the weather gets cool, and the radiance of fall is all around us. This time of year lends itself well to quiet contemplation, to thinking more deeply about our world – which is in the first instance God’s world. For me, it’s a time to revel in the beauty of creation and the joy of being a creature in relationship with God.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about beauty and the role it plays (or doesn’t play) in our culture, especially after reading a marvelous interview between Peter Wehner and the novelist and nonfiction writer Marilynne Robinson. Robinson is, I think, our greatest living chronicler of the dignity of humanity as God’s creatures – a humanist in the classic sense.

Here’s a link to the article, which I commend to you enthusiastically. (I hope the gift link doesn’t die…) 

Our contemporary culture, Robinson says, has fallen into a functionalist and materialist aesthetic sensibility, so that anything that points at beauty and the soul is seen as somehow untrue or – at best –an unnecessary luxury:

“It’s like we have made beauty into something falsified. Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God created that was not meant to ravish us with its beauty. The idea of the beautiful is a signature of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many other people. This distillation of the joy, the sensory joy, of being among things in the world.”

Despite any cultural claims to the contrary, we live in an enchanted world, shot through with the glory of God and the fellowship of human souls both living and in that “great cloud of witnesses” who rejoice in God’s nearer presence. The spiritual aspects of life are as real (or more real) than the material. As Robinson puts it, the enchantment of the world is “reality clearly perceived.” She continues, “I think God enchanted things and it is for us to acknowledge the fact.”

In this beautiful season of the year in our community, I pray that you will find time to slow down, take a breath, and look for those signatures of God in the enchanted world all around us.

Yours in Christ,

Kara+

A Warm Welcome to All Visitors & Newcomers.

A warm welcome to all visitors & newcomers.

At Trinity Church, we believe God’s love is expansive and unconditional and that through Christ, God has called us to love one another as God loves us. We welcome all people regardless of gender, race, age, culture, ethnic background, sexual orientation, economic circumstances, family configuration, political affiliation, or difference of ability. We celebrate the worth, dignity, and gifts of every person as a child of God.

We warmly welcome the presence and participation of children.

They are a blessing and gift to our worship experience.

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

I want to bring your attention to two important updates to our bulletin.

The first is a small but significant change to our long-used words of welcome. After prayerful reflection and meaningful conversations with several Trinity members, I have added “political affiliation” to our litany of welcome. I never thought such words would be necessary, but in this season of intense political division, I believe they are. As followers of Christ, we are called to be a community that welcomes all. Trinity Church will not be a “Left” church or a “Right” church, but rather a church that imperfectly yet faithfully strives to follow Jesus Christ and live out the Gospel message for the healing and transformation of the world. This is not easy work. It is work that will not be completed in our lifetimes. Yet each day, in small but meaningful steps, we move closer to God’s dream for our broken world.

The second addition is a welcome directed especially to families with children. Children are essential to the life and vitality of the Church. While their sounds and movements may at times feel distracting, without them there is no future for the Church. These movements and voices are signs of young believers beginning to find their way into the sacramental life of the community we call Trinity. We know how much effort it takes for parents and caregivers to prepare children for worship—and how much energy is spent helping them participate once here. Their efforts deserve our deepest encouragement and our warmest embrace. We must support them with open hearts, open minds, and open arms.

We are especially blessed in this season to have Anne Thomsen Lord, Catherine Breed, and Donte Milligan guiding and nurturing our children and youth. Please reach out to them—or to me—if you feel called to help grow this vital ministry.

I close with the prayer I offered at last Sunday’s forum, a prayer I hope will remain before us as we continue the work of being Trinity Church:

Quicken, O Lord, we pray, all members of your church, that we may be alive to the opportunities and responsibilities of our times. Save us from complacency and from fear of new ways; inspire our minds with the hope of your kingdom; give us joy in what lies before us; and stir our wills to pray and to work until your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Peace,

Paul+

Let’s Talk… and Listen!

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

I invite you to join me this Sunday for our Adult Forum time, which will serve two important purposes.

First, we will kick things off with an update on our Comprehensive Campaign. We are steadily closing in on our $7.5 million goal to secure the future of Trinity Church. Our dedicated co-chairs, Jeannie Garner and David Schneider, will share the latest progress and outline the steps ahead as we work together to cross the finish line.

The majority of our time together will be devoted to reflecting on the current state of our country—particularly the ways we speak and listen to one another. In light of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, we are once again reminded of the divisions, hostility, and intensity that characterize our national life.

As Christians, we are called not to withdraw from this reality, nor to wield our faith as a weapon to dominate others. Instead, we are called to enter the conflict with humility, courage, and love.

A friend recently shared with me the book Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division by Robert P. George and Cornel West. This conversation models civil discourse and robust intellectual engagement around vital questions of truth. Along the way, they remind us that truth-seeking requires conditions such as freedom of speech, and virtues such as intellectual humility and courage. To their call to be “truth seekers” and “truth speakers,” I would add this: we are also called to be truth listeners.

Too often, we speak in order to persuade or to win an argument, rather than to share honestly from our own hearts. Likewise, we listen not to understand, but only to prepare our rebuttal. This cycle keeps us locked in hostility and division.

This Sunday, I invite us into something different. Let us practice speaking with honesty and humility, and listening with openness and grace. When we do, we create the possibility of genuine understanding and deeper unity.

I look forward to being with you. Let’s talk… and let’s listen.

Peace and Blessings,
Paul+

Make Our Life Together a Sign of Christ’s Love

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

Just before the 5:30 Eucharist on Wednesday, my phone buzzed with news: Charlie Kirk had been killed. A conservative political activist and a deeply polarizing figure—followed by millions, despised by millions—his death was immediately met with words of horror, outrage, and disgust. The airwaves filled with the usual rhetoric about political violence, gun control, and the deep divides in our society.

I walked into the chapel for worship and offered a reflection—disjointed, raw, unrefined. Today, on 9/11 of all days, I am trying to write something more thoughtful. As a priest, people expect me to offer a word: grounding, hope, faith. What follows is simply my heart and mind in this moment. Yesterday my words were different; tomorrow they may be different still.

First - why are we shocked? We live in a world steeped in violence. Every day, people are shot and killed. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in 2023—38% were murder. That is nearly 18,000 murders in one year. Someone gets angry, picks up a gun, and takes a life.

But violence is not only personal—it is systemic, national, global. Governments plot and plan wars. Entire populations are sacrificed because of power, anger, greed, and fear, but under the guise of something good and noble, necessary and courageous. Violence is not an occasional interruption in our world; it is all too often the normative reality.

And the violence of our world is not only about guns, not by any means. There is economic violence, relational violence, sexual violence, emotional violence, “tribal” violence, religious violence – violence contaminates the very fabric of our being. Some is public, graphic, and on display. Some is quiet, subtle, cunning, and seductive—yet just as destructive, just as damning.

Second - on Sunday, I said that Jesus warns us: following him will get very real. Because the world is broken—broken in a uniquely human way with envy, fear, jealousy, and hate. Since the beginning, we have continually responded to that brokenness with violence.

So, what do we do as followers of Christ? We cannot stand on some imagined moral high ground, as if we have special clarity because we “follow” Jesus. No—we fall to our knees and pray. We beg for forgiveness. We search our souls, honestly confronting the truth of our own violence—sometimes hidden in the shadows of our hearts, sometimes shockingly exposed. And we trust in God’s love and grace. Only then can we begin to live differently, see differently, speak differently, act differently—not adding to the darkness, but bringing even the faintest light. And this we believe: the darkness cannot and will not overcome the light, even when it shines dimly from our fragile human souls.

Finally - I do not know if these words bring any comfort or clarity, but I offer them in faith, as we seek our way forward together. My dear ones, there will be more violence - there always is. But, there will also be more love, more hope, more life. There always is!

I leave you with a prayer from the wedding liturgy, written for couples beginning their life together, but just as fitting for us, as we continue on this sacred journey.

Make [our] life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world,
that unity may overcome estrangement,
forgiveness heal guilt,
and joy conquer despair. Amen.

Peace and blessings,
Paul+

Get Ready...

Dear Good People of Trinity,

This Sunday, we gather for Homecoming Sunday and begin a new program year together. I always love the excitement, energy, and possibilities this season brings. It is a time of life and abundance as we look forward to the ways God will work through the people of Trinity Church in the coming year. Trinity now enters our 192nd year of ministry, rapidly approaching our bicentennial.

As we prepare to gather this Sunday, I pause to reflect on the thousands of families and individuals who, over nearly two centuries, have found at Trinity Church a place of grace, service, prayer, and praise.

When the first families gathered at Trinity, Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. Since then, the people of Trinity Church have gathered for worship through the Civil War and abolition of slavery, the Industrial Revolution, World War I, the birth of the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, the moon landing, Watergate, the fall of the Soviet Union, September 11, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the explosion of technology and emergence artificial intelligence—and that is only part of the story!

Through it all, God’s people have gathered here: to sing and pray, to serve and love, to learn and grow in faith. In and through it all, we strive to make our broken world a little more like the image and likeness of God’s hope for us. We know there is still much work to be done.

Get ready …our journey continues! Forward in faith! There is love to be shared, people to be welcomed, and Good News to be proclaimed.

I look forward to welcoming you home this Sunday.

Peace and Blessings,

Paul+