Dear Beloved Community,
It’s not quite time for our annual roundup of the year in review – churches like ours have a lot of life to live together in December! – but as the month begins, I am so moved by all the ways that you create church right here in the heart of the city.
Sunday’s sanctuary filled with children and youth “hanging the green” in their leadership. Volunteers each week packing food boxes at Una Bendición, tutoring students at Ashley Academy, delivering Meals on Wheels to seniors, sending cards to our home-centered neighbors and serving meals to our unhoused neighbors. Members who check in on each other through depression and fear and step up for each other during treatments and tests, who grieve together in loss and celebrate together in joy. A church house exercised regularly for the community: community choir rehearsals and Bookmarks author events and nonprofit board retreats and county educators, among many. New members and friends of all kinds. Worship that prepares us for the worship that is our very lives.
Together with God, this happens – church happens – because of your faithful gifts to our beloved community.
2025 has been a truly extraordinary year of generosity in our church, as together, we have pledged nearly $2.9M to our Life Together capital campaign, and given much of that to date. You answered the call by giving to complete the work left unfinished in 2019, and to ready our campus for the community, inside and out, for the years ahead. And when our completed grounds open in 2026, they will bear your fingerprints of generosity – for First Baptist and for Winston-Salem – over generations to come.
In a year with a capital campaign that had several “asks” of the congregation, our faithful Finance Committee felt it best to take a year off from our annual pledge campaign. Thus, you’ve not heard an invitation to offer your pledge for next year’s giving to the ongoing missions and ministries of the church.
But as we near this year’s end, we are $100,143 behind our 2025 budget as of the end of November. For a church in a capital campaign year, this is common and expected, even planned for with reserves and expense-trimming. The Finance Committee has expressed their confidence in our growing congregation’s commitment to what we’re doing together, in part by recommending an increase to the church’s budget seen in the 2026 Ministry Funding Plan that we approved unanimously in November.
Cultivating the kind of church that opens wide its doors in inclusion and celebration of all, that knits people together in uncommon love, that nurtures the young and old alike, that calls and equips staff leaders, that provides refuge and courage amidst the uncertain, chaotic world around us, that tends the call of God, that creates a space for home in the heart of the city, that moves us all to serve … that kind of church takes an investment from each of us. Deepest thanks to you for investing in God’s work of Love through First Baptist on Fifth!
By fully funding our 2025 ministry, and all the church it provides, we will affirm what God is doing in our midst and ready us for a dynamic year ahead. With the completion of our building project, the addition of a new amphitheater next door, a fitting end to the church house’s 100th anniversary celebrations, new partnerships, strengthened vision, and faithful ministries and mission, 2026 will fill with possibility for how God equips and empowers us to lead in the work of Love. Your gifts at year-end will make that possible.
It has been a long pattern of our church to end the year with significant giving. Often 20-25% of our annual gifts come in December! Today’s newsletter has directions below on how to offer your year-end gifts, which can be given online at firstonfifth.org/give or through your account in Realm, in person by check or cash, or through a stock gift in coordination with Sally Barbour, Accounting Manager. Whether you catch up on your giving this month or give an extra gift as you are able, will you help us close this budget shortfall in 2025 to enter 2026 with confidence and hope?
In the cold and quiet of this morning as I write to you, I thank you with my whole heart, beloved community, for being the kind of people who make a healthy, vibrant, dynamic, brave, just, faithful, kind, generous, and loving church happen, with God, together!
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily