“They don’t care what you know until they know that you care,” my camp director, Mac Westmoreland, told the group of counselors sitting in front of him. The quote is usually attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. Mac reminded us that it is all about relationships. Working with campers, he was trying to get across, is about building relationships and trust.

Camp ministry at Camp Gravatt, the Episcopal Camp and Conference Center in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, was where I cut my teeth in ministry. As a counselor, I learned how to lead, experiment with different roles, and care for people. In other words, I learned how to build, maintain, and cultivate good relationships.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is all about relationships. Trinity Sunday is about a God who wants to be revealed, wants to be known. Trinity Sunday is about a God who is first off in relationship with oneself. Trinity Sunday is about a God who wants a relationship with us. Trinity Sunday is about a God who wants us to be in relationship with one another.

The Trinity is not just some obscure doctrine but rather a way of being in the world, a way of saying relationships and the love that exists in relationships is the way we need to be in the world. That is the way God moves in the world – in relationship with Godself, in relationship with us individually, and in relationship with the world.

As Mac was telling me and the rest of the counselors that summer, it’s all about relationships.

In Faith, Love, and Service,
holly+
Rev. Holly Rankin Zaher, Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Evansville, Indiana