Nearly every day I encounter someone who tells me their churches budget was cut, people at their church are about to lose their jobs, or otherwise their church is encountering hard financial times.
That’s not purely a bad thing. Here are three positive things that a lack of money bring to a church.
1. A gut check for the staff. If you’ve worked in a church you know that there are people who are on staff because they are absolutely convinced God wants them there and there are people who are there because its a job. When budgets get slashed, programs get cut, and necessary and unnecessary stuff gets trimmed to cut costs… each staff member has to examine herself and ask, “Why am I here? Do I really want to be here?” Some will double down their efforts and some will check out. Both are positive for the church going forward.
2. A gut church for the parishoners. Along the same lines the people who attend the church have to face the same choice. When their beloved program is dismantled because of a lack of funding they have to ask themselves, “Am I here for that program, or am I here because this is where God wants me?” When they see a staff member lose benefits or their job or even their house, they re-examine their financial priorites automatically. “Am I being faithful to God with my money? Am I being a good steward of what I earn?” This is a positive outcome!
3. A gut check for the dreamers. I can’t help but think of the mid-2000’s boom in church growth. With the last coughs of the Field of Dreams model [If you build it, they will come… and give!] of church growth, congregations built massive additions, added satellite campuses, and even reached out to buy up struggling churches. For the most part this was done during good times and using credit. Now those churches see double digit decreases in giving and are stuck in a catch-22 scenario. Admit they were wrong to buy on credit and sell property or trim programs and staff to try to ride out the dip. This is a positive outcome for the church, even if it means they go bankrupt. The healthy and faithful congregations will make it. The ones who depended on their own talents will fail.
A bonus positive: A side effect of the extended recession is that I am seeing a massive wave of volunteerism in the church. As churches trim their budgets and people in the pews realize that they need to step up, the church as a whole is seeing an increase in volunteers in key church leadership positions.
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