Been in your shoes way too many times.

Anyone who says the economy is great needs to step back to 1995, I think. That was a great economy, even if it was all illusory.

I prayed for you just now.

Thoughtful and wise comments.

As I got my unofficial notice of my job termination due my factory closing (this is my second), I could fill this webpage of examples of efforts to make things better going sour to the point of blaming God. (Maybe I did like Him more when life was better.)

Of course, I’ll just hold my breath in the transition when there is no health insurance.

I’m glad i wasn’t in that group with the happy-go-lucky man who LOVES his job. He needs dressing down.

1. Companies lay off workers and giving goes down. Now how do you pay for your building and staff when the collection plate is half-filled and you budgeted for a full one?

There are a number of innovative solutions to this problem. First, you pray that God would provide a miracle, but as Metropolitan Anthony of the Eastern Orthodox Church notes praying to God also means that you will do everything within your power to make sure the work is done. Second, a church could begin renting out the church to another small church looking for a home and allow them to meet after your church gets out. This rent should help pay for the staffers. Third, you save money by going “brown (i.e. stop watering the lawns). Fourth, you run church-wide participatory fundraisers like a BBQ or a Krispy Kreme donut sale to raise more funds for the church.

Obviously, these four options are temporary and may not save the church from a financial crisis. If this is the case, you must begin the painful process of firing all the staffers you cannot afford.

2. The bastions of the church start discovering that they need an extra job or must take service industry jobs that work strange hours, hours that overlap most church activity times. Suddenly, your lay leaders aren’t available to lay lead because they are busy making ends meet any way they can. Who is left to run all your discipleship programs?

This is the problem with programmatic and strategic visions. What we need to be teaching is how families can live together communally. My suggestion for a long time has been that families within the church need to live together to save money. I am not talking about “commune hippie style living, but real Americans working jobs but shouldering the burden of a mortgage, food, and other necessary items together. That is to say that two or three families within a church should live under one roof. If my calculations are correct this could save over $100,000 per family (even more in some parts of the country). In these communal families, bible study, discipleship, and other such events could happen at a deep level without all the organizing. We don’t need things like a lay-leader for small groups, we need small communities to really be existing 24/7 within the church. We also need to be teaching parents how to properly disciple their children. In this way, youth ministry will be a tool alongside what parents have already taught their kids.

3. Churches that bet the farm on small groups, hoping they will sustain the flock during the week, now find that most people are busy trying to make a living and have no time for small groups. Now what?

See my answer to #2.

4. The most vulnerable people in the church start suffering. Who will care for and comfort them when you’ve been forced to reduce paid staff numbers and lost to job-related issues the 20 percent of non-clergy who do 80 percent of the ministry?

Your model assumes that we have a fairly large church that can afford to pay for a fairly large full-time staff. Many churches don’t function on this model. The churches that do function on such a model have many other problems they have to deal with before dealing the problems that you are asking about. For instance, why do they have so many full time positions? Do we really need all these full time positions? Your model also assumes that the adage of 20/80 is correct. I don’t think it has to be this way. I think this a pessimistic way to look at the church, and it is not helpful for motivation.

5. When people lose jobs, they lose employer healthcare benefits. When they take part-time jobs (if available), they don’t get health insurance. What do you do when one of the cornerstones in your church tells everyone he has cancer and will need at least half a million dollars for a course of therapy?

The church should first pray for a miraculous curing of this cancer. I’m assuming that the question implies this man only works part time. I think we would be surprised by the amount of help will come to a person in need. We underestimate the power of the human spirit. Just recently a good friend of the family at the church had a stroke, and the church and the community raised $30,000 to help her get a wheel-chair accessible van. Beyond this, we have to consider the nature of the church. The church is primarily a communist structure. People take what they need and contribute what they can. If it costs $500,000 for chemotherapy I believe that at a church of 500 it will cost each person $1,000. But if they are practicing communal living and good stewardship, that should not be a problem. Perhaps certain people can’t afford to give the $1,000 and others can give more, then people will give what they can, and take what they need. The nature of the church is not capitalistic, fair, or equitable.