Churches vs. The Economy

Being a church leader can sometimes be like a ride on a roller coaster. With everything to manage, people to care for, budgets to make, sermons to prepare, meetings to attend, prayers to say…well, it can take a toll.

And that is when things are going well!

Imagine how roller-coastery things can get in the midst of a bad economy. People are losing their jobs, the offering goes down, you have to let staff go, you can no longer serve free coffee…if you’re not careful, the roller coaster can make you sick.

So I got to thinking: if Jesus were a year and a half into his ministry today, what would he do in the midst of a bad economy? What would be the markers of his ministry? How would he survive the economy? Here are some ideas:

Radical Calls to Discipleship

Jesus would have the audacity to ask someone to leave everything behind for the sake of following him and if they didn’t he would move on. Jesus wouldn’t be interested in persuading the lukewarm. He would constantly say, “All or nothing.” His vision was such that the half-hearted would impede it. Thus, he turned several (potentially even many) would-be disciples away.

Extreme Focus on People

Jesus’ ministry would never be too busy for people. If someone was in need, he would stop and care for them be it through healing or just conversation. This is true even if Jesus had a hundred things on his agenda.

Quality Not Quantity

Jesus wouldn’t care about how many people were following him. In fact, his teaching about dying to self, loving one’s enemies, and life in the Kingdom caused many to stop following him. But Jesus would be okay with that because he would probably think that just a few well-formed, well-trained disciples could make much more of a difference than a thousand kind of formed, somewhat-trained disciples.

Resourcing Ministry Through People

Jesus would have a huge vision for ministry and it would take a massive amount of resources to accomplish it. But Jesus wouldn’t beg for money or take a special offering. Instead, he would enable and equip people to do the ministry trusting that when they seek first the Kingdom of God, everything else is given as well.

Focus on His Mission

Most of all, Jesus would have laser focus on his mission. He wouldn’t get side-tracked with political issues or be co-opted by what someone else thinks he should do. He would know exactly what his mission was and would give that mission his full attention, making sure that every activity, every conversation were pointing to his vision.

In other words, were Jesus to have come today in the midst of a bad economy, he wouldn’t have changed a thing. Sure, things would look different, he might wear jeans or travel by car. He might be known for hanging out at bars and getting in the faces of popular preachers, but his values would remain the same.

We church leaders have to ask whether we share the same values. Sometimes we say we do, but we don’t actually live out those values. And sometimes, our values are just plain different: quantity, big crowds, easy preaching, etc.

So what’s my point?

If, in the midst of a bad economy, we are forced to change either held or lived values, our values were askew to begin with. I cannot imagine Jesus’ church sharing in the same struggles that many of us do. But I don’t think that’s because Jesus would have some sort of Joel Osteen celebrity status with lots of rich people to fill up the offering plate. It would be because Jesus had different values than we do, values that were wholly independent of any sort of economical health – that wouldn’t just be an accident or the result of some divine gift, it would be an intentional, calculated effort to build a church that nothing could overcome – not even the economy.

And if our churches couldn’t do that, we may need to leave the building of a booming-economy-dependent-church.

Participate: Write down your held values. Do they match your lived values? Do they match Jesus’?

Engage: Write down the changes your church has had to make as a result of the economy. What would it look like to keep those changes long-term?

Own: Identify one lived value of yours that doesn’t line up with Jesus and outline a strategy for changing it.

What do you think, were there other characteristics of Jesus’ ministry that would thrive in the midst of a bad economy? How might Jesus structure his ministry budget different from ours?

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