According to leading economists, we are slowly making our way out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. The markets are generally (though not uniformly) trending upward, while household spending edges up. There is also some movement in the job market, though unemployment is still unacceptably high. We’re in that period of economic recovery that always makes me wince – the time of “increased productivity,” which means companies are getting more business, but aren’t ready to hire people back, so they make their employees do more work for the same pay.
I understand that this is a necessary transition in a market-based economy, but that doesn’t make it any easier on my parishioners who are more exhausted, have shorter fuses, and become more anxious. I’ve been through three economic recessions as a pastor, and I’ve observed that, for churches, and perhaps for all non-profit organizations, the full effects are not felt until after the economy has already bottomed out and the lumbering giant is beginning to wake up again. We’ve been schooled by the media to know that a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. From a pastor’s perspective, recession carries with it a spiritual dimension. Because it is a time of high unemployment, flat income, and increased job insecurity, it is a time when people become more anxious and less generous.
If I can trust all the anecdotal evidence I have received from my elders over the years, the spirituality of recession is completely different from the spirituality of depression. During the Great Depression, unemployment reached close to 30%. Banks closed, money disappeared, and the bottom fell out of the economy. But when people who lived through the Depression tell stories from that era, they talk about how their mothers were always glad to cook meals for the hobos who got off the train, how neighborhoods and local communities banded together and made the most of what they had. They remember how generous people were, because there was so little.
In a recession, things are bad, but not catastrophic. The floor beneath us feels a little punky, but it hasn’t fallen in. Money is tight, but most of us still have enough to get by without depending on somebody else. The spiritual result is the opposite of what happens during a depression. Instead of being more generous, people grab hold of what they’ve got for fear of losing it. They become less willing to share and less willing to make financial commitments. In some ways, recession is a greater test of faith than economic depression.
So when the recessionary lag hits churches – during the long, slow, mostly jobless recovery – there’s less money to budget even though costs continue to rise (though at a smaller rate than when the economy is good). It is very tempting to slip into survival mode; to pull up the drawbridge and just pay the bills as best we can, hoping for better times. That option, of course, is not really acceptable for communities who seek to live by faith under grace. When churches succeed in doing nothing more than reflecting the larger society, they are no longer witnesses. So here is our challenge as churches of Jesus Christ: to continue to believe that God provides us with whatever we need in order to do whatever God wants us to do. And since it is patently obvious that God wants churches to do more than survive and pay the bills, we must believe that the resources are available among the people of each congregation to fund real ministry and mission that provide hope and transformation.
Unemployment and underemployment reduce how much we have to give, but need not affect how we give. There are no circumstances under which we cannot be generous according to what we have. Resources that are cheerfully given in faith are more useful to God than those given grudgingly, regardless of the amount.
In 2 Corinthians 9:8, Paul wrote, “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” He wrote this, not to individuals, but to an entire church congregation. God provides “you all” – “you the church” – with everything you need to share abundantly (not anxiously, not tentatively, not conditionally, but abundantly) every good work God calls us to accomplish. May it be so in times of plenty, times of scarcity, and times of recession.
Copyright 2010 by J. Mark Lawson
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