• Be honest. Don’t blame the recession if your church’s finances were already in trouble when the general downturn began. If you take the easy course and blame the recession, you won’t see underlying issues, and the economy’s bounce back from recession won’t help you.
• Be even more honest. Constituents need to know the extent of financial distress. If the church has been living beyond its means, people need to know that changes lie ahead.
• Adapting to reality need not mean a death spiral. The church won’t get more viable by trimming staff, deferring maintenance, cutting services, and closing doors for longer periods. The necessary work is to get viable. Best course: grow the membership.
• Remember that people matter more than buildings. As loyal as you feel to inherited facilities, your higher calling is to serve living people. Christians have met on hillsides, under trees, in hotel banquet rooms, in vacant stores, in school gyms, and in barns, among many places.
• Be clear on whether you need shortterm tactics or long-term strategies. Short-term tactics can include temporary pay reductions, doing without air conditioning, doing homegrown education and music, assigning maintenance chores to members, or asking members to make a 12- month commitment to slightly higher giving. Long-term strategies are different. They include major reductions, but even more, they rely on members making the fundamental decision: Will they underwrite a dynamic future, or close the doors?
• Be of good cheer. In an atmosphere made gloomy by financial worries, current members will get discouraged and drift away, and prospective members won’t stay. Even if money is tight, you are still the Body of Christ, and the love of God is still among you. People need to see you being honest about problems and rejoicing over God’s presence.
TOM EHRICH is a writer, church consultant, and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of On a Journey, and the founder of the Church Wellness Project www.churchwellness.com.
