How Are You Dealing?

With this economic downturn. You know, the one that started in December 2007 but the administration then in power refused to acknowledge until almost a year later. How has it impacted your local church, district, or conference?

If you're like us here in Virginia there have been a few changes. Budgets are being slashed, staff positions are being cut. Even big, successful churches are feeling the pinch. People (and churches/conferences) who relied on investing in the stock market to make a buck are finding out that they've trusted in mammon. And true to form, mammon has let them down once more.

People in the pews are hurting. Jobs have been lost. Donations and tithes are down. Ironically so is attendance. In a time when people have traditionally turned to the church for comfort and solace they're staying away in droves.

Why? Why in this time of economic uncertainty are people not turning to God and humbly kneeling before Him and asking forgiveness? Is the church so out of touch with the postmodern times that folks today aren't even considering it as an option? Or is it just that the church has forgotten how to reach out to people in need? That the church is so concerned with maintaining the "institution" it doesn't have a clue how to be "The Church" Jesus wants us to be?

Questions, I know... but important ones that we'd better answer quickly. For if we don't we'll be only a memory within a generation.

Or perhaps the Revelation According to John is true...

Maranatha.