Recession and Our Partners
By Patrick Keifert

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The last year or so has been quite a study in the relationship that exists between wealth and mission. In the early months of the recession most of the conversations with our partners in judicatory, churchwide, and other church-related institutions like colleges, universities, seminaries, and more independent ministries has been about the effect of the recession upon their donor base and their income from endowments. The conversations with partners in congregations however, with a few notable exceptions, have not usually been about the crisis in income from endowment and donors. This difference in conversation topics reveals a basic difference between most congregations and the various other churchly institutions that make up the church in the United States and Canada. As Nancy Ammerman noted in her still unmatched piece of scholarship, Congregation and Community (Rutgers, 1997), congregations in the main do not depend upon fiscal or material wealth to flourish. The other churchly institutions do depend upon fiscal or material wealth to flourish.

The more traditionally well-endowed institutions have been more severely impacted by the equity markets. The less well-endowed have been less impacted by the market crash but still very impacted by the downturn in their donor base’s ability to continue their usual generosity. Combined with the ongoing sex wars in some mainline denominations, the financial circumstances of many of these institutions preoccupies most conversation among leaders with whom I speak.

While none of the leaders would disagree with the maxim that “money follows mission,” the leaders of fiscally- and materially-dependent institutions must be attentive, even I imagine preoccupied, with the diminishing fiscal resources. They all, of course, rightly maintain a public posture of focusing on the mission, however they define it. They must eliminate dozens of positions in their organizations and put more and more portfolios of “mission” upon fewer desks. Most are continuing the pattern of major religious organizations still in a Christendom mode, and I include here several churches that would not include themselves in the mainline category. They expect more and more from fewer people, and they substitute for mission Big Hairy Audacious Goals and moving propaganda on all that their organization does. They, on the whole, seem only slightly aware of the opportunity they have at this moment to make major changes in their perceived role in the economy of the church’s work.

Some, in stark contrast, are calling for genuine change in how they organize their religious work. A few have even paid attention to solid scholarship and advice on more fruitful models for relating to the dynamos of the church: local churches. To these few, and I believe their numbers are growing, I want to add the voice of Church Innovations to their supporters, indeed, fans.

We at Church Innovations get to hear in any one month hundreds of stories of local churches, mostly congregations but also the myriad of other forms of local church emerging in these last couple decades, tell how they are joining God’s mission in their local communities and around the world with little or no fiscal or material wealth. In short, they are discovering in this capitalist society what has always been the case, the church’s primary business is forming Christian community in, with, under God’s mission in the world. They are discovering for themselves one of the underlying lessons of the growth of the church in Africa, an example I have the privilege to see on the ground regularly: that it is best to grow the church without money.

Please understand two things clearly: (1) Local churches can carry on this primary activity of forming Christian community without worrying about money because it is about growing relationships with God, their fellow Christians in their local church, and their neighbors (including civil society who share a sense of the good to be done in their neighborhoods), and fellow local churches. This Christian community formation is creating social capital, to use the popular sociological lingo. (2) Institutions that renew the basic relationship with these flourishing local churches will have the necessary fiscal and material wealth to do their work.

Fiscal and material wealth has its place, but its place is never as a substitute for this central community forming activity of the church. Organizations like judicatories, churchwide, and other agencies and institutions, like Church Innovations, will continue to depend upon that fiscal and material wealth. And, to the degree they commit themselves to those local churches’ primary activity of forming Christian community by joining God’s mission, they too can flourish. If you are wondering where to put a small or large contribution to innovate such relationships, we at Church Innovations invite you to consider us.