The stewardship opportunity
There's a budget shortfall. What's the congregation going to do?
Throughout its 100-year history, First Church leaders had employed various strategies to provide adequate income for its ministries. Years ago, for example, the congregation shared its pastor with other congregations. At another time, the church owned a house for the pastor, and farmers supplemented the pastor’s salary with gifts of garden vegetables and chickens.
Then, during a real estate boom, the church sold the parish house. It made sense, because pastors needed the equity of home ownership as they moved toward retirement. The church used the money to start an endowment, which grew as the stock market grew. People contributed to it throughout the years.
But the 2008 economic crisis was a wake-up call. Until then the endowment had kept growing, and the congregation had never dipped into the principal. Leaders relied on investments to sustain the church’s budget and didn’t worry too much about members’ stewardship. But with a volatile stock market, the steady growth they had enjoyed came to an end, and they were forced to look at their budgets and resources differently.
