This is a repost from February. Scott Hodge inspired me with his recent blog post: Tought Times = Breeding Ground for Innovation. Also, fortunately, Unemployment fell to 10% which is a good sign (we might not have this recession "opportunity" for much longer).
The economy sucks right now. Un-employment is up to 10%. Starbucks is doing something about it - they have a really slick campaign encouraging is to all go out and serve our communities.
What about The Church?
In these tough economic times, the Church needs to be right there, serving people, helping - this tough economy is really an opportunity from God for us to be a light! Let's not squander this!
Here are some ideas of how we can serve our communities, lessen the burden of the economic crisis, and build trust with outsiders:
1. Setup a clothes trading program or event. People can come together and trade clothes, or just have free clothes for people who need help.
2. Stone Soup - help everyone save money, and build some community by having a potluck gathering where people bring different contents for soup, and you all make and eat the soup together.
3. Setup a website or bulletin board to help setup car pools for people in your community.
4. Setup a volunteer to coordinate a program where people in your church or community get help renting out their empty rooms. Helping them with advertising, cleaning it up, screening, etc.
5. Have a garage sale at the church, members and locals can bring their stuff to the church, take a little square, and sell their stuff. A large aggregated sale like this benefits b/c more people will be interested in a monster garage sale.
6. Have volunteers teach financial classes at your church, advertise them as free to the community.
7. Setup a ministry of mechanics who take one Saturday a month to consult on car problems for locals and members.
8. Setup a job board, connecting the employers in your church with the people without jobs in your church.
9. Create a gathering for entrepreneurs - men and women who want to start businesses (helping the economy, creating jobs) and who want to do business in a godly way. Make a one day seminar that takes people through the steps of starting a business, removing some of the mystery and encouraging them to do it.
We NEED to take this opportunity to pour ourselves out to serve and love our neighbors in these difficult times. If we do, the resulting community and trust that we will engender from outsiders will truly advance the Kingdom.
Great list of ideas. We are presently putting together some resources on recession readiness for churches. We will be holding another recession readiness brainstorming session at Trinity Lutheran church in Lynnwood WA March 15th.
You can check out some of the resources we already have at http://msainfo.org
Blessings on what you are doing
Comment by Christine Sine - Feb 06, 2009 @ 09:19 AM
love it.
Comment by Nadia - Feb 06, 2009 @ 09:22 AM
Wow, thanks for the feedback.
would love to hear your ideas for recession preparedness!
Comment by Jesse Phillips - Feb 06, 2009 @ 11:17 AM
Hm, I do think the crisis is an opportunity for us to think about what is really important - and the church can be a good place to discuss this. Let’s make sure that the people who are unemployed feel that they are no less precious because of that. Let’s offer fun activities for kids that are open to all, including those who can’t afford things like leisure parks and ballet classes. But, really, I wouldn’t want to turn our congregation into an exclusive club were you can earn bonuses like free car repair.
Comment by Annegret - Feb 06, 2009 @ 01:57 PM
At our church we’ve leased out an acre of land we’d intended on developing to immigrant gardeners. Entire families can feed themselves off of shockingly small patches of land.
I think the idea was a fluke—they approached us—but could be much more broadly adapted. Like the “victory gardens” during WWII: some churches could feed their entire neighborhoods if they cultivated underused land.
Comment by Paul Grant - Feb 10, 2009 @ 08:00 AM