When Churches Hit Hard Times

Recent years have been hard economically for churches, especially small ones. Many churches are cutting staff and programs or even closing because of lack of resources. But while all of these cost-cutting measures deal with the expense side of the ledger, some creative churches, are finding abundance by imagining and then implementing ways of increasing their income.

The success of these churches hinges on a fundamental shift from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance. Scarcity is one of the basic axioms of all major economic systems (especially capitalism); we are trained to live and act as if there are not enough resources to go around. Abundance, on the other hand, is the conviction that that the world has enough resources to sustain itself. In the Christian tradition, abundance is a theological conviction that God provides for creation to flourish in the manner for which it was created.