Confirmation

Many of you received an email and/or a letter from the church about a week ago, detailing our ongoing fiscal difficulties, and announcing the 2010 Annual Meeting. As we prepare the Confirmation class for its attendance at the annual meeting, we've been talking about how churches work, what their processes are, etc.

In light of this ongoing preparation for the Annual meeting, this past Sunday in our Confirmation class, I had the students do an exercise. I gave them a copy of the 2009 budget, and then gave them the amount of revenue we expect to have in 2010 and 2011. As you may know, those numbers are far apart. I asked them, in three groups, to pretend that they were the church council, and to propose a budget that matches our resources to our expenditures.

Their responses were one part creative, one part outlandish, and one part somber. They quickly realized, going through the budgets line by line, that the budget wouldn't be balanced one $500 item at a time. One group proposed doing away with the church's telephones altogether, and having everyone email the church when they needed something. Another group suggested turning off the heat and air conditioning. One group suggested an across-the-board pay cut for all staff. A couple of groups suggested doing away with retirement. Two of the Confirmation students were unwilling to cut their own parent's jobs. One group thought we should rely on a cottage industry of elves for revenue. I wish I were kidding.

In the end, the Confirmation students realized that in difficult economic times, difficult decisions have to be made. None of the three groups made the same proposals as the other two; every group had its own take on the budget challenges, and every group proposed to face those challenges differently. In the end, I think they came away with a greater understanding of what it takes to run a church, and what it will mean when they take that vow of membership in May.

Those Confirmation students can be models for us. These are not easy times, but we can face them together, with eyes wide open, and with the knowledge that God stands with us and before us, calling us ahead on our mission. While we may not be unanimous about where we go from here, we can still go there together, bound to one another with love.