Churches need to be prepared to ‘do more with less’ – Tim Keller by Staff writer for Christian Today
GNN Note – I believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. He will make for a bright future with plenty to go around. “Do more with less” is a defeatist mentally that I reject.
Mr. Keller, why not believe in the Words of Jesus Christ? Do the birds of the air worry about “doing more with less”? Not so much.
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With coronavirus hitting finances and yet, at the same time, increasing the amount of need, churches will need to find ways to serve their communities with less than they’re used to, says Tim Keller.
The popular pastor and writer told the Q 2020 Virtual Summit that churches will need to think differently about stewardship as a result of the pandemic.
He said he could see similarities between the impact of Covid-19 and the aftermath of 9/11, when income at the church he founded – Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York – fell by a quarter.
“Christian institutions are going to be faced with needing to do more with less,” he told the summit.
“The number of people and the needs massively expanded, [but] because people lost their jobs and left the city and all that, income was having a huge shortfall,” he said.
He said he was seeing “exactly the same thing” now with coronavirus.
“All the churches I know are saying, ‘We have to do more with less. We have far more needs and we have less resources to do it.’ And so it means not only a new approach to stewardship but also thinking about what you spend your money on,” he said.
Keller admitted he wasn’t sure what the future looks like, but said that regardless of how the pandemic plays out, “it will take innovative thinking”, as well as “more networking and talking”.
He also predicted that churches will need to scale back some of their programmes to focus on the needs of people, as he hinted at the possibility of pastors taking a pay cut.
“The second thing is, you always lead through sacrifice,” he said.
