The world of economics is a depressing one at the moment.
Turn on your TV and you will almost certainly get a gloomy forecast of impending doom somewhere in the money markets. Greece, Turkey or Ireland may not exist by the end of the year!! Without question the effects of this downturn have been felt in church budgets and in reduced amounts of giving coming from God’s people.
If churches have to make economies, it seems that youth staff and youth ministry can often be the victim. It seems that the only ‘wise’ action is caution. We must cut back. In one church recently, a leader, who had worked hard for four years and seen considerable fruit, was told by the church that they had insufficient funds to employ him for any longer. I fully appreciate that churches have to make wise decisions about their budgets, but it may not be the ‘wisest’ to remove funding from youth ministry.
