Posted 269 days ago

Recession is Looming: How Can We Prepare?

by Tom Sine, MSA team


Waking to an Economic Hurricane
“Global markets plunge as world leaders struggle to respond…” ¹ The US stock market has experienced the biggest five-day drop in history. We are clearly headed into a global recession and many are concerned that we could slide into a global economic depression.

On September 18th, I flew to the UK to speak to leaders in the Evangelical Alliance about my concern over several issues, including the impact of a possible serious economic downturn, on those at the margins in the UK and in all our countries. Many of them shared my concerns, but all of us were still surprised when it actually happened the next day—Black Friday—when the US economy almost went into meltdown.

After the collapse of several financial companies, the US administration drafted a massive $700 billion bailout plan to try and stop the economic hemorrhaging. This plan caused a furious debate in the country and in congress.

Many Americans got upset, wondering why their tax money should be used to bail out those in the banking and financial world who have been playing fast and loose with the regulations governing their industry. They are also very angry about the compensation paid to the top executives in the five largest firms on Wall Street who presided over the bad loans that helped bring down the investing and banking system. The compensation for these five executives doubled between 2003 and 2007 to over $3 billion dollars.²

There is also a growing outcry from smaller Latin American countries because the US government has repeatedly told them that it was unacceptable for their governments to take similar action to bail out their struggling economies.

The most troubling part of this situation is that the same amount of money being used to try and bail out the US economy, created by reckless behavior to those in banks and the financial markets, would have been enough to make poverty history for our poorest neighbors.

Brainstorming for Recession Preparedness
On September 7th, weeks before the US and numbers of other nations began to slide into this serious global recession, Mustard Seed Associates hosted our first ever Recession Preparedness Brainstorming Session in Seattle. We asked almost fifty friends to imagine creative ways we could more fully be the compassion of God in our communities during a possible worsening economic situation. At the time, hurricanes lashed the Caribbean and the US coast. Hurricane Ike had devastated Haiti and Cuba. Then Galveston, Texas, felt its destructive impact with thousands losing their homes.

During Hurricane Katrina three years ago, churches were among the first responders. They weren’t prepared, but often did a better job than government agencies. More importantly, since Katrina, churches all over the country have developed disaster preparedness capabilities. For example, Crown of Life Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas, was ready to receive, house and care for 200 refugees fleeing Hurricane Ike.

In the weeks before the world slid into this troubling growing global recession I tried to find any churches or Christian organizations that had developed recession preparedness strategies and only found one or two small examples.³ Many of us remember the last recession but our churches never seem to be ready for the next one.

Since we found so little preparedness we at MSA decided to invite friends from a broad spectrum of churches in Seattle to our Recession Preparedness Brainstorming Session. We began with a simple, “hard times” meal like you might be served in a homeless shelter. Then people selected one of three groups to work in for a couple hours concentrating on three distinct groups of people: the urban poor, the middle class and church communities. Essentially, we invited our friends to become an a part of the ministry of Mustard Seed Associates for one evening by anticipating new economic challenges and creating new ways to respond before these challenges blow up on our doorstep.

Stop and ask yourself: what would the impact of the devastating winds and waves of a full-blown recession look like if it hit your communities? What would happen if 10 percent of the people in your community and church lost their jobs and inflation continued to grow? The poor and the working poor are the ones hit hardest and it is only likely to get worse for them.

At our Recession Preparedness evening, we asked participants of Group One to imagine the impact of a full-blown recession on the poor. What would happen if the organizations who serve the poor suddenly saw their resources evaporate while the needs of the local and global poor soar?

As the recession accelerates, government agencies that serve the poor are seeing their funding base cut which means they will have to cut services, and there is no one to replace these vital human services unless we can call our churches to prepare now to increase our capacity to care.

Rick Reynolds, the executive director of Operation Night Watch in Seattle participated in this brainstorming group. He stated that the gale-force winds of this economic hurricane have already blown his program upside down. “We have been at the ‘worst-case scenario’ for about 18 months,” Rick reported. He explained that as more and more homeless come seeking services he has had the painful task of denying services to more and more people because economic resources are shrinking. He stated that there are well over 8,000 homeless on the streets of Seattle on any given night.

The global poor are going to be particularly hard hit as Western governments reduce their aid to poor countries that was intended to achieve the millennial goals to cut global poverty by 2015. Clearly, those of us in the Western church are going to have to simplify our lifestyles to free-up more resources to significantly increase support for Christian agencies like Tear Fund UK, World Vision and World Concern in their efforts to make poverty history.

Under the leadership of Mike McCormick Huentelman, the Director of Urban Ministries at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Group One stated that the greatest resource in poor neighborhoods is the remarkable ability of families and community networks to work together during good times and tough times. They asked these questions: How can we enable these networks to work together now to increase a capacity for compassionate response now for a possible worsening situation later? How can churches in poorer urban communities collaborate with churches in suburban and rural communities to increase their capacity for response? How can we enable all our churches to create economic and agricultural cooperatives to increase the capacity of those living in communities of need?

A few years ago, an inner-city Methodist church in Chicago answered this question not only by activating their neighborhood networks, but also by collaborating with a rural Methodist church. Farmers in the rural church grew thousands of fruit tree seedlings. Then the urban community networks planted these fruit trees in parking strips and backyards all over their inner-city neighborhoods to significantly increase the food-producing capability of the community for good times and tough times. In the resource section, you will find some websites with information on such cooperatives.

In the UK, the Evangelical Alliance has influenced a number of churches to join their Square Mile Project by which churches partner with community networks within one square mile around the church to create ways to make a difference in the lives of those who are struggling economically. The Square Mile Project could be an excellent means of developing recession preparedness capabilities in these communities.

Some of the most vulnerable to an economic downturn are the working poor who work minimum-wage jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry. These people are most likely to be laid off as the economy slows down. One of the few groups I found that are doing recession preparedness is Catholic Charities in central Texas. They offer workshops for employment preparedness for a possible recession. They help the working poor find jobs that will be less vulnerable to layoffs during this growing recession.

Group Two was asked to consider how to reduce the vulnerability of the middle class to increase its capability of being compassionate to those in need. When I talked to a number of those in the middle class in the US and the UK, they couldn’t imagine this recession would ever impact them, but thousands are already feeling the pain. Many are already losing their homes, equity in their homes and their retirement savings. Like the poor, they too are struggling with the growing costs of food and fuel. In fact, come winter seniors and single-parent families will be faced with having to choose between heating their homes and eating unless the church and followers of Jesus get ready to help now.

In The New Conspirators, I told the story of a couple with kids who decided to sell their large home and buy a smaller but adequate home in Grand Rapids to significantly reduce their monthly mortgage payments. Originally, they did this to free up some of their income to help the poor in their neighborhood. Now, with an economic crisis looming, they could put this money directly toward starting or developing recession preparedness activities in their neighborhood. For middle class followers of Jesus, giving up extra space in order to share resources with their poor neighbors is something to seriously consider in these uncertain times.

Our third brainstorming group was asked to come up with ideas for how churches could increase their capability to be God’s compassion to those in need during a recession, even if they are experiencing a serious downturn in giving. That is not an easy challenge.

One possibility is for churches to invest in creating emergency food storage for the needy in their congregation and community during a time of recession or natural disaster. The Mormons have developed very sophisticated methods of food storage from which we could all learn. In our very uncertain world, many organizations are encouraging families to invest in at least a three weeks of food supplies for themselves and their neighbors in need to use in an emergency.

Let me be clear though. The last thing we want to do in MSA is to encourage various survivalists groups. During the Y2K scare, a disappointing number of American Christians, caught up in end times fear-mongering, loaded up on guns and dehydrated foods, abandoned their neighbors and headed for their remote cabins. We are convinced that followers of Jesus, during times of crisis, are called to be in the forefront of those sharing resources with their neighbors. Check out the USA Today article Laying in provisions for rainy days, not Doomsday.

We at Mustard Seed Associates want to invite you to join this important conversation. Read the summary of the ideas generated by our brainstorming groups and the other articles. Then please feel free to share your responses to these preparedness ideas, and send us your ideas as well.

• What are ways that followers of Jesus and our churches could reduce our vulnerability and increase their capability of being the compassion of God to those in need during a time of growing economic crisis?

• What are other organizations, books or websites that can help us all increase our capacity for compassionate response in times of economic crisis?

Imagine the difference followers of Jesus could make if we creating ways to be the compassion of God to those that are being hammered by the hurricane force winds of this global recession.

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Notes

1. John Dennis, “Guardian Daily: Market turmoil points to recession,” Guardian Daily (October 7, 2008), accessed October 8, 2008, here.
2. Tom Randall and Jamie McGee, “Wall Street Executives Made $3 Billion Before the Crisis (Update 1),” Bloomberg.com, (September 27, 2008), accessed October 8, 2008, here.
3. If there are some that I simply missed, please do let me know about them (mail@msainfo.org).

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