Millstone of Ministry

I attended a budget hearing on Saturday. The combination of being surrounded by numbers and the chai that I was drinking set my mind spinning down numeric roads. Now, granted that these were all rough estimates, but based on the current, and actually statistically very good, giving levels of the congregation, we would need to grow to double our current size in order to sustain our current budget. Now, there are a coupe of giant stones that are placed on our budgetary backs. One of these is my salary ... not that I make a lot, but even at half time it is a significant part of the budget. The other large expense howevecr is the loan payments on our mortgage and the assessments owed to the city for recent improvements. The church has been caught between a rock and a hard place. Without a building the church was struggling for identity and a space to call home. But now that they have a building they are facing the intense pressure of paying for it. While its numbers might be slightly more oppressing than some churches, because of the assessments on top of the mortgage, from what I can tell the story is the same in many other churches that are starting out.
So what is a congregation to do? Should it struggle with rent payments and shared space until it is large enough to sustain itself? Does this mean that in today's economy of churches, small congregations are simply not viable in the long term? More and more churches in rural Minnesota are faced with the possiblity of closure because the combined weight of maintaining pastor and building is to great to bear. These are not new questions or challenges, but the need is growing for increased brainstorming of creative new solutions to these problems. The more time I spend struggling with these issues the more I feel that small churches need to look at new and different ways of living out our Great Commission.