Spare Change?

Spare some change?

Oregon just got word that the state can expect to run $563 million short this year. That requires an immediate 9% budget cut for all state spending. On the school side of things, that could mean (if nothing else changed) the loss of 4,000 teachers next year.

Ouch!

But that's nothing compared to the projected 2011-2013 budget shortfall of $2.7 billion.

That's billion, with a "b". Ditto for much of the decade to follow.

MEGA-OUCH!

Check it out: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf.2010/05/oregon_suddenly_arrives_at_the.html
After clicking on the link, click on "Editorials".

I'm thinking, there goes Jean's job. There goes our health insurance. Same for a lot of other folks. Glad our house is paid for; but now when we should be saving retirement money at the highest rates of our lives, our incomes are the lowest in two decades. And they may go lower. We aren't getting any younger or any healthier.

Across the board, things will feel the fiscal tsunami that's coming. Churches will cut more staff, cut more services, and more will close altogether. Might be a really good time to get very familiar with the model of the house church that ministers in the neighborhood with practically zero overhead. Our neighbors are gonna need it. WE'RE gonna need it--all of us.

And American affluenzics who've never tasted such a time will not cotton to it very well, methinks.

Bricks and mortar operations may have to be severely decreased as overhead becomes unaffordable but the need for us to be the salt, the light and the glue in our communities grows by orders of magnitude.

Change is here. Change is coming. Change is.

There's more than enough of that to spare. We'd better get used to it. Like the megachurch in the area, we're all going to have to "do church different" (sic).


Roger