(See all the stories in the West Side Church Series HERE.)
The Scavenger Approach to Ministry
What do you do when you have a clear spiritual call to ministry with a specific church and community context, but you have too few resources?
Inner city ministry often leaves churches struggling for resources to fund initiatives to address the real needs of real people in real time. West Side Church was no exception.
Traditional funding streams were insufficient. Offerings from church members with lower incomes would not fund essential things.
In the mid-1970s offerings were about $500 per week which meant $26,000 annually. Finances depended on a few suburban middle-class families who still attended and helped lead the church.
It was not just the need for personnel and programs. It was also taking care of building maintenance, repair, and retrofitting. Ministry was hampered when portions of the facilities became unusable.
The West Side Church facilities were much too big. Attendance was more than 500 in the mid-1950s. Twenty years later the church had slightly less than 100 in attendance.
Available funds for staff were limited. Everyone was part-time. Some were volunteers.
As pastor, living in the parsonage next door to the church, allowed me to make a modest living while also attending seminary. My wife taught in a private church school and was certainly not overpaid.
The Scavenger Approach
Funding ministry involved what we called The Scavenger Approach. We pieced together from various sources what we could. We scrounged to find other resources. We did everything except dumpster diving.
We kept looking for more ways to fund ministry to bring resources to a congregation and community in great need of God’s love. We stopped short of selling drugs like they did at the house across the street from the parsonage.
The scavenger approach did not mean doing anything illegal or unethical. It meant innovative thinking, continual networking, and hard work. We were not above begging!
Funding the Ministry
First, all ministry staff were seminary students. A Baptist seminary was seven miles from the church. Many staff commuted from the seminary. They worked other jobs either on the seminary campus or elsewhere.
With available income, the church could afford four part-time staff positions: pastor, associate pastor, youth director, and music director.
Second, funding for a few interns was available from the seminary and other scholarship funds. A Christian foundation in Louisville supported seminary students to do inner-city ministry.
We also had seminary volunteers who needed ministry placement hours. Typically, between paid and volunteer staff, we had a dozen students helping at the church and in the community.
Third, church partnerships from suburban congregations also provided needed supplies. A few dollars flowed our way primarily from individuals in these churches. They were given when people thought about contributing. Or when we made a specific appeal.
Fourth, twice during my tenure when we had significant building needs—such as replacement of a roof—I applied for grants from our regional denomination.
In both cases they partnered with us to meet building needs. They gave us more money than we contributed to them for state, national, and international missions work.
Fifth, a big boost was when we had the opportunity to host a federally funded senior adult lunch program. This met five days per week in our fellowship hall. Approximately 60 people came each day.
The grant provided some start-up funds. These funds permitted us to renovate the fellowship hall and install a separate heating unit for that space. Also provided was a utility bill supplement.
Since this was our most used building space, it provided an ongoing supplement to our building costs. We did not turn on the heat for the rest of the building.
This was a true Godsend one very cold winter. Heating the worship center was so expensive to operate that worship was held in the fellowship hall.
Sixth, funerals were one interesting source of income. The parents of people who grew up in our church and community died and their funerals were held at our church or a nearby funeral home.
Have you ever taken up an offering at a funeral service? Neither did we.
When the families saw not only our needs and realized how much we had ministered to their parents, they made special gifts to the church in thankfulness for our ministry. These were very helpful and often timely regarding a specific need.
Seventh, my last year as pastor, we realized there were hundreds of people in the region with a tie to our church. In commemoration of a special church anniversary, we sponsored a major homecoming event. We began a fund in honor of the long-term pastor of the church from the 1940s and 1950s.
These people had guilt money burning a hole in their pockets since they left our church without their presence or their financial presents. The day of the homecoming we “lifted an offering.”
It worked. Almost 500 people attended the anniversary Sunday. The special fund launched that day. The thousands of dollars contributed made a significant difference over the next several years.
It took more scavenger efforts than listed here, but these seven provided amazing resources.
The Scavenger Approach Never Ends
The difficulty with doing ministry based on the scavenger approach is that it never ends. You must do it year after year.
An innovative approach means continually looking for new resources as some that work one year may not work the next. Unless something happens to permanently transform the church ministry, the search for new opportunities is a never-ending task.
Often God’s Holy Spirit connects us with resources in ways we could not humanly explain.
It requires people who think and act innovatively. Who know how to scavenger for resources and are willing to do the hard work.
Innovative people are not always available. Some come and go. I was pleased to have a staff team who functioned as scavengers and innovated in many ways to serve our church and community.
I did not always know when, where, or how they functioned as scavengers and obtained needed resources. Often there was an odd smile on their face when I asked where they got the resources. That led me not to ask the source, but just to rejoice and be grateful.