Hi. I was just wondering if anyone has had any ministries where their church was having financially struggles. My wife is a children's minister and it never seems to fail that we always wind up in a ministry that seems to go wrong. The two previous churches we were at only lasted about 2 and a half years before we had to move on. Now currently at our third ministry we have been here for 3 and a half years. Our church about a year and a half ago had a split and has not seen much growth since. Our congregation is in a building where they cannot afford their mortgage let alone afford a full-time senior minister. We have a part time preacher who cannot dedicate anymore time to the church due to having a second job. Our church is thinking about possibly hiring a full-time senior minister in hopes of saving the church by growing it. With this being said, my wife's job is on the line. There is an option to maybe have her go down to part-time or even let her go all together in order to afford a full-time senior minister. The church probably will not sell the building due to the fact that the leadership would rather have the church die then to move out. Any advice? Do you think that my wife should step down in order to save them the trouble or should she hang in? The problem is that if she is let go then we are sure that families would leave due to not having a children's minister(we do not have a youth minister). The other problem is that if she voluntarily leaves then families would also leave due to the same reason. Also, has anyone left the ministry all together? My wife and I are thinking about it because we really do not want to go to a fourth church knowing that we probably won't be there very long. If we do permanently leave the ministry then we do not know what we will do for jobs, especially since I have been staying home with our two sons for 3 years while I go to school.
