–– Tim Cantrell

The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Everyone can see that the brain drain has dealt a heavy blow to Africa.  Skilled professionals emigrate overseas, while locally the working class are forced to leave their villages for our African cities in search of work, as our continent continues to urbanise.  All of these factors severely impact churches and their income.  Recent news told of a local pastor having “sleepless nights” because of losing so many faithful givers in his church to emigration.  While there are many causes of brain drain, my aim here is simply to answer two practical, related questions: (a) ‘How important is it for churches to be self-supporting?’; (b) ‘How should churches respond to a financial crisis?’