Depression for a new century

Everybody with a title and a media outlet is real careful to say that there's not an economic depression coming up. But those people also didn't want to say that a recession was coming.

Warren Buffett, a man who I listen to closely, has said that we're in for a long, deep recession. But he hasn't said "depression" either. But that doesn't mean he can't be wrong.

So here's an interesting article from the Boston Globe: Depression 2009: What would it look like?

The recap? It won't look that startling. There probably wouldn't be long lines into the street and families packing all their worldly goods into trucks and people selling apples on the corners. Suburbs will empty, and cities will fill.

TV is one big difference. Once you have a TV, entertainment is essentially free, and you don't even have to leave the house to get it. So people won't. In 1930, it was much harder to hole up. Now, it will be hard not to.

People packed together, ignoring each other.

What the article doesn't go on to say is that an economic depression would lead to massive, crippling emotional depression. People will be separated, and in that separation, people will get lost. Suicide rates among adults could be ugly.

Our church, Circle of Hope, talks a lot about community. But we're only so-so on activating it... it's a very DIY church -- punk without the bad attitude. But if you don't know how to be DIY, you can feel left out.

I've been thinking loosely in the last couple weeks about how we can show Christ, love our neighbors, and help people in the coming recession. I've got a list of ideas, some more workable than other. One I'm adding today is becoming aggressively friendly to strangers, inviting them to do stuff with us, to get them out of their houses, and into some company. Ideally the company of a loving God, in addition to our own. The need for Jesus is about to get stronger in the Philadelphia region... people will need friends in a life-or-death way.