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November 7, 2007
Alarming Trends in Church Giving
I found an interesting article today. It's from 1996, so it's a bit dated. However, it's a futures trend analysis on church giving, specifically money set aside for mission work beyond the operational and ministry expenses of the local church. The article defines this as benevolence giving which is a wider definition than most of us hold on the subject.
I think we are beginning to see the realization of some of the author's predictions and conclusions.
1. We must acknowledge the decline in church giving as a trend.
Benevolence monies consist of funds earmarked for church activities whose focus lies beyond the congregation, such as support for denominational work at regional and national levels and funding for seminaries and international and domestic mission programs as well as local mission projects. In 1988 we noticed that of the two categories, giving to benevolences declined faster than giving to congregational finances for the period from 1968 to 1985...Giving to church benevolences as a percentage of income, for example, has been in a fairly regular decline for over two decades. Through what statisticians call linear regression analysis, we combined the past 26 years of data and then developed a trend line based on the accumulated information. What this trend shows is that in 1968, church members in the denominations we studied gave 0.66 percent of income to their churches' benevolence funds. By 1993 this number had declined to 0.43 percent, a decline of 35 percent in the portion of income directed beyond the congregation's own needs. At this rate of decline, by the year 2049 zero percent of church member income will be going beyond the congregation to benevolences.
2. We must consider the connection between giving and membership trends.
Some observers suggest that such membership trends represent a swing of members away from mainline churches and into conservative and evangelical ones. If that were true, conservative and evangelical membership statistics ought to be reflecting an increase that roughly corresponds with the decrease within the mainline. The numbers do not support that conclusion. It is true that a group of 15 conservative and evangelical denominations increased as a percentage of population between 1968 and 1993. However, between 1985 and 1993 this group's rate of growth slowed and the portion of U.S. population they represented declined...Data for 37 communions allow us to perform a trend analysis for a wide spectrum of American Protestantism. The group includes the 11 mainline denominations considered earlier, as well as 15 conservative denominations, some of which are among the fastest growing in the U.S. The trend suggests that historical Protestant Christianity as represented in these 37 communions will fall to zero percent of the population in less than 100 years.
3. We must have a strategic plan to ensure the the trend does not continue to it's logical end.
It is reasonable to propose, therefore, that the answer to declining giving, and perhaps to declining membership, will not be found in requests to help maintain institutions, whether those be local congregations or denominational offices. A much larger vision is required to capture the imaginations of church members living in this communications-rich society. A conclusion of the 15 denominational officials and one seminary vice-president who served on the Stewardship Project National Advisory Committee was that the church needs to offer its members a constructive agenda for deploying their affluence.
Posted by bstroup at November 7, 2007 2:58 AM
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