Church Donations on the Decline
Source: AFP
Roughly 40 percent of Christian churches in the United States in 2009 saw a decline in offerings according to a new survey by Christianity Today International.
“For the first time in consecutive years there is a notable decline for a significant number of churches,” said Matt Branaugh, one of the report authors.
Branaugh, editor of “Your Church magazine” — part of the CTI group — told AFP that one of the most important factors in the drop in donations was increased unemployment.
According to the survey of 1,000 churches across the United States taken for a second consecutive year, 38 percent of churches registered a drop in donations, against 29 percent the previous year.
The “State of the Plate” survey did not report the value of the offerings.
One third of the churches surveyed — 32 percent against 14 percent the previous year — cut expenses between one and 20 percent, which included cutting back on trips, conferences, renovations and parish expenses, according to the report.
>CUTS FOR GOD?
Not surprisingly, custom design invitations to Sunday sermons are on the budgetary chopping block. Stripped down sermons, cheaper cookies and coffee out on the social table, and luxury items such as new lawns and other facility upgrades are all on hold as even the houses of God struggle with the economic downturn that has had the country in a financial tailspin since 2005. Think big business and the banking industry are the only companies struggling? Think again. Churches are also businesses, too, and they have had to address issues of financial strain right alongside corporate America. They may not have played a significant part in the massive commercial loan restructuring fiasco the country has been grappling with since the real estate market took a nosedive in 2005-06. But no church is immune to the needs of some form of a commercial loan workout, as many of them own their own buildings, which means they pay a mortgage.Nevertheless, 45 percent of the churches surveyed increased their budget allocated to help people in need, Branaugh said.
Especially hard-hit were the “megachurches” surveyed — churches that have room for between 2,000 and 5,000 faithful for a typical Sunday service.
Forty-seven percent of the “megachurches” saw a drop in contributions, compared to 23% in the previous year.
West coast churches — those located in the states of California, Washington and Oregon — were also hard-hit, the survey reported.
Representatives of Evangelical, Baptist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, along with a small percentage of Catholic churches, responded to the survey.
According to a 2007 Pew Research survey, nearly 80 percent of US adults identify themselves as being Christian.
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My Take: Churches across the country may be tightening their belts, but the rampant spending that goes on behind the scenes of the biggest religious organizations in the world continues. The money the Catholic church rakes in each year is enough to put the majority of California’s in their own Costa del Sol homes on Spain’s southern coast. Even renting out villas in Marbella for every Californian could be covered by the church’s coffers, supported, by the way, by a consortium of politicians and extremely wealthy community players, from bankruptcy attorneys to the highest-paid real estate lawyer.
If the Catholic church in Oregon, for example should have someone slip inside a pew on a Sunday morning, they don’t need to hire a slip and fall lawyer to cover a lawsuit. They have their own in-house lawyers for that. If they want to buy property in Solana Beach, CA to build a new church, they can hire the most expensive real estate attorney to find a location and, if necessary, payoff current land and business owners to make way for the new facility.
I personally prefer to give my extra cash to charities that help people in other ways. Somehow, I just never felt confident that my two bucks in the plate was ever going to make its way to Africa, the streets of Calcutta, or the poor families of the Central American highlands.
Anything extra I get these days goes for fun, but not for me. My daughter and her friends are at concert-going age, so you can bet I’ve spent a fair amount on Bon Jovi tickets, tickets to see the Jonas Brothers, and, lately, tickets to see their current “fav”: Taylor Swift. If there’s anything left over for me, I buy theater tickets to see the latest movies, but even there I tend to compromise and go for the early show to take advantage of matinee pricing.
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