EDITORIAL
Forward Leading | Mark DeYmaz
It’s no secret: Stagnant or declining tithes and offerings have local church pastors and governing boards today struggling to meet budgets, let alone advance mission.
Indeed, the problem of limited or decreasing revenue was already present prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic only exacerbated the problem. Now, post-pandemic, it is becoming an existential threat for many churches as they look to the future.
Think about it.
In the first year of the pandemic, tithes and offerings remained largely unchanged as jobs and incomes were only beginning to be affected, planned giving was already in place and/or cash reserves were available.
In 2021, churches in the U.S. were greatly helped by the government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as they were again in 2022 through refundable tax credits known as the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC).
Only in 2023 did financial realities become too large for thoughtful churches to ignore.
With savings diminished, without government assistance, and apart from any significant uptick in giving, increasing numbers of pastors are beginning to recognize that tithes and offerings, ongoing appeals for generosity, and/or growth in attendance will not alone solve their budgetary problems.
According to a recent study, 78.8% of total church giving comes from those born before 1964. In contrast, those born after 1965 (30.4% of the U.S. population) make up only 26.1% of total church donors. Coupled with historic wealth gaps and income inequality among people groups, as the nation becomes more ethnically diverse this too will impact giving to the local church.
The question becomes: For every older donor who dies, moves to a different state or otherwise leaves a church, how many millennial or Gen Z donors will be required to replace the loss of that donor’s consistent giving?
When I ask this question of pastors, the typical guess ranges from a low of 4 to a high of 10. What do you think?
Recently, I considered one financially struggling, aging, homogenous church, looking at trends in their growth and giving between April 2021 and March 2022. Here’s what I found.
- Between April 2021 and March 2022, Sunday morning attendance grew from 224 to 397 (173 people).
- In approximately the same time span, 76 consistent givers were lost while 68 were added.
- The total amount of income contributed by the 76 givers averaged $41,716 per month ($549 per donor). Among those lost, all were white and only three donors were under the age of 39.
- Yet the total amount of monthly income gained from the 68 givers averaged just $5,432 per month ($80 per donor). Among those gained, there were eight non-whites and nine givers under the age of 39.
In other words, as the church trended away from aging homogeneity, and in that season pursued a younger and more diverse demographic, giving per household was significantly less than what might have been expected. In spite of gaining 173 attenders on Sunday mornings, for every one giving household that left the church, 6.89 (say 7) additional donors were needed to offset the financial loss.
Of course, this is only one anecdotal case study with some built-in assumptions. Nevertheless, you get the idea: Pastors should not assume that growth in attendance will necessarily lead to a significant increase in tithes and offerings.
To get beyond financial survival to stability and sustainability in the future, local church pastors and governing boards will need to leverage congregational assets to create multiple streams of income. They will need to recognize the difference between stewardship and management (Matt. 25:14–28). They will need to rent space sitting empty from Monday to Saturday, monetize existing services, form umbrella nonprofits, start micro businesses and more.
In so doing, churches will be better positioned financially to do even more good works that glorify Jesus (Matt. 5:16) beyond what tithes and offerings alone could support, while at the same time generating some measure of sustainable income to strengthen their budgets.