A national survey of 1,002 Protestant pastors in November by Nashville-based LifeWay Research found:
Ӣ28% reported raising less money than in 2008.
Ӣ57% said the poor economy was hurting their church.
Ӣ70% reported increased requests from people outside their congregation for assistance.
Ӣ43% budgeted more money to help more needy people.
Ӣ3% were considering closing down their churches.
“Churches have not yet entered the recovery,” says LifeWay director Ed Stetzer. “Historically, they tend to recover financially when unemployment decreases, usually after the economy as a whole” recovers.
Wow, for me the most interesting thing here is the hidden story, the sources that [b]USA Today[/b] chose to turn to for the data, namely two recent national surveys by conservative evangelical pollsters. In selecting the (George) Barna Group and the research department of LifeWay, the big Southern Baptist outfit, and by quoting several prominent pastors of very large, thriving conservative churches, the newspaper has chosen to focus on the conservative wing of American Christianity, rather than the so-called “mainline.” It thus inadvertently helps document the continuing shift in the center of gravity within American religion to the evangelical sector.
But in terms of the data itself, I was actually surprised that the drops in church income weren’t even higher. Both the Barna Groiup and LifeWay reported finding that mid-size churches with an ASA of 100-250 averaged a drop of 13% in giving last year, less than the 20% or so that many churches had reported earlier in the year.
It’s also notable that the declines weren’t evenly distributed, but that, the churches that were hardest hit were the smallest and weakest churches to begin with. And not surprisingly, the churches that tend to draw people from the poorer segments of the population (including black and Southern Baptist churches) fared worst. And churches in the struggling Northeast faced bigger cuts than churches in the Midwest.
I particularly liked how the Rev. Brady Boyd, pastor of the huge 10K ASA New Life Church in Colorado Springs (Ted Haggard’s former church) stressed that despite the drop in giving, the church had a mandate to dig deep and not cut back on outreach efforts. Bravo.
David Handy+