Church giving lacks external focus, study reveals

Posted: 1/19/07

Church giving lacks external focus, study reveals

By Matt Vande Bunte

Religion News Service

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (RNS)—An annual study of church giving shows most offerings go to activities and needs within local congregations, and activities focused beyond the congregations increasingly go unfunded as donations decline.

The authors, Sylvia and John Ronsvalle of Champaign, Ill.-based empty tomb inc., contend Christianity in the United States is becoming a “maintenance organization” that soon will have zero financial capacity for external ministry if the trends continue.

The numbers lay guilt at the feet of the worshippers in the pews and also challenge church leaders to motivate their members toward a financial generosity that could have Earth-changing effects.

“We’re not doing the good that we can do,” said Sylvia Ronsvalle, co-author of The State of Church Giving Through 2004: Will We Will? “The portion of income going to benevolences has been shrinking steadily.”

The Ronsvalles have published 16 annual editions of the study. The most recent report, which uses published financial data from the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches as well as direct correspondence with denominations, contains figures for 2004, the latest numbers available.

The study finds that while donations to churches have in-creased 78 percent in real dollars since 1968, income has risen 116 percent over the same period.

The average U.S. congregation member gave 2.56 percent of personal income to the church in 2004, a decline for the fourth straight year. That’s down 18 percent from 1968, and below giving levels from the early 1930s at the height of the Great Depression.

“It is clearly not an issue of capability. The issue is: Will we choose to do what we know we should be doing?” Ronsvalle said.

As financial contributions to U.S. churches founder, building projects and staff salaries consume more of the available funds, the study showed.

The percentage of the average church member’s income devoted to internal congregational operations was at 2.18 percent in 2004, on par with figures from the mid-1970s.

But the amount used for benevolent causes outside the congregation has declined to 0.38 percent, about one-third of a penny for every dollar of income. In 1968, 21 percent of the typical church member’s giving went to external ministries; in 2004, that figure was less than 15 percent.

A study of eight members of the National Council of the Churches found benevolent efforts have borne the brunt of the decline in giving, dropping 46 percent since 1968, while congregational funding has remained stable.

A separate survey of 34 U.S. denominations shows churches spent an average of 2.1 cents per dollar of donations on overseas missions.

The Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church of Christ all checked in at less than a penny.

“These numbers are the thermometer of our choices of where our hearts really are,” Ronsvalle said. “There is absolutely nothing to prevent us from being faithful, and we’re growing cold.”

The numbers from the Ronsvalle study do not include donations to disaster relief for 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, for example, or for the bulk of response to the Asian tsunami in the final week of 2004.

People will respond to urgent crises and will give if they know what their giving is going to accomplish, Ronsvalle said. But she stressed the vision emphasized in churches has ignored benevolence too often in recent years.

As churchgoers direct most of their money elsewhere—“maybe simply because there are more things to buy,” Ronsvalle said—donations that make it into the collection plate are spent on serving the congregation. And that leaves much of the world out of the loop, she said.

For example, the study theorizes U.S. Christians could evangelize the world, stop the daily deaths of 29,000 children younger than 5 worldwide, provide elementary education across the globe and tackle domestic poverty—and have $150 billion left over annually—if church members tithed a full 10 percent of their income.

Per U.S. churchgoer, it would cost 28 cents per day to cure those global ills. Catholics could foot the bill on their own for 61 cents per day, or evangelical Christians for $1.56 per day, according to the study.

Instead, according to the empty tomb analysis of figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditures Survey, Americans spend almost four times as much on entertainment as on church giving.

And 85 percent of the average person’s $565 annual gift to churches and religious organizations is spent internally, according to the study.

“It’s not that people aren’t generous, but church leadership are not providing a vision to use our power for good,” Ronsvalle said. “We’re using all of our power for self-gratification. (Jesus) is not impressed with buildings. He’s saying, ‘Feed my sheep.’”

Matt Vande Bunte writes for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.