Researchers see ways to ensure church giving
It's that time of year when the old purse strings loosen up and the money flies away like blackbirds out of a gunnysack.
The trouble is, most of that money is going to department stores and candy shops and very little is falling into the church offering plate. In fact, every year more religious charities, including congregations, are hurting.
So what should stewardship committees and clergy do to boost that holiday giving?
The answer is simple: Get tough.
If you want a little extra money in the church coffers, you have to ask the members of the congregation to join the spirit of the season and give until it feels good.
Seriously, the more a congregation asks of its members, the better the weekly offering will be, according to a piece in the Christian Century magazine. Congregations that have high expectations of their members will be the churches with the most money. But those expectations must be consistent with the ethics of the congregation and they must be repeated often.
Congregations that ask members for a full tithe (10 percent of annual income) will have larger annual budgets than similarly sized congregations that leave contribution levels up to the people.
The Christian Century article, based on a survey by four researchers, found that when people are not asked to give a full tithe, more of their charitable giving will go to helping agencies outside the church.
The second consideration is how to get people to contribute to special fund drives at holiday time. Thanksgiving, for instance, is a natural for a special offering to benefit the poor.
Lyle Schaller, the widely known church consultant, says people like having choices. They may not be willing to drop a tithe into the offering on Sunday morning and then let the pastor and the church council spend it any way they want. Contributors want some control in those decisions.
So, at Thanksgiving, for example, the congregation should give people a chance to contribute to a fund that benefits the poor. At Christmas, people can give to a one-time fund that will buy toys for children the following year. During Easter, the special offering can be used to buy food for people living in famine.
You can also have ongoing funds: ones for future buildings, a new organ, youth ministry, a redecoration project for the education wing. The list could go on forever.
The Christian Century article looked at research done in five denominations: the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Some of those denominations are high-expectation churches, and some are not. But it is always the high-expectation churches that do better with stewardship drives. Those are the congregations that are very sure about what they believe, agree on how the Scriptures should be interpreted, expect regular attendance at worship and ask their people to make a commitment to tithing.
Set up that kind of congregation and your coffers will be full to overflowing, the researchers say. But let the people make a decision without knowing what the church expects and you will be begging for money from a congregation with glazed-over eyes.
The key to all of this is trust. If there is a good deal of secrecy about how the money is being spent, if the pastor controls the money, if the church council won't talk openly about the budget, then you have a trust problem. And no amount of pleading will produce more money.
Clark D. Morphew
12-7-96
