News

Churches struggle to keep up with communities' needs

Church giving to benevolence funds is decreasing, leaving many congregations struggling to afford to meet their communities' basic needs. Some blame it not on a lack of money, but on priorities. Church members are more interested in making themselves comfortable, they say, than reaching out to those in need.

December 10, 2002

More than 300 members of Valley Community Church in Pleasanton, Calif., will gather at a local homeless shelter Dec. 14 to dish out turkey and all the trimmings. It's the church's "holiday blessing" to thousands of homeless persons who will make their way through the line that day, event organizer and church lay leader John Haynes said.

"It's one time a year that we can get the volunteers together and do something good, something practical, for the community," Haynes said.

Valley Community Church leaders would like to do more the rest of the year. But funds aren't always available.

"That's not to say we're not doing ministry, but as I'm sure all churches do, we sometimes feel limited by our financial resources," Haynes said.

By the Numbers In a year of recession and crisis, Americans gave a record $212 billion to charity in 2001. While the number reflects a 0.5 percent increase over 2000, it's actually a 2.3 percent decrease when adjusted for inflation, according to Giving USA, 2002. Of this amount, $81 billion went to religious institutions. According to the Barna Research Group, as of 2000, 17 percent of Americans claim to tithe, while only 6 percent actually do so. Americans collectively made $7.51 trillion in income in 2000, with total giving at $152 billion. According to NewTithing Group, Americans could have comfortably doubled their giving to nearly $320 billion without any change in lifestyle.

Valley Community, and thousands of other churches across the country, are facing the same dilemma the nation's non-profit social service agencies have battled for decades: Donations are down, and requests for help are up. But the strain on churches is growing, thanks in part to President Bush's proposed faith-based initiative, which calls for churches to handle more of the nation's social services burden.

"There certainly is more pressure on America's congregations to do more for their local communities, especially now that the President's initiative has brought such attention to them," said Ram Cnaan, founder of the Program for the Study of Religion and Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "The question is, with churches already doing so much, how much more can they afford?"

High expectations, low funds

Cnaan is co-author of The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare, for which 1,400 Philadelphia congregations were studied to assess how much social service they provided.

The findings are indicative of churches nationwide, Cnaan said.

"Our data was unanimous; churches do a lot to help people in the community around them," Cnaan said. "I was surprised that most take it for granted that it's part of their mission. There is no doubt that people of faith want to care for the needy."

But giving to church benevolence funds is decreasing, leaving little to distribute among international missions and local needs, according to research by empty tomb inc., a Christian service and research organization based in Champaign, Ill.

Giving to benevolences as a portion of income in 2000 hit its lowest point since 1968, according to empty tomb. Instead, church members are giving more to congregations' internal operations that benefit current members. In its studies of 11 mainline Protestant denominations, empty tomb found that church members gave, on average, $564 toward congregational finances in 2000 and $100 to benevolence funds.

"This strongly suggests that congregations are trying to make their members happy rather than transforming them," said Sylvia Ronsvalle, who co-authored The State of Church Giving through 2000 with her husband, John. "The thermometer of giving patterns tells us there's an increased preoccupation on personal comfort and less on those in need."

Pastor John Reagan of Hope Community Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., agrees, but doesn't think it's intentional.

"I think it's true that congregations don't mind giving to things they benefit from," including padded seats, family activities centers and larger parking areas, Reagan said. "I don't think church members are consciously saying, `OK, let me do something for myself instead of helping someone who is really in need.'

"Many times our congregations aren't even aware of how often the church helps people," he said. "Members just expect us to take care of people; they don't really ask how often we do it or how much need is out there."

For that, Ronsvalle blames church leadership.

"Churches are telling their members `Give us the money and trust us to spend it,'" she said. "Congregational people need to know what's going on. There is no incentive for them to give more to benevolence funds if they don't have any idea how much need exists."

Empty tomb is proposing two solutions for what it calls the "vacuum of leadership in the church":

• Formation of a blue-ribbon commission -- The commission would be charged with raising $1.25 billion annually for 10 years from wealthy donors to match new money raised by congregations to support additional mission activities.
• Development of a dynamic Web-based feedback system -- The system would list mission projects that qualify for matching funds raised by the blue-ribbon commission, allow individual congregations to know how much money is needed for a particular project, and provide regular and project-specific feedback to congregations that donated to a particular mission.

The proposed solutions are not far-fetched, Ronsvalle said. Responses from nearly 200 U.S. church leaders indicate church members should increase their giving for a specific cause, such as preventing global child deaths, she said.

"This is what the church was called to do; we must reach out to those who need help, and we must reach far, not just within our own small church cluster," Ronsvalle said. "Until we come up with a way to increase benevolence giving through churches, people will continue to suffer as they wait for the church to help."

Helping their own

Cnaan, however, cautions against dismissing services provided to those within congregations.

"It is immaterial whether (churches) help others or help their own," Cnaan said. "If someone is poor, they're poor. If the contribution to quality of life is significant, the person's affiliation is not important. Church members need help just as much as those outside the church."

In his study of Philadelphia congregations, Cnaan found that the replacement value of services provided by churches -- what it would cost another party to provide the same services to the same people -- had a value of $250 million over one year, including staff time, dollars spent and in-kind support given.

"When you put it in those terms, it sometimes is easier to get people to realize how much our congregations are already doing for communities," Cnaan said.