Economy

I recently read a report on financial giving in churches during the economic crisis. I won't post a link because those have a way of going bad after a few months but it was presented by the Alban Institute. I was a little surprised that only around 30% of the churches in the survey reported a decrease in giving in the first half of 2009. 37% percent reported an increase while the rest reported their giving stayed the same.

There are lots of explanations for the numbers and some of them are good. Church growth during the time period is a good example. Overall, I'm not sure there was enough information available to draw many useful conclusions.

But it did get me thinking about what should be the case. If you base the numbers on per capita giving to take out the affect of a gain or decline in numbers, shouldn't our churches mirror what is going on in our communities at large?

My first thought when I saw this survey was that an awful lot of church people must be lucky enough not to lose their jobs. But then I got to wondering if in some way the church tends to not welcome people with easily expendable, and therefore usually the first to go, jobs. Are we prejudiced in some way against people who are more economically vulnerable.

I wonder what would happen in Jesus' church. Actually, I think I know because, though I can't say for certain what is in the heart of people, I do think I have met people that belong to his church who are amazingly rich and desperately poor. I also know that he tended to attract the desperately poor while he warned the rich during his time on earth. That leads me to think that while there certainly are rich people who belong to his church they must be greatly outnumbered by the desperately poor. My conclusion is that watching the giving in Jesus' church would reflect what is going on in the larger economic picture.

I also think that Jesus' church would make a great leading economic indicator, if you could somehow get a hold of that number, because members of Jesus' church, especially the poor ones, are incredible givers. (Remember the story of the widow's mite.) If you saw the giving at Jesus' church going down you could be pretty sure that the economy was going to tank because the desperately poor, who give like no one else, would have stopped giving, not because they got disillusioned with it, but because they really had nothing to give. Likewise, if the giving in Jesus' church went up you could bet that economic recovery was on the way.

So what does it mean if our church finances go up, down, or stay the same? Maybe it means that God is blessing us. Maybe it means our guilty consciences are kicking in and we are actually giving a greater percentage of our income. Or maybe it means we aren't including a lot of people who we should include.