Members who are pledging have hiked their median pledge nearly 20 percent over last year, from $1,020 to $1,200 each. That's a whopping increase for one year during hard times.
So how come money's so short?
It appears the simple reason is twofold:
1. In each of the past two years, there were 335 members who pledged. This year, despite a hard sell from church leaders, the number fell to 296; and
2. The average pledge didn't rise nearly as much as the median pledge, which means that a handful of bigger donors stopped giving so much. The average pledge rose from $1,727 to $1,824 during the past year.
Ray, who heads the Policy Board, shed a little light on the numbers. He said that some of the church's largest contributors retired.
Moreover, he said, "We're getting younger as a congregation."
With membership stable -- not growing, but not shrinking -- the fact that we're getting younger overall is generally a good thing. It's hard to argue that we're dying as a church, as some want to say, if we're attracting young families to fill the roles of older people who are moving on.
But it's also true that younger families are less likely to have extra money to toss into the church's kitty. Those most apt to donate significant sums are people who are closer to the end of their working lives, when their own kids are through college. Everybody understands that.
So what do those younger people want from their church?
I think that before we go slicing away important parts of our ministry, particularly the music and religious education programs, we ought to find out what exactly our members want. Perhaps the exercise will help convince people to donate more, but it will surely shed light on what's really needed.
I don't like the dismissive tones of leaders who seem to think that slashing salaries and positions of our employees as a recession looms is just fine. We owe our employees better than that. It sure ain't social justice to lay off good employees in hard times unless there's no other option. It is, in fact, just plain wrong.
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3 comments:
I will be happy at any time to discuss "what the numbers mean" in detail and without revealing proprietary data about who pledges how much. Your conclusions based on a few comments today miss the mark. As to the comments regarding the "dismissive" statements by church leaders, let's try and focus on the solutions. Let's assume for a moment that we adopt your position (I'm not going to pledge more but I want the youth choir and all the remaining cuts not to be made). What do you propose the church do, besides commence focus group studies (with which I do not necessarily disagree), to balance the budget? You should be aware that maintaining the status quo results in about a $45,000 deficit (I'll defer to Pete on exact numbers). So, what are we to do now to fix this? Matt Schreck
The church leaders did ask members what they most wanted. They spent a lot of time talking to members. You may remember the "listening campaign."
Did they hear that we should fire three choir directors and diminish our music program? Because if they did hear that, I don't remember anyone telling us about it.
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