Conference Congregational Giving

 

Our year-end statistics for 2020 are going to be unusual.  In the narrative of numbers, we sometimes refer to outliers, those numbers which lie outside the normal pattern.  Outliers will define much of 2020.  The world-wide pandemic led to a radical change in how we “did” church for most of 2020.  Comparing many, but not all, statistics for 2020 with earlier years will be challenging at best.

One question that consistently emerged in 2020 was how well local churches were being supported by their membership even during the pandemic. 

This article includes two charts.  The first chart shows at the Conference level the annual totals for 2011 to 2020 for congregational giving.  Also included in 2020 was the opportunity to apply for Federal Grants under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).  The annual giving from 2011 to 2019 were relatively stable in constant terms.  There was a 7% reduction in giving for 2020 compared to 2019 which was in the aggregate offset by the cumulative effect of PPP.  Said another way, if we look at congregational giving and add in “grants” (which includes PPP), 2020 was slightly higher in 2019. 

We appear to have obtained about $4,000,000 in PPP grants in 2020.  

The second chart looks at the over 300 churches who reported within year-end statistics detailed congregational giving numbers for both 2019 and 2020.  There is an assumption here that the 50+ non-reporting churches look like the 300+ that did.  That is probably an optimistic assumption. 

The second chart breaks percentage change into clusters.  For example:  all churches that were down (without PPP) by between 10% and approaching but not reaching 0% were placed into a cluster and counted.  As in the aggregate, total number comparison, the average down was 7% with the mid-point in the data being in that range as well. 

In total candor, the expectation in March 2020 was that congregational giving was going to plummet and we were decidedly mistaken.  People can look at the first chart and see a radical downturn, but I would offer that the chart shows a more optimistic story:  the church was supported well during an economic downturn.  The second chart does demonstrate that 2020 was not uniform in how well churches were supported but overall, the support was quite positive. 

 

C. Dennis Shaw

Mountain Sky Statistician

stats@mtnskyumc.org

Defining Our Mission Around Leadership Development

 Part of the issue facing us in the Mountain Sky Conference of the United Methodist Church is "mission creep.”  My experience in the military is that clarity of mission is an essential and core ethos.  Always important, the goal to seek clarity of mission in clearly definable terms and have buy in up and down the chain of command about that definition, became during my personal time in the military (1971 to 1994) a core value.  People were rarely, if ever, criticized for seeking clarity on missional definition. 

My view is that the mission of the Mountain Sky Conference should be the mission of the United Methodist Church which I see as drawn by and large from Matthew 28: 18-20 – Go, make, baptize, teach and in infinitive form, obey.  Verbs are good:  they give us the action. And focusing on those verbs will have a transformative impact, locally and globally.  The world is local and global. 

How does the Mountain Sky Conference do that?  Clarity of purpose, clarity of mission, our “why” in Simon Sinek terms.  We believe, or should believe, that a relationship with the risen Christ leads to transformation of the spirit.  Paraphrasing the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it is the pursuit of the only goal that really matters.  The further we get from the transformative mission, the more an idea needs to be placed on the pile of ideas we will get to later. 

The clarity of purpose we need is in defining how does the Mountain Sky Conference bring about that transformation driven by making, baptizing, teaching, through obedience outside of our walls?  I posit it is through Leadership Development.  Everything we do, for the foreseeable future anyway, should be around developing leaders:  lay and clergy.  It does not mean, for example, the local church Finance Committee Chair needs to be an evangelist, but it does mean that the Chair needs to understand that the budget of the local church is a means to an end:  transformation.  Transformation is our purpose, our why, and the resources available to the local church are the means towards that mission. 

Leadership development is, in part, the nurturing of skills from within, it is the identification of skills talented developers see but the individual does not see themselves, it is showing new ways to solve old challenges.  In many ways, our current challenges are old challenges.  Paul in 1 Corinthians is dealing with what we are dealing with now:  a flawed focus on what is important, and Paul says, “teach Christ and him crucified.”  Bonhoeffer agreed.  At the same time, while the context may be ancient, our solutions may be more contemporary. Gil Rendle, and I will paraphrase, says “we don’t know what to do so we do what we know.”   New ways to solve old challenges.

Having looked at this for a while, I posit everything we do in the Mountain Sky Conference needs to get back to how we can help leadership be developed in order to accomplish the transformational mission, which the UMC says is best accomplished at the local church. 

Kevin Bacon, the actor, has this thing about the “degrees of separation.”  If a proposed idea for the Mountain Sky conference cannot be within about three or so degrees of separation from the Mission of the UMC, it is probably not something we need to be doing now.  ‘Three or so, “so that’s’” from the proposed idea and the transformational mission need to be a core test.   For example, within the Financial Leadership: “We will improve the technical and theological knowledge and competency of Financial Teams at the local church so that the transformative mission of the United Methodist Church defines everything we do.” 

This brings us back to why I wrote this post.  On February 20th past, I participated in an adventure in improving how we reimagine circuits composed of local churches.  Circuits if organized from a top down, “do it this way” will fail.  Clarity of mission (i.e., purpose, why) while establishing guard rails to keep the circuits moving forward are good and necessary, but Circuits need to be about expanding, stretching, focusing, developing the people (and the churches they represent) within them.  Clarity of mission, purpose, why. 

I sought brevity with clarity here:  less than a thousand, hopefully, clear words.  Sometimes when a person is brief, we criticize with “well, you did not mention, <insert something>” and that becomes evidence of an inherent bias.  Please, do not do that.  A thousand points I could have made. Absence of a particular focus does not mean it is not potentially relevant to the issue:  it probably is!

Respectfully, Selah

Dennis Shaw