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
