Recently the Barna Group revealed yet another disturbing study for Christians. This time, they looked at the perception of the economy among Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians, and Americans in general. Then they looked at the trends in charitable giving – both to non-profits in general and to churches specifically.
The results are not great. The study shows that Americans in general are becoming more and more pessimistic about the economy, with 50% now believing the economy will not recover in the next 3 years (with some believing it never will). Among Protestant Christians, the number is about the same (49%), although Catholics believe the situation is slightly better (44%).
However, when it comes to charitable giving, Protestant Christians are not leading the pack. 41% of Americans in general reported a decrease in charitable giving over the past 3 months, whereas 46% of Protestants have.
The Barna Group puts it this way:
“However, church donors are now showing increasing fatigue. We expect the next six months to be continued cautiousness for donors of all types. For faith leaders and fundraising professionals, this means planning on modest donation levels and capital campaigns and the need for clear, compelling and consistent communications to donors.”
Here’s an infographic that highlights some of the problems:
That doesn’t look so good, does it?
Bob Miller says
I know it’s a little outside the scope of the infograph, but another question is begged. It would be interesting to know how the three groups fared in charitable giving overall, like in percentage of income or some meaningful measurement. I’d be heartbroken if we weren’t leading the pack!
Chris Ruddell says
Agreed Bob. Unfortunately, the Barna Group report only looked at changes in giving, not overall giving. The questions asked were:
1) believe the economy will take 3-plus years to recover or never recover
2) have reduced donations to non-profit organizations (in last three months)
3) personally affected by the poor economy in a major way
4) have reduced donations to church/religious center (in last three months)
5) stopped giving to churches altogether
Craig Owens says
Is it possible that giving is down because pastors aren’t teaching/preaching about this topic as much? I have a sense that because some of the (mis)perception about churches is that they are only interested in attendance and offering statistics, that perhaps pastors have swung the pendulum too far the other way. If they are not giving sound biblical teaching on the topic, one of the natural outcomes would be the numbers that Barna is reporting.
Chris says
Good call Craig. I think many pastors (at least quite a few I know) get scared talking about money too much in their sermons, for fear of appearing self-serving. But giving is a spiritual issue, not a paycheck one and so needs to be talked about from time to time.
On the other hand, the Barna group’s report looked at changes over the last 3 months – probably not enough to say there’s a trend in preaching going on.