Baptist missions giving lags behind total offerings

That trendline more than any other is the one that worries denominational officials, missions leaders and missions workers.

"That's not a healthy trend if you want to name Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior," Ronsvalle said.

Church challenges
So what's going on? Are churches simply hogging more money for themselves while mission boards freeze appointments?

It's not that simple, according to several analysts.

"I personally feel Baptists' commitment to missions is as strong as ever, but it has been influenced by other factors," said Clay Price, research director at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Price has monitored giving trends across three decades of denominational employment.

First, Price said, "as the education level of pastors and church staff has increased, so has cost of salaries and benefits."

That was echoed by Phill Martin, education director for the National Association of Church Business Administration (NACBA) based in Richardson, Texas.

Specifically, he said, rising health-insurance costs have wreaked havoc on church budgets. "With multiple years of 25 and 30 percent increases in the cost of health coverage, it is a significant impact on church budget issues."

Second, churches have faced increasing land and building costs.

Third, the price of keeping the lights on and the heat or air conditioning running has increased significantly.

Fourth, churches have experienced a long-term trend of members wanting to be personally involved in direct missions - sometimes as a full or partial substitute for giving to send others.

Through NACBA, Martin monitors the ratio of church personnel costs to total church budget. The portion spent on personnel has grown from reportedly between 40 percent and 50 percent in 1973 to about 45 percent to 55 percent in recent years, he said.

More local missions?
One of the explanations churches often give for reducing Cooperative Program giving is increased expenditures on local missions.

The statistics support this assertion to a small degree. Total missions expenditures reported by churches grew 55 percent from 1987 to 2002, a better growth rate than the 49 percent gain in Cooperative Program giving. However, that small distinction pales in comparison to the 112 percent growth of undesignated receipts.

Martin, a former church business administrator who has filled out the Annual Church Profile form before, believes it may not accurately report all church missions expenditures.

Cliff Tharp, research director at LifeWay Christian Resources and coordinator of the Annual Church Profile, too, agrees with that caveat, noting that while the definition of what constitutes "mission expenditures" on the report is defined broadly, not all the correct data gets passed along. National data in recent years could be slightly skewed downward, he added, because two state conventions have not reported their numbers on this item.

Price is willing to give churches the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge many may not accurately report their full missions spending on the profile.

Yet, a clear trend still exists, Price said, noting the consistent pattern of Cooperative Program giving, total missions expenditures and designated offerings to grow at only half the rate of undesignated giving to the churches.

Is politics to blame?
Political tensions in Southern Baptist life over the last two decades could be explored as a factor in missions-giving trends, but Price discounted that as not a likely influence. Ronsvalle said that the picture of SBC churches looks similar to what she sees in other evangelical and mainline churches regardless of whether they have experienced controversy.

Put another way, has the SBC lost missions money to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), the group formed by moderate Baptists disenfranchised from the SBC in the 1990s?

Total dollars given to the Cooperative Program did hit a brief plateau from 1991 to 1993, the same time the CBF was launched. However, in those early years, the CBF served as an alternative pass-through funding mechanism for a number of SBC ministries.

That plateau in giving also corresponded to a national economic downturn in the second half of the first Bush administration.

SBC leaders never claimed to have taken a financial hit from churches defecting to the CBF. To the contrary, the SBC has boasted of sailing along without missing a beat.

CBF supporters, meanwhile, have contended the combined missions reach of the two organizations is greater than what the SBC could have accomplished alone.

The $8.7 million in undesignated gifts to the CBF in the fiscal year ended June 30 represents less than 2 percent of more than $501 million given through the Cooperative Program in 2002. The undesignated gifts to the CBF represent less than 5 percent of the Cooperative Program income that flowed to the national SBC in 2002.

In 1996, the first year for which complete giving data is available for the CBF, it received $7.4 million in undesignated gifts. Had that amount been given directly to the SBC's national causes instead - which CBF supporters say is unlikely - the SBC's undesignated income would have increased by 10 percent rather than 4 percent.

Such a leap is inconsistent with the 1 percent to 4 percent gains posted by the SBC in the decade prior.

What cannot be deduced from the available data is how much of a shift in giving might have occurred between various types of Baptist churches. For example, it is possible that increases in giving to the SBC by more conservative churches have offset decreases in giving to the SBC by CBF-friendly churches.

Regardless, one fact remains unchanged: The percentage of churches' undesignated receipts going to missions has dropped by one-third in 15 years.

What's the answer?
If denominational bodies want to increase missions giving from churches, they need to increase feedback, said Ronsvalle.

"We have found, repeatedly, church members will give to missions if they understand the need, if it's explained to them," she said. "But people want to know what their money is doing when it leaves the congregation. If you don't have feedback mechanisms to tell people the difference they are making, they feel like they're sending their money away and it's not accomplishing anything."

Most denominations are not well equipped for this type of reporting, she said.

That failure combines dangerously with a trend of church members wanting to support missions efforts they not only can see but also can personally participate in, added Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tenn.

"The day has long been over when churches were willing to give their money to someone else to determine what to do with it," he said. "People want to see their money at work. It's an issue of trust. They ask, 'Why should we give our money to a bureaucracy?'"

Back to the root of all evil
While it's easy to blame churches for keeping more of the offerings for their own discretionary use, the root of the missions funding challenge lies with individual Christians, Ronsvalle said.

"The church, and particularly missions, is shrinking as a market share of people's spending," she said.

The average member of a Christian church in the United States gives only 2.6 percent of his or her income to the church, Ronsvalle said.

If all church members gave a biblical tithe of 10 percent, nearly $80 billion in additional funds would flow into missions annually, she said.

How does that figure compare with world need? By some estimates, a mere $2.5 billion could stop the deaths of 11 million children worldwide under age 5. An $80 billion investment could end the worst cases of world poverty, according to the empty tomb ministry.

Ronsvalle wishes churches not only would give more money to missions but also would challenge Christians to be better stewards of their financial resources.

"We don't really believe what we say we do," she said. "Because if we did, we'd be spending our money differently."

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