The Challenge: Why Not You? Why Not Now?

The Challenge: Why Not You? Why Not Now?

Notes for Loren Mead’s Presentation
PEER Network Conference
October 20, 2005
Gaithersburg, Maryland

Summary of the Case

• We are increasingly dependent upon an aging, declining donor base.
• We already have an enormous backlog of deferred maintenance.
• We have no plans for those – congregations and clergy – that are likely to be squeezed out in the next few decades.
• Across the boards, our judicatories, our seminaries, our institutions are in varying stages of financial distress, left to their own devices.
• Nobody is talking turkey about this. There is a conspiracy of silence. We seem to think it will get better if we ignore it.

Other Challenges

• Churches, like hospitals and universities, are “service-providing institutions.” Down-sizing is hard.
• Future tax uncertainties
• Church property tax exemptions
• Charitable giving deductions
• Housing allowances
• Commitments we have made but have no funds to cover
• Deferred maintenance on buildings
• Clergy salaries, minimums, and clergy pensions
• Programs we’ve started
• Future litigation costs

Outline of Presentation

• Introduction: How we got here
• Cut to the chase: The situation of the Church today
• Old stuff
• Newer signs and signals
• The three big things on the horizon
• The Church is going broke
• Stewardship is a dead duck
• The windfall is happening without our being involved
• Who is going to lead: General Assembly? Louisville? Presbyteries? Clergy? Seminaries?

If it’s us, where and how do we start?

Data

PCUSA congregations with fewer than 100 members
1983: 35%
1998: 43%

Congregations without a full-time installed pastor
1990: 28%
1998: 33%

Total PCUSA church members
1988: 2.9 M
1998: 2.5 M

% membership under age 35
1982: 22%
1998: 15%

Bequests to congregations
1990: $75 M
1998: $104 M

Four Kinds of Endowments

1. Old Furniture – shoved against the wall and generally ignored
2. The Bombshell in the Night – a large unexpected gift that nobody knows what to do with
3. Topsy – started decades ago that just kept growing on its own
4. The “Gunner” Model – “We’re gunner do this and we’re gunner do that….”

From The PEER Post (PEER Network’s electronic newsletter), July 2005

Specifically, the offering plate passed each week is no longer adequate – if it ever was – to provide for the mission and ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ.

In conclusion…

We are in a financial mess.
It’s getting worse every year.
The church and its components are in deep denial and getting weaker by the day.
Challenges abound.
Who is going to step out and lead?
Why not you?
Why not now?
If not you, then who?

Books by Loren Mead

The Once and Future Church, 1991
More than Numbers, 1993
Transforming Congregations for the Future, 1994
Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church, 1996
Financial Meltdown in the Mainline, 1998
A Change of Pastors, 2005

All books are available from amazon.com or from
The Alban Institute, 2121 Cooperative Way #100, Herndon VA 20171
www.alban.org

Recent books of note touching on basic issues of money

Money and the Meaning of Life
Jacob Needleman, Doubleday, 1993.
The power of money to shape and twist our personal lives. Challenging.

Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money
James Buchan, Farrar, Straus, Firoux, 1997.
The “story” of money and how it has changed through history. Eye-opening.

Eat the Rich
P.J. O’Rourke, Atlantic, 1998.
A wide-ranging, irreverent, often funny treatment of how different societies in our world deal with money.

The Worldly Philosophers
Robert Heilbroner, Simon and Schuster, 1953.
Readable account of the ideas of economists from Adam Smith to J.M. Keynes.

The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe
Robert Wuthnow, Oxford, 1997.
Best story of how the financial and the spiritual confuse the church’s people, and why.

Wealth and Democracy: Political History of the American Rich
Kevin Phillips, Broadway, 2002.
A political scientist puts wealth accumulation in the picture of American politics.

Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice
Vincent Miller, Continuum, 2004.
A Catholic theologian explores what living in a consumer culture does to the nature of religion.

Financial Meltdown in the Mainline
Loren Mead, Alban, 1998.
An analysis of money and mainline congregations.