These two charts give an overview over a sixty year time span of the two major funding sources that support the International Mission Board.
Chart #1 – CP Giving Received by the Executive Committee from States
The first chart shows COOPERATIVE PROGRAM funds received from the churches, via the state conventions, by the Executive Committee. About 50% [actually 50.41%] of the CP funds received by the executive committee are forwarded to the IMB. The blue line of the chart is CP dollars received by the Executive Committee. The red line is the blue line dollar amount adjusted to “constant 2014 dollars” based upon the Consumer Price Index issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPI is a pretty good measure of spending power of dollars as viewed by consumers in the United States. It is based upon price changes of a typical market basket of items that consumers buy such as housing, transportation, utilities, food, and clothing.
As it relates to the Cooperative Program, the blue line indicates that the 45,000 churches in the SBC, and hence the people in the pews, have generally been giving less and less each year since the mid 1980s in real terms. In real terms the amount given to the CP by the churches was about the same in 2012 as it was in the mid 1970s.
It should be noted that the red line is based upon an inflation index as viewed by the guy in the pews. The inflation index relating to the spending power of dollars by the IMB is likely different than this since the “market basket” of items that the IMB “buys” is significantly different that those that a typical consumer buys. I do not have available any “producer price index” that would model the spending power of the funds that the IMB receives over time in US dollars that are spent both in the USA and abroad.
About 30% of the income received by the IMB comes from the CP funds given by the churches and routed to the IMB via the Executive Committee.
About 59% of IMB’s funding comes from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. The LMCO giving trends are shown on the next chart.
Chart #2 – Lottie Moon Christmas Offering Giving Received by the International Mission Board
The second chart shows LOTTIE MOON CHRISTMAS OFFERING dollars received by the International Mission Board. The biggest item that stands out on this chart is that in terms of CPI adjusted dollars LMCO giving has been on a generally declining slope since 2003. There have been a few years where the red line is horizontal from year to year but overall the best straight line fit for the red line from 2003 to 2014 is a downward sloping line. In terms of “constant dollars”, as measured by the CPI, the 2014 LMCO giving was about the same as it was in the mid 1990s.
Setting aside any “inflation adjustment” the blue line shows that LMCO giving has trended more or less “flat” since 2006.
Again I want to stress that the red line inflation adjustment looks at inflation as seen by the typical US consumer – i.e. the guy in the pew. It may not be the best gauge, over time, of the IMB’s spending power for such things as missionaries’ salaries, travel and living expenses, and the cost to run the Richmond headquarters operations or the Rockville training center.
Looking at this post on a Mac and I can’t see the charts so I must ask, is it just me?
I will check on a PC later. Thanks.
Roger sent this to me as a Word doc and 2 jpegs. I put it together.
So, the chances that the thing is messed up in formatting is high since I am the one who did the formatting.
On the other hand, Mac is the tool of the Antichrist, so there’s that….
They didn’t come through on Feedly (some things simply don’t), but they came up when I clicked through directly to the SBC Voices site.
The surprise is that Southern Baptists do not realize that the decline in giving is due to the unemployment of members by the millions due to the departure of textile, furniture, other forms of industrial employment of the small factory variety, tobacco, the increase in computerization, automation, and robotics, and various other factors. The other factors include a discriminatory educational school system, even one fast becoming totally alien and antithetical to the Christian and biblical faith, the influx of multitudes of people from outside the country, from up North (where few go to church), the latter being generally aided by… Read more »
James,
Just to add to what you are saying, some churches have pastors that are not ordained. They even get less money than the bi-vocational ministers.
I fear we are due for an implosion, barring a Third Great Awakening for which I have been praying for 42 years (ever since the Fall of ’73). An implosion means that we will collapse like a house of cards.. O and yes, what in the world do you folks make of a school system teaching totally contrary to what we preach? Like when third graders read a book about King and King (I think that was the title I heard), presenting a very favorable picture of two homosexuals in a same sex marriage. I was looking at the Atlantic… Read more »
So, folks, are the graphics showing up now?
I hope so, they are worth it.
I’m going to confess my ignorance here. I see the charts but they appear to me to be more like trees walking. Can someone please interpret the significance of them for me. What does this say?
Roger is the ex-poit here, but here are the salient points I see: 1. Contributions to CP consistently increased in both actual and inflation adjusted dollars until about 1987 when it began declining. 2. CP, as measured in real (inflation adjusted) dollars has declined by about one third since its apogee a generation ago. 3. The LMCO tracked with the CP until about 1988 and then stayed flat while the CP declined. It’s interesting to see it graphed but the story of the SBC and funding since about 1980 is that our primary funding mechanism, the venerable Cooperative Program, has… Read more »
The first graphic paints the picture pretty well. With revenue adjusted to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), one will note the dip occurring in the late 1980s which never recovered to previous highs. As an old guy, I remember “Black Monday” very well. On Monday, October 19, 1987, the stock market experienced its largest one day decline, even to this day. Markets around the world shed a tremendous wealth from world economies. Numerous businesses closed; millions of jobs were lost; family incomes were strained. It’s no surprise that SBC giving also plummeted that year; folks in the pews were struggling… Read more »
The ghost in your evaluation of the declining CP giving is the slow departure of moderates who were super CP supporters but not so much when it became evident that the CR was not going to be turned back.
Yes, that was implied in my comment “The economic factors are complicated …”
Big-buck givers exiting, combined with remaining givers not giving in a poor economy, does not yield a healthy revenue stream. We may need some Macedonian Christians to bail us out: “Somehow, in most difficult circumstances, their joy and the fact of being down to their last penny themselves, produced a magnificent concern for other people” (2 Cor 8:1-5).
Thanks are due to Roger for his work on this. Almost all SBC statistics are in decline and have been for some years. It is no wonder that missions giving is in decline also.
I wonder if everyone who is having trouble is part of the Mac cult?
I had trouble initially and I’m on Windows 10.
But it worked great on Linux.
And now it’s working on Windows.
As Mark Terry has noted in a previous post many people who gave to Lottie and the CP are now at retirement age. More and more of their income is now coming from savings as opposed to wages. The only problem with income from savings is that with interest rates effectively at zero there is no income from savings. If you were going to live off the interest from savings and have a “middle class” lifestyle — even assuming you have no debt such as a mortgage and/or car payment — you would need a ton of money. For example,… Read more »
It would be interesting to see, Roger, if giving to LM and CP ticked up if interest rates were back at more traditional levels. On the other hand, a lot of wealth has been created in retirement funds with the stock market going up. I think SBC leaders were spooked when, after the recovery of the markets and dropping employment rates, there wasn’t a corresponding increase in giving. SBC leaders, particularly state convention leaders, are in a position of having to outline a compelling vision that churches want to support rather than sailing along on a never-ending stream of CP… Read more »
Sorry! I confused “fiscal policy” with “monetary policy”.
Monetary Policy — controlled by the Fed Open Market Committee using various levers — most notably interest rates
Fiscal Policy — the amount of government spending as controlled by congress.
Roger