The average church percentage of undesignated gifts to the Cooperative Program is well under five percent, headed towards four and a half soon. Averages have limited value and don’t measure some important things, like the fact that a good number of churches give very high percentages, above ten, more than double the average. These churches, I think, are a dwindling number.
The old standard promo for the CP was that members should tithe to their church and the church should tithe to the SBC in CP percentage. Ten percent from your pocket to the church. Ten percent from the church to the Cooperative Program. We are way below that and have been for a generation and a half. But I know of a few churches that are still above ten percent to the CP.
One of these recently cut their CP giving by 20 percent. Deferred maintenance, staff salaries, and updating facilities all contributed to the decision. All that plus the general trends of older, high level givers passing away and younger, lower level givers making up a greater proportion of the church. There was not a whimper of protest about the move.
Churches may give what they wish, according to what they believe best expresses their mission priorities. When the CP has been the main mission giving vehicle and it is more than double the average, it’s not difficult in my view to make the argument that the church is better served by adequately paid staff and up-to-date facilities and programs. But, I commend whatever church is going way above the average. Just don’t punish your pastor in doing it. State and national convention entities keep salaries current and competitive. So should your church.
False choice, you say? It’s not necessary to posit a conflict between church staff salaries and facilities and Cooperative Program percentages? No, but anecdotally, that’s what I see in the high percentage CP giving churches. The pastor is underpaid or does without inflationary increases. Buildings are out-0f-date and not well maintained. Maybe I’m seeing all the wrong churches and not the ones that can give 12 or 15 percent to the CP and find 85-88 percent sufficient to do all this.
As an aside, the church that cut their CP by 20% could raise their Lottie Moon offering by a couple of thousand and end up with greater support of international missions than when their CP percentage was above ten percent. Simple math. Churches may not label it as such but all of us make opportunity cost decisions with available funds.
The CP has about six week until the end of the Executive Committee’s fiscal year. The SBC part of the CP is running about $900k behind last year. Chances are not great for an increase but we will see soon.
Ronnie Floyd is making a lot of changes in Executive Committee staff. When the time is right, I guess we will see what he has in mind for CP promotion. The CP is critical for the SBC but I think an average of five percent per church would be healthy.
As younger pastors take the helm CP giving will reduce. Young pastors are as suspicious of large organizations as any other mils. They want to know where the money is going. They want to do more hands on missions. Most consider these missions endeavors are a superior expense to CP support because their members are more directly involved. 5% is a more realistic goal to be sure. We still have one more administrative level than we need. In some situations a bloated and ineffective SC should go. In other situations irrelevant Associations deserve to be disbanded. Or the SBC could greatly scale back to do Intl missions and nothing else. I know it is doubtful any of those things will happen. But it is just a reality that the status quo is not financially sustainable.
William,
I agree with your comments.We are a high giving church (12%) in addition to a number of direct mission causes, association, etc. We are probably at some point going to reduce to 10% (still double the average) in order to provide more local hands-one missions and also hire a missions minister (and I realize every church is not in that position). Since our state keeps approx. 65% in the state, the money is not going where our people think it is. We attempted to educate them when we dropped form 15-12. Some didn’t like it. According to one, our church should already have closed it’s doors because we reduced CP. I think some of the previous administrations saw it as a “bragging” right to be #(whatever) in the state. Younger crowd could care less about that.
I agree with the Lottie Moon Offering idea. I have heard of a church who sends half of their CP funds directly to Lottie or to the SBC and sends the other half to the state. I actually think that is not a bad idea. I told our missions committee that very thing recently.
It’s just a matter of time. I know we are compensating for the churches who give 3-5%, but that cannot be our primary concern. The CP is not the holy grail some make it out to be. It is a good program but not a sole indicator of SBC support or significance.
Good article points hit home
State Conventions jave long mismanaged the money that has been entrusted to them
I remember Dr Cad telling us how much money actually made it to missionaries. It was disgraceful and that was in the mid 1980s
We’re cutting our CP this year, though will still be well above 5%. We’re increasing our Associational giving because of the international and multi-cultural ministry we are doing. Our association is 25% African-American churches, several Hispanic, with Filipino, Hatian, Indian, Pakistani, Korean, and Vietmanese congregations as well. We’re doing hands on international missions in our own front yard. We’re attempting to sell our missional building to funnel more money to this and other endeavors.
Cool. Where do you live Jeff
Columbia, SC
Good article, William – One thing I wish more people were more understanding of the reality that since many state conventions (including mine) keeps 65% of everything churches give to CP – it might not be the best course of action, despite traditions, to additionally have a special offering almost every month to various state entities and the state missions offering.
I admit I chuckled a little as I read the part about facilities, programs and salaries being under developed because of the Church is giving generously to the CP though…. only because those things are under developed in many churches I am familiar with but it has *absolutely nothing* to do with what the church gives or doesn’t give to the CP. LOL
Not sure what you mean. I have now several more people who volunteer that they are considering cutting very high, more than double the average, CP percentages in order to bring staff up to par with compensation. I wrote that this wasn’t an absolute forced choice but when churches look at their mission giving and other expenses, they consider CP as to it’s value and efficacy in carrying out their mission. While giving your staff needed raises doesn’t demand that funds come from CP giving, this is often the case. Why should the local church sacrifice to fund state staff who are paid well when their own staff is underpaid?
I just mean that many Churches have outdated programs and facilities and underfunded staff salaries, more because of controlling power group(s) not wanting to, and/or a stalwart adherence to traditions, and/or fear of change, and/or a refusal to actually spend money that they have on facility needs until a roof falls or a car disappears in one of the cracks in the parking lot… Rather than because of cooperative program giving.
Tar heel, Amen to that!
There is only so much money coming in and whatever gets spent in one area cannot be spent in another. Now obviously each church must make their own decisions on those allocations, but a church could over give to CP (yes I said it), and the church’s ministries suffer which could and has ultimately led to lesser ministry and outreach and staff which will quite possibly (probably)lead to a church decline and the subsequent offering decline and guess what, less CP. And the stats tell us that is happening. Churches brag about 15-20% to CP while they are dying on the vine ( in some cases).
I believe one tremendous factor in the reduction in giving to CP is the internet. As opposed to 25 years ago, we now can read about, be made aware of, stay in contact with and research mission entities and causes, both SBC and otherwise, that we couldn’t before because the information was hard to get or we didn’t know they were there. Churches are giving directly to those entities. Our church did increase our CP giving last year from 3-4% but we’ve put a priority on local homeless ministries, food pantries, sex-trafficking rescue ministries and the like that we can put our hands on, so to speak.
I don’t think the trend will reverse and I believe the CP probably needs to take a long throw view at what will happen as giving to missions, overall, probably will continue to climb, but CP giving will most assuredly continue to decline.
I could see a scenario where churches adopt missionaries in some fashion but I think the seminaries would be the ones to lose out. Many churches just don’t see that as part of their missions giving if they had to separate it out from the CP overall.