Here in Georgia The Christian Index prints the giving records of all Georgia Baptist Churches, 3,556 of them, displayed in eight pages of mice type so as to cause those with even the sharpest visual acuity to strain. It makes for some interesting reading, however. The most recent report gives 2010 results and there are some interesting observations to make:
18% of GBC churches did not make a report, presumably, not filing the ACP. I would speculate that this number will rise as pastors and churches find that reporting has less value to them. I give the bigwigs credit for simplifying the ACP.
Almost one in five (19.4%) GBC churches reported no contributions to the GBC, no Cooperative Program, Lottie Moon, World Hunger, nothing. This number is up from last year when 17.6% of churches reported no contributions.
Almost one in four (24.3%) of GBC churches reported no contributions to the Cooperative Program.
Cooperative Program gifts by GBC churches were down 1.54% in 2010, about $700k total. Not too bad, I’d say.
Total giving was up, mainly because of sizable Haiti relief giving (about $1.5mil) and increased Lottie Moon ($721k) giving.
Gifts to NAMB dropped by about 4%.
I suppose that one could find some trends in some of this but I don’t have past years readily available.
I don't have a figure for the number of GBC churches that have elected to designate their CP gifts around one or more SBC agency or institution.
4 comments:
I can only imagine what it is like here, in TX.
We almost met our Annie Armstrong goal, I'm embarrassed to say. It wasn't even that big of a goal. For whatever reason, Annie just isn't given the same priority as Lottie where I am.
Tim Dahl
If churches are in no way cooperating with the SBC, then in what sense are they SBC? Sounds like our numbers of churches may be inflated by the thousands if the rest are even a little similar to GA in their trends.
I don't think that the GBC automatically drops churches for non-giving, although they are not permitted to register messengers to the annual meeting. Many of these churches are small and some may give to various SBC or GBC entities directly.
I would speculate that a significant trend is in churches that just fail to file an ACP, but I don't have the stats to back that up.
William:
Would you mind sending me a copy of that GBC report...or pointing me to where you found it? I have looked for several years after I moved away from GA, but can't locate it...email: thehigg@hotmail.com
Tim Dahl:
Not sure which TX convention you're in, but I know that SBCT is very similar in percentages to GBC
To any and all:
I'm working on a 2010 report of how the states differ in their giving patterns...and whether there is a relationship to their CP division. For the 2009 report (of 2 state conventions), see my blog and the post "And now a consideration of some numbers…"
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