What’s a Church Congregation Worth? $476,663.24

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Christianity Today ran a fascinating infographic recently that profiled the work of self-described “nonreligious” University of Pennsylvania sociologist Ram Cnaan. Cnaan has been working for years to accurately estimate the economic value of urban congregations to their communities, and he recently upwardly revised his earlier estimate of $140,000.

To $476,663.24.

That’s the average amount of services provided to the community by a typical urban church, in the form of things like:

  • Volunteer hours worked: $94,770
  • Reduced crime: $64,476
  • Divorce prevention: $22,500

Cnaan contends that while the actual numbers in each category are debatable, the real value of his work is that it proves that it’s possible to determine the economic impact of a church on a neighborhood.

Some might pooh-pooh this, either denying the legitimacy of the specific calculations Cnaan proposes ($523 in income produced by trees on the church property?) or worrying that such a calculation could lead to unfavorable restrictions once local governments realize that a church congregation provides much less value to a neighborhood than, say, a Starbuck’s (hard to tell the difference between them and churches sometimes) or–even more provocatively–a mosque. And some might suggest that a church’s real value is in intangible spiritual benefits which defy measurement.

But I’m all for the attempts to calculate. After all, they force us to ask: What are the outcomes we’re seeking? If they’re not reducing divorce and suicide and growing, um, trees, then what are they–and how might we measure them?

My old philosophy prof at Purdue, Dr. David Fairchild, used to say, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.” What difference does being a Christian make in our lives really, anyway?

In my new Whole Life Offering book, I contend that the difference Christianity makes in our daily lives is an increasing movement towards Christlikeness, which can be measured in the maturity, proportionality, and comprehensiveness of our involvement in the ten disciplines of loving our neighbor and seven disciplines of loving God that the Bible commends to us.

It may not yield a dollar figure like $476,663.24, but it does yield a series of measurables that we can use to compare things like:

  • the relative effectiveness of the discipleship methods we use;
  • the congregational structures in which we undertake such discipleship; and even
  • the way that whole life discipleship impacts our economic distribution, i.e., what impact does growth to maturity in each of these causes have on the percentage of our income that we give away, and where and how we give it?

To that end, Cnaan’s books may be worth us checking out.

Then again, with Cnaan’s Faith-based Social Services: Measures, Assessments, and Effectiveness currently running at a cool $175 per copy, perhaps we’d just be better off bartering for the book in exchange for putting in a few more trees around the church parking lot.

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Fundraising Banquet Location Tip: Always Hold Your Banquet on the Mezzanine Level

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Well, here’s the weirdest but potentially most helpful fundraising banquet tip you’ll receive this year, courtesy of Call & Response blog:

According to a study profiled in Scientific American, people are more likely to give generously to a cause after stepping off the “up” escalator.

In fact, lest you dismiss this to flukedom, there were actually four studies about the generosity of “up” that all came to the same conclusion:

In the first study they found that twice as many mall shoppers who had just ridden an up escalator contributed to the Salvation Army than shoppers who had just ridden the down escalator. In a second study, participants who had been taken upa short flight of stairs to an auditorium stage to complete a series of questionnaires volunteered more than 50 percent more of their time than participants who had been led down to the orchestra pit.

A third study took yet another approach. Participants were to decide how much hot sauce to give to a participant purportedly taking part in a food-tasting study. Those who were up on the stage gave only half as much of the painfully hot sauce to the other person as did those who were sitting down in the orchestra pit.

In a final study, participants watched film clips of scenes taken from an airplane above the clouds, or through the window of a passenger car. Participants who had watched the clip of flying up above the clouds were 50 percent more cooperative in a computer game than those who had watched the car ride down on the ground.

The report reminded me of a banquet I emceed a few years ago where the hotel elevators were on the fritz. Participants had to trudge up four flights of stairs to get to the banquet hall.

And the offering was really good that night.

No word on whether the effect holds for elevators or is diminished by forcing participants to undertake a Bataan Death March up twenty flights of stairs to the penthouse. So best be on the safe side and just opt for a generosity-spritzing escalator ride up one level to the mezzanine of the hotel for your next banquet.

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A Must-Have For Every Church in America: A Do-Good Bus

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Pastor Foley

The exact date when your church is going to go out of business has recently been charted by mathematicians, according to CNN’s Belief blog. So add this item to your church’s bucket list of ministry things to do before it goes under:

  • Acquire a Do-Good Bus to aid you in executing your responsibility to grow all the believers in your care to fullness in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As with many great discipleship ideas, this one didn’t come from the, um, church. In fact, as Alissa Walker at Good explains, The Do-Good Bus is a standalone nonprofit organization in its own right:

Co-founder Rebecca Pontius had always been involved with nonprofits, but in recent years she became flooded with questions from friends about how they could participate. “They’d say, “I want to volunteer, but I don’t know how,'” remembers Pontius, an event planner. For her birthday, Pontius organized a party bus and noticed the camaraderie created amongst her friends just by traveling to a new location together. Teaming up with two of her friends, Hannah Halliwell and Stephen Snedden, the trio decided to combine the fun of a party bus with a service trip as a way to make volunteering easy and accessible.

Part of the fun of a Do Good experience is that each destination is only revealed once volunteers board the bus, which Pontius thinks removes some of the anxiety from volunteering for the first time. “It takes away the preconceived notions or judgement about what you’re going to do,” she says. But participants don’t go into the experience blind: They’re briefed en route and also receive a training session from the organizations themselves.

In my new Whole Life Offering book, I lay out the ten ways–what the church has historically called the “Works of Mercy”–that the Bible calls us to mirror the love of Christ to our neighbors.

Why not a monthly “Works of Mercy Road Trip,” where church members board the bus (in lieu of Sunday services? Just askin’…) knowing only the name of the Work of Mercy they’ll be undertaking but not the specific destination for their service?

Of course, as the Whole Life Offering book recommends, we’ll want to train participants in that Work of Mercy in the month preceding their boarding of the bus.

Maybe if we undertake such an intentional plan for growing Christians in their love of neighbor and their love of God, then the mathematicians may be forced to revise their calculations predicting our imminent demise?

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