PCUSA says 2001 giving ‘encouraging’ – but is it?
The Layman Online, May 1, 2002
The Office of the General Assembly, whose overseer is Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, has released a sunny report with its statistics about the performance of the Presbyterian Church (USA) during 2001.
Despite the loss of 31,549 Presbyterians, the report cited “encouraging news” and quoted Kirkpatrick as saying: “The encouraging news in these numbers gives us courage to face our challenges.”
Among the “encouraging signs,” according to the news release, was that “annual per-member contributions rose to over $1,200 per year.”
But there was no evidence that contributions reached anywhere near that level. Normally, per-member contributions are based on a simple formula: total contributions by Presbyterians are divided by total membership.
With that formula, which the denomination has used for years to compile the annual comparative statistics, the per-member giving in 2001 was $783.33 – which represented the lowest increase in more than a decade. And, when inflation is factored in (using the model and calculator of the American Institute for Economic Research), giving in terms of 2002 dollars actually fell.
According to the institute’s calculator, the value in 2002 dollars of the per-member contribution of $773.42 in 2000 was $797.22. The inflation-adjusted value of the 2001 per-capita contribution was $785.11 – $11.12 less.
In actual dollars, the per-capita annual giving by Presbyterians was only $9.91 higher than the $773.42 figure in 2000 – an increase of only 1.2 percent.
Before 2001, the percentage increases in per-member giving have consistently been above the inflation rate. The increase in 2000 was 6.5 percent; in 1999, 6.3 percent; in 1998, 4.7 percent; in 1997, 6.25 percent; in 1996, 5.5 percent; in 1995, 5.1 percent; and in 1994, 4.6 percent.
The giving rate in 1994 is significant because that was the year of an enormous backlash against some denominational leadership arising out of the PCUSA’s involvement in the ReImagining God conference. While per-member giving did not trail off, contributions to support the denomination’s staff and the church’s mission fell by an estimated $8 million.
The denomination’s news release about the “encouraging” per-member contribution was based on factors other than per-member giving: capital and building funds, investment income, bequests and “other.”
In terms of total dollars, Presbyterians contributed $1,953,450,151 – that’s nearly two billion – as compared to $1,953,131,292 in 2000.