David Ewart

United Church Mission and Service Fund Trends - 2010

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United Church Financial Trends - 2010

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From 1965 highs to the present, United Church of Canada people demographics have all trended downward¹:

 

 

 

 

And yet, as the chart below shows, by and large, the Total Amount Raised for All Purposes has not dropped significantly:

The Total Amount did decline from 1964 to 1976, from $436,400,000 to $363,000,000, but regained this loss to reach $446,400,000 in 1987. In 2010, the Total Amount Raised was $393,800,000 a reduction of $52,600,000 or -12%.

What can also been seen from the chart is that the amount raised from Congregational Givings follows the pattern of the Total Amount Raised until 1987, and then begins a slightly faster rate of decline: from $332,900,000 in 1987 to $262,600,000 in 2010; a reduction of $70,300,000 or -21%. Whereas Identified Local Givers declined from 459,900 to 257,800; a change of -202,100 or -44% in this same period. So while the overall declines are worrisome, one piece of good news is that the amount per local giver has risen from $725 to $1,020.

The amount raised that is identified as from United Church women has declined from $49,200,000 in 1964 to $14,011,000 in 2010; a change of -$35,189,000 or -72% which parallels the change in United Church women’s groups membership.

However, whereas Congregational Givings and the UCW accounted for 92% of the Total Amount Raised in 1965, by 2010 that had fallen to 70%. The difference being made up by “Other Organizations, Sources, and Means” which has grown from $31,930,000 in 1965 to $117,200,000 in 2010; an increase of $85,270,000 or 267%.

“Other” is a large category that includes fowl suppers, choir concerts, and thrift sales. But I suspect the largest contributions are coming from rental and investment income. And while there is good news in having this extra income from rentals and investments to support our ministries, the danger is that this income masks the loss of people participating in the life of the congregation.

Rental and investment income allows a congregation to actually become non-sustainable as far as its people participation is concerned. There is a very real danger, especially in urban areas, for congregations to be able to continue to pay their bills while in fact the number of people participating in the life of the congregation has ceased to be viable.

The danger of the present trends can be seen if we ask, “What will the average Pastoral Charge be like in 2025 if the trends for the past 10 years continue unchanged?”

For our 100th Anniversary, the average for each of our 2,000 Pastoral Charges will be:

• 90 Resident Members
• 11 Average Weekly Worship attenders
• 60 Local Givers giving $1,920 each
• 15 M&S Givers giving $575 each
• 6 UCW members
• 10 Sunday School members
• Zero Baptisms, Marriages, and Professions of Faith
• Raising a total of $210,000 from Congregational Givings of $115,200, UCW givings of $4,100 and Other of $90,700 – 43% of the Total.

David Ewart,
www.davidewart.ca

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¹ All data is from The United Church of Canada Year Book. Data has been rounded. Historical financial data has been adjusted for inflation based on the 2010 CPI. 

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Permission is granted for non-profit use of these materials provided credit is acknowledged as, "David Ewart, www.davidewart.ca."

 

The World Changed in 1957 … Or Maybe It Was 1958

In hindsight, it often looks as though the world changed for the United Church of Canada in 1965. That was the year membership reached what turned out to be its peak of 1,064,000.

But signs of the cultural tsunami that would change Canada's religious landscape actually began to be evident in 1957 and 1958. These are the years when the first-born of the Baby Boom Generation graduated from Grade 6. And these are the years when lasting trends in membership first began to appear – again.

The United Church tracks 2 ways of adding to its membership and 2 ways of removing from its membership:

Adding by:

1. Profession of Faith – Persons who have never been a member of any other church. Typically these are teens who have been raised within the United Church.
2. Received by Certificate or Otherwise – Typically these are adults who are transferring their membership from another church.

Removing by:

1. Death
2. Removing by Certificate or Otherwise – Typically these are adults who are moving to another church, or persons that the Session has lost contact with or has otherwise decided that they have ceased to be a member.

Apart from death, the other 3 are all reflective of demographic and cultural changes that take place in Canada. And all of these seemed to have significant changes in 1945, and then began to correct themselves in 1957 or 1958.

Being received – or removed – by certificate reflects life choices and circumstances of adults. And from 1945 both of these increased to peaks 54,700 received, and 63,000 removed in 1957.

However, the net loss of members in this way was more than made up by new members being added by Profession of Faith. New members joining the church grew from 25,500 in 1945 to what turned out to be the peak of 41,700 in 1958.

It is important to remember that this data is not about the Baby Boomers – it is about their mothers and fathers. After a decade of poverty of the Dirty Thirties and six years of World War, Canadians entered two decades of marrying, moving, and having babies – and a significant part of their new life was bringing their young families to church. Sunday School enrollment rose from 474,000 in 1945 to 731,000 in 1958.

But in 1957 and 1958, just as the first-born of the Baby Boom Generation began to graduate from Grade 6, their parents began to "graduate" from church.

Whereas these parents had driven the rise in church membership in the decade following World War II, instead of continuing to go to church and being joined by their children as they completed the first years of Sunday School, the phenomenon that we still see today happened then:

Parents attend church in support of their children's religious education. But once the basic years are completed and the children graduate from Grade 6, often the children and their parents stop attending church.

The response to the hardships of the Thirties and the war resulted in a boom that many of us in the church mistook as a trend.

If in fact there was a 15 year window of opportunity to truly entrench the value of life-long attending and belonging to a church in the lives of young adults and their children – that opportunity was lost.

And instead, at the first opportunity, the longer-standing utilitarian value of attending and belonging to church when needed and useful re-asserted itself.

I actually do not disparage in any way this utilitarian approach. This is after all what it means to be of service to others.

However, the boom from 1945 to 1957 or 1958 blinded those of us in the church to properly understand and respond to the wider culture.

Because we had been so busy all those years with the hordes of new people thronging through the front door without even being asked, we hadn't noticed the steady stream of people leaving through the back door.

When the boom ended and people continued to leave as they had always done – we mistakenly thought the problem was us.

And we've spent – no wasted – 50 years trying every new program or gimmick to renew and revitalize our churches. But it wasn't us; it was just people doing what they had always done – being who they had always been – coming to church when and if it was needed.

The problems this has created for those of us who do cherish life-long attending and belonging to a church are:

1. We haven't a clear idea or plan for encouraging others to also cherish life-long attending and belonging to a church. We just take it for granted and assume others will too.
2. Cherishing life-long attending and belonging to a church is not the reason for attending and belonging to a church. We too often and too easily forget this. We get busy with the many pleasant and necessary activities that keep our churches good places to attend and belong to – and forget that the single purpose of the church is to love the world.
3. We have inherited and continue to maintain buildings and budgets that were created for the boom. They will kill us if we don't soon figure out points 1 and 2 above.

David Ewart,
www.davidewart.ca

Permission is granted for non-profit use of these materials provided credit is acknowledged as, "David Ewart, www.davidewart.ca."

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