empty tomb®, inc. Is Looking for 10 Churches and $250 Million in 2019 to Close the Promise Gap and Solve the "Demographic Cliff"
CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Dec. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- For the past 32 years, empty tomb research analysis has pointed to downward trends in church giving and membership. Now, similar declines are commonly reported in various national surveys.
empty tomb also wants to take action to help reverse those declines. To do that, empty tomb is looking for two things in the closing weeks of 2019.
First, empty tomb is looking for ten churches to apply for Mission Match® Matching Contributions. These churches will do mission projects they design to help close, in Jesus' name, the Promise Gap: the difference between the actual Under-5 Mortality Rate and the target reduction rate promised by world leaders. As a result of this gap, 1 million children under age 5 are dying each year around the world. Ten churches are invited to be in the vanguard of a congregation-based movement to close this gap.
Second, empty tomb is looking for $250 million to help jumpstart an expanded congregation-based movement in the U.S. to close the Promise Gap by 2025.
Declining Trends in the Church
The 29 editions in empty tomb's The State of Church Giving series have monitored giving and membership numbers in a cross-section of Christian denominations in the U.S. The demographics in the U.S. indicate that most religious people in the U.S. still self-identify as "Christian."
For the past three decades, the data in the empty tomb analyses have suggested downward trends in both giving and membership patterns. Those downward trends, initially found in the 1968-1985 data in previous studies, have become recognized reality.
Surveys by Gallup, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, and Pew all have found declines in church membership and/or Christian self-identification.
Recently, David Heim, retiring editor of Christian Century, referred to the downward trends, particularly in the mainline Protestant church, as a "demographic cliff."
The proposal is that a vision of addressing a critical need that should not be tolerated - - children under age 5 dying from preventable causes - - will help the children and at the same time revitalize the church.
Part 1: Matching Contributions Available for Congregations
empty tomb invites 10 historically Christian congregations to apply for up to $3,000 each in a Mission Match Matching Contribution. The congregation will do a mission project designed by the congregation to address one of the causes of death in children under age 5 in one of 40 countries that have had difficulty reducing their Under-5 Mortality Rates (U5MR). empty tomb will match up to $3,000 that the congregation raises for their mission project from donations of people in the congregation. Started in 2002, Mission Match now has narrowed its focus to projects that help close, in Jesus' name, the Promise Gap in 40 countries. The projects might provide supplies needed on the frontlines to help prevent the deaths, support workers who bring medical expertise, and/or on-site facilities.
Part 2: How Much Does It Cost to Reverse the Downward Trends?
Cost to launch a national movement: $250 million in seed money. Beyond the demonstration project of 10 congregations, empty tomb also seeks $250 million even yet in 2019. This $250 million will expand the effort to mobilize more congregations to stop the deaths of 1 million Promise-Gap children under age 5. People choosing to provide this money to help the dying children might have to forego setting a record for a Central Park South penthouse ($240 million) or buying a Cézanne oil painting ($250 million).
Cost for an expanded movement to close the Promise Gap by 2025: $16 billion a year starting in 2021. The annual enterprise-level budget of $16 billion total will be raised through a combination of wealthy individuals and a popular movement among $50 donors throughout the U.S., and the mission project funds raised by congregations.
The $16 billion a year that is needed starting in 2021 is less than the U.S. chocolate budget ($22 billion, 2018). And people spend more than twice that $16 billion amount (in fact, $38 billion, 2019) on self-storage units in the U.S. to stockpile all the stuff they're buying.
How Did It Come to This?
In general, church members in the U.S. are among the most affluent people in history, and yet the church is weakening. Meanwhile, 1 million children globally never make it to their fifth birthdays, instead dying from preventable causes. How did it come to this?
In 1958, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith recognized growing affluence and coined the phrase "uncorrected obsolescence" to describe economic theories that did not take that affluence into account.
The church in the U.S. may suffer from "uncorrected obsolescence." Pastors each week face congregations full of people who are far richer than most others around the world. Yet, churches have not helped their people understand both the potential for good, and the dangers, of the growing affluence engulfing them. That's the current situation, even though 2,000 years ago, Jesus addressed the issue: people need to choose whether to serve God or money (Matthew 6:24).
As a consequence of ignoring this new reality of affluence, the church has largely accepted the role of cultural wallpaper, resulting in downward trends.
In a 1789 sermon, 200 years ago, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, recognized the dynamic missed by today's church. He commented on people's response to his three rules. He noted while many observe the First rule, "Earn all you can," perhaps a few also observe the Second rule, "Save all you can." However, he stated that it was difficult to find those who also observe the Third rule, "Give all you can." He concluded, "And yet nothing can be more plain, than that all who observe the two first rules without the third, will be twofold more the children of hell than ever they were before."
The State of Church Giving through 2017 (29th edition, Oct. 2019) found church people's priorities have not changed since Wesley's time. Since 1968, the trend has been for church contributions to represent a smaller portion of members' rising incomes. And membership has declined as a percent of U.S. population.
Meanwhile, churches have focused on maintaining their programs, rather than developing a broad, positive agenda that would attract an increasing portion of the growing resources available to those in the congregations.
In the absence of such an agenda, fewer people identify with the church, or Christianity as a whole. A recent Pew survey found those in the U.S. who self-identify as Christian declined to 65% in 2019, compared to 77% in 2009.
The downward trends are evident across the theological spectrum. For example, the Roman Catholic Church (largest communion in the U.S.), the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant communion in the U.S., it is described as conservative/evangelical), and the United Methodist Church (the largest mainline Protestant communion in the U.S.) have all seen drops in membership as a percent of U.S. population.
Although Christianity has been the largest identity group in the U.S. for most of the country's history, there is still not an enterprise level ($5 billion or more a year) Christian global mission group.
For 29 editions, empty tomb has documented church member giving and membership trends. Over that time, warnings were issued that these trends needed to be addressed proactively. Further, it's been stated, since religion is the main source of philanthropy education in the U.S., over time, the trends would affect not only the church, but the culture at large as well.
Now, a 2019 report from the Lilly School of Fundraising presents the finding that fewer American households overall are donating to charity.
What Can Be Done?
Keeping on the same path is one option. However, if people value the church as a major positive social institution, that passive approach spells a bleak future.
Rather, as empty tomb has documented the downward church giving and membership trends, empty tomb is now also proposing a solution that needs immediate action before the trends become irreversible.
In addition, continuing to allow 1 million children under age 5 die around the world from preventable causes is also not acceptable. The goal to reduce under-five mortality rates was first set in 1990. Data through 2017 indicates the U5MR reduction goal has not yet been met. The Promise Gap having existed over 27 years (1990 to 2017), at least 27 million children died over that time because the goal was not met.
Both for the sake of the children and the sake of the church in the U.S., the time to act is now.
The church needs, empty tomb suggests, a platform in this age of affluence that has the same power that Jesus demonstrated in one-on-one miracles while on earth. Now, church members are sitting on the potential to apply resources to close, in Jesus' name, the Promise Gap, and help one million children who are dying each year from preventable causes. By seeking a goal on a scale with a need that is critically important, and one that will benefit from the oneness that Jesus prayed for in John 17:20-23, the church in the U.S. can begin to share among the many parts in the body of Christ a common agenda of helping, in Jesus' name, save the lives of these children.
Congregations can apply for Mission Match Matching Contributions, up to $3,000 each, at missionmatch.org for projects designed to help, in Jesus' name, close the Promise Gap.
In addition, an amount of $250 million in 2019 can provide the seed capital to launch an initiative to expand the congregation-based effort nationally. Closing, in Jesus' name, the Promise Gap is a first rung on the ladder of meeting other global needs as well. The energy resulting from mobilizing churches on a common positive agenda for affluence has the potential to lay the groundwork for taking on additional global challenges.
The causes of death in the 40 countries are outlined in empty tomb's 29th edition in the series, The State of Church Giving through 2017: What A Can-Do Attitude in the Church+$16 Billion Can Do, in Jesus' Name, to Help the Children Dying in the Promise Gap (29th edition, Oct. 2019). The book is available from Wipf and Stock Customer Service by phone at 541-344-1528 or [email protected]. For more information, contact empty tomb at (217) 356-9519.
SOURCE empty tomb, inc.
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