How Liberal Churches Profit Outrageously By Driving Away Members

The most frustrating thing for Christians watching the self-destruction of liberal denominations may be that the liberals don't seem to learn. The more liberal they become, the faster they shrink, and the faster they shrink, the more liberal they become. You'd think self-preservation would force a change.

Financially, mainline churches don't function like businesses, but rather inheritances. And that's a big problem. Businesses get wealthier as they gain customers or members. Inheritances get wealthier as siblings die. Hang with me here… that sounds like an amazing accusation, that churches grow wealthy as their congregations die off, but let's look at some numbers:

Consider the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA, not the tiny, but growing PCA). In the last two years alone, the PCUSA shrank by 10%. And the membership losses are incredibly increasing even as there are fewer and fewer people to lose! At this rate, in 20 years, the last person will quit the PCUSA. And it's actually worse than that: the number of enrollees in continuing adult education programs is down 24% in just three years.

Businesses expect that their size is related to their finances: a growing business acquires new assets and those assets are called "profit." A shrinking business sells off assets as "loss." The real problem with shrinking is that employees have to find other lines of work, and retirement plans often function as Ponzi schemes. So we expect that a shrinking denomination may have less money but not even be poorer on a per-capital basis. It's shocking, therefore to imagine that shrinking denominations can be outrageously profitable.

But the PCUSA actually made about $300 million in profit last year, and that profit margin just keeps expanding. Yes, their declining membership resulted in $42 million less revenue. But it also resulted in $128 million less spending. So the "non-profit organization's" profits grew by about $85 million.

Families with kids demand their children be educated in the faith. That costs money. Adults demand services of their own, including adult education programs. That costs money. Active parishioners expect a certain amount of outreach and charitable programs, calculating in their minds that the church ought to be able to do an amount of service proportional to their attendance. That costs money. When the children are grown, when the adults shuffle off to convalescence, when there are no more volunteers for the food drives or thrift shops, those expenses disappear.

However, as the adults shuffle off to convalescence, their giving increases. While many older people struggle to make ends meet, they are off-set by other older people who have the highest incomes of any demographic, and by far the lowest costs. And of course, when childless couples die, they leave their inheritances to the churches that made them feel good about childlessness.

This may sound conspiratorial or scandal-mongering, but the facts don't lie. The liberal denominations are getting far wealthier, and that money is being divided by far fewer people.

This isn't to say that liberals are saying, "Great! Our attendance is down 10%! We're going to be rich!" But here's the thing: Some parishes and dioceses and denominations are working hard to keep ministering and spreading the Christian message. And they're constantly scraping by to raise money for that expanded parking lot, or to build a larger sanctuary, or to acquire new classrooms for their education programs.

Other parishes and dioceses are sighing in relief as those troublesome Christians head for the doors. And you know what, they feel really good about the work that the Society for Abolishing Soft Drinks does in the classroom space they rented out. And they love the fact that agnostics and nominal Christians use their big, empty churches for the six extra weddings they can hold in their sanctuaries because they're down to one mass per week. Now, they don't even have to pay to get a great organist, since the organist makes so much money on the weddings. And isn't it nice that someone else can use most of what used to be their parking lot rather than despoiling more acreage of greenspace? And when they don't even have to ask for money, they believe they are doing a great job. Yes, the statistics say that some churches in their denomination must be shrinking, but theirs is doing just excellently.

In contrast, the Episcopal church is cannibalizing itself. The national headquarters in NYC has been shopped around for sale, and currently is being rented out, while the national church offices occupy one small section of one floor of the multi-floor office building.

The DC church has attached the principal of their sustaining "Soper Trust," the remains of a huge inheritance from a mega-wealthy benefactor, to keep the National Cathedral open.

They have spitefully squandered millions in legal expenses to seize real estate from parishes voting to leave the denomination. These buildings are old and costly to maintain, and have few if any parishioners left, so they mostly are sold off to secular enterprises.

But these stopgaps will not last forever--trust funds run dry when used for current operations--they will run out of captured real estate to sell, and the church itself is demographically doomed-- they are old and getting older.

There are more people attending NFL games on a Fall Sunday than all the Episcopal churches in the country put together.

The Episcopal Church will NEVER go bankrupt in America. It is fabulously wealthy. With a membership only 1/30th that of the Catholic Church, it owns more land than the Catholic church! With a budget of $146 million, it need not ever collect another penny, but could live on annuities until some great economic collapse of the planet.

My guess is that in about 20 years, if our Lord tarries, the PCUSA will find itself without members and without funds.

Not if they shrewdly invest and their money keeps growing..

Some years from now, if they keep shrinking, perhaps the few remaining could somehow alter the bylaws to disperse to themselves all the remaining money.

Interesting observation.

I remember hearing an interview with Parker Williamson of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. He viewed what he was doing, fighting a loosing fight in the PCUSA, as, at least partially, a matter of fiduciary responsibility.

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