The Church Dollar
One way, though by no means the only way, that the Church can judge of its
successful work is by the financial support that it receives. In this
Range country nearly all of the Church dollar is raised locally, except
about twelve cents donated toward church work by denominational boards.
Various methods are used by the local church for raising the other
eighty-eight cents. Half the churches use a budget system. That is, they
set down at the beginning of the fiscal year an itemized budget of the
amount which they need, on the basis of which amount subscriptions are
obtained from each church member or family. Twenty-five churches finance
all their work this way and ten churches budget only their local needs.
Thirty-two churches make an annual every-member canvass, i.e., every
member is asked regularly each year to contribute something toward the
church. Weekly envelopes, in single or duplex form, are used in
twenty-four churches. Forty churches can be said to have a system of
regular, frequent payments. The rest of the churches depend upon various
combinations of quarterly or annual payments, plate collections at
services, bazaars and other money-raising devices.
Incidentally, the Ladies Aid and Missionary Societies are real stand-bys
in the matter of church upkeep and benevolences. In fully half the
churches, women's organizations undertake to raise some part of the church
expenses in various ways, from regular weekly contributions to
distributing bags to be filled with pennies for every year of the
contributor's age, or by making gayly colored holders at three cents each.
Nearly one hundred thousand dollars were raised by the 3,956 active
members in the year of the survey. This is the "real thrill" of the church
dollar. The total amount of the budget raised on the field by sixty-eight
of the seventy churches[3] was $97,571.98. Of this amount $70,910.74, or
little less than three-fourths, was procured by subscriptions; $9,464.24,
or slightly less than one-tenth, by collections, and the balance of the
$17,197.00 by miscellaneous means. This is an average amount per church of
$990.25. Here again it is clear that the larger the membership of a
church, the greater the impetus from within for further growth and
activities. This condition is evident in the various church campaigns. The
city churches raise more than twice as much as the churches in the town,
village or country, but with their larger membership there is not a
corresponding drain on the individual. Thus, the city and village church
members give about the same, $24.87 and $24.47 respectively per year; the
town members give $29.63; the country members, with fewer buildings, fewer
services, and less resident ministers to maintain than the members in the
centers, pay $16.12 each.
[Illustration: CHART VI
Figures refer to total amount raised and spent, including Home Mission
Aid.]
Considering that nearly half the churches raise their money haphazardly,
the average contribution per church and per member, in these four counties
on the Range, is most encouraging. Of course, it must be borne in mind
that 1919-1920 came at the end of the fat years, and hard upon this
prosperous period followed the lean one of high freight rates and low
prices for farm products. Church finances depend in part upon the
practical presentation of the financial needs of the Church, and upon
education in Christian stewardship--i.e., in learning the value of church
work at home and abroad. But there is another side to the question which
is quite as vital. Is the Church rendering a real service to the
community, and has it an adequate and worth-while ministry? After all,
people cannot be expected to give more than they receive in service.
Not quite all the money was spent. In each group there was a small
surplus; $85.00 for the country churches, $64.24 for the village, $64.00
for the town, and $365.89 for the city churches. Of the total amount
spent, $41,268.79, or about 43 per cent., paid salaries, $24,657.55, or 25
per cent., was given to missions and benevolences, and the remaining 32
per cent. was used for local expenses and upkeep. The total amount given
to benevolences averages $6.27 a year. All the money spent averages $24.67
per resident active member, a good record indeed for a homesteading
country.
The question of benevolences is important because many churches offer no
other means to their members of learning and practising unselfish giving
and service. One of the standards adopted by the Interchurch World
Movement was that the amount given to benevolences should at least equal
25 per cent. of the total amount spent. The proportion of all money raised
which is used to pay salaries and local expenses is higher in country and
village churches, while the proportion given for missions and benevolences
is lower than in the town and city churches. In other words, the country
and village churches have less surplus over and above their running
expenses. Benevolences receive 14.3 per cent. of all money raised by the
country churches, and 12.75 per cent. of all money raised by the village
churches. Town churches, on the other hand, give 23.84 per cent. of their
receipts to benevolences, and the city churches give 33.65 per cent. The
finances of city churches are well proportioned, almost an equal amount
going for salaries, missions and all other expenses.
Home Mission Aid
It has already been stated that about twelve cents of the church dollar
come from the denominational boards in the form of Home Mission aid. The
total amount given to the local churches in the year preceding the survey
was $12,937.50, which went to forty-one churches in amounts varying from
$50 to $750. Two more churches would have been receiving aid if they had
had a pastor, and still another church had there been a resident pastor.
Of the forty-one churches receiving aid, two are city, seven are town,
seven are village and twenty-five are country churches.
Of course, some of these churches, in their turn, hand back money to other
boards in the form of missions and benevolences. All the city churches
give $13,382.04 in benevolences and missions and receive $2,100; all the
town churches give $8,304.96 and receive $3,035; the village churches give
$1,650 and receive $3,650, and the country churches give $1,320 and
receive $4,152. By counties, Beaverhead gets back 46.8 per cent. of what
she gives, Hughes gets back 47.3 per cent., Sheridan 37.2 per cent., while
Union is the only county which receives more than she gives--24.4 per
cent. The churches which receive aid send back to the boards $2,872.79. In
a word, the churches send money to the church boards, who in turn remit
this money. This would seem a strange story to some one not versed in
church ethics and denominational procedure. But giving and serving is one
of the fundamental ideas of the Christian religion, and money given for
missions and benevolences is good training as well as definitely a service
to humanity.
The Range has always been Home Mission territory; justifiably too, because
homesteaders have not been able to pay for religious ministry. A
homesteader's "bit" is hard earned enough, and seldom adequate to his
needs. Nevertheless, the problem of financial aid is always a serious one.
Subsidization of persons as well as institutions must be wisely handled or
moral deterioration is likely to set in. The Y. M. C. A. never subsidizes
a county for its rural work. If the county cannot pay, it must do without
the work. Ordinarily, several counties combine for rural Y. M. C. A. work
and have one secretary among them.
An excellent grading system for their aided fields has been worked out by
the Presbyterian Home Mission Board.[4] One of the first questions
considered is the prospect of self-support. How far has it been the policy
of the Boards to help a church to a status of self-support? Forty-four of
the seventy active churches have had aid during the last thirty years.
Only four of these churches are now self-supporting. It has already been
pointed out that three churches did not receive aid during the year
preceding the survey because they lacked pastors. Development toward
self-support has evidently not been a criterion of the Boards in granting
money.
Another test is whether the field is a "strategic service
opportunity"--either allocated to this denomination or a field presenting
a unique need. Some of the churches fall within such a classification. A
total of about $207,170 has been received, given by eleven denominations.
City churches have received $40,850, town churches $67,465, village
churches $47,430 and country churches $51,425. Of the total amount,
$44,980 has gone to fifteen strategic service churches. In addition, four
of the aided churches receiving $27,000 serve special groups of
population, of which one is Swedish, one Norwegian, and two are German
Lutheran churches. There remain thirty churches receiving $136,190. Three
churches, receiving $6,830, are the only ones in their community. All the
rest are in communities with other churches, at least one of which in each
case is aided.
[Illustration: A NEGLECTED OUTPOST OF CHRISTIANITY
A village church in the center of a large unevangelized area, served by a
minister living thirty-five miles away.]
Aid Misapplied
Some aid has very evidently been granted without a definite understanding
on the part of the board as to whether other churches were concerned,
whether the community could really support a church, whether, after all,
it was good sense to assist a church in that particular situation. Not
very much money has been spent. More could have been used to advantage. As
H. Paul Douglass says in "From Survey to Service," "It is in the nature of
the case that the conquest of distance by the Gospel will take very
disproportionate amounts of money compared with other forms of missions.
It can be cheap only when it is adequate." The policy has too often been
to help keep alive a great many struggling churches which did little to
justify support, rather than to develop a smaller number of churches in
greater need of help in a poorly churched area. In other words, the
policy has been one of denominational expansion rather than of
denominational concentration and demonstration. Home Mission aid too often
creates futile competition within a community by supporting a church for
selfish denominational purposes. Some of these churches were better dead,
and they would have died of natural causes but for Home Mission aid.
There are good and bad instances of denominational help. One denomination
has aided three churches for thirty years, but has not helped any one of
them for the last ten years. They had reached a self-supporting status.
But, when a denomination lavishes $18,000 of Home Mission aid in keeping
alive a church in a village of 150 population, where there is also another
church, and when the village is situated near to a large, well-churched
center, such aid is wasted. The same denomination fails to give with
liberality to a far needier case, the only Protestant church in a small
village, a railroad center, located fairly in the center of a large
unevangelized area. In one of its valleys, a resident recently remarked
that they had heard no preaching for twenty years. This instance of
neglect is in Montana, and the territory has been allocated to this
denomination since 1919, so that other churches are keeping their hands
off. Yet this church, which had a resident pastor until two years before
the time of the survey, is now being served by a pastor of a town church
living thirty-five miles away who preaches there on a _week-day_ night. No
preaching on Sunday, no pastoral work, obviously no community work in the
village and no touch at all on the districts outside of the village! How
well could the lavish aid of $18,000 have been put to use in this
churchless area! This desperate condition needs as much aid every year as
_all_ the Boards give _all_ forty-one aided churches at present. Instead,
this church has been allocated to one denomination, and is now getting
less attention than before. This case constitutes an abuse of the
principle of allocation.