This pandemic will be fatal for some faith institutions, too. Giving is way down.
A hallmark of COVID-19 has been its ruthlessness against the elderly and those with existing health conditions. It doesn’t target them, but it’s more likely to take down the weak than people with stronger immune systems.
It will have a similarly disproportionate effect on religious institutions that came into the pandemic with underlying financial problems.
Religious leaders say some churches, synagogues and mosques — particularly those that already were struggling — will come out of the national and statewide shutdown with such dire funding problems that they likely will be forced to close or combine with another congregation.
“We’re going to lose churches. We’re going to lose a lot of churches,” said John Butler, spokesman for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, based in Cary.
Since the beginning of the shutdown, Butler said, he has spent hours every day calling pastors at the 4,400 or so churches affiliated with the convention to see how they’re doing and to pray with them.
“I’ve talked with churches who are saying, ‘We’re looking at how to dissolve or how to merge with another church,’” he said in a phone interview with The News & Observer..
“The virus just basically exposed the tenuous nature of their financial situation, the same as it has done with a lot of small businesses all over this state. The weaker you were at the beginning, the more likely that you’re not going to survive.”
Handling money week to week
A church might be in poor financial shape because it borrowed money to upgrade or build new facilities and donations have not risen enough to pay off the debt. Or it might be an older church located in a neighborhood where demographics have changed and the congregation is no longer relevant to its surroundings.
Many churches, Butler said, handle money the same way some of their members do: week to week to week. They pass the collection plate during worship service, count the tithes and offerings, which make up the great majority of nearly every church’s budget, pay whatever bills they can and pray for the best.
With no emergency funds and little or no budget reserve, these organizations are in no shape to weather weeks of shuttered sanctuaries and perhaps months of low attendance even after stay-home orders are lifted and worshipers are allowed to gather in large numbers again.
Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-at-home order is tentatively scheduled to expire May 8, conditional on the state meeting certain milestones such as increased testing and decreasing case counts as a percentage of all tests done. If the markers are met, the governor has outlined a three-phase reopening of business and institutions and a relaxation of restrictions on crowd sizes.
If all goes well, the governor’s plan would allow more than 10 people to gather in a church by late May, and the crowd size could increase again in late June.
Though members of churches, synagogues and mosques say on social media they miss their faith families and can’t wait to see and hug them again, Butler said he isn’t sure people will be willing to crowd back into sanctuaries and family life centers right away, even if the governor, state, national and international health officials says it’s OK.
“I don’t think we have seen the worst of it, for churches,” said Butler, who fears finances at some churches will continue to constrict into June and July because of congregants’ unease.
“You’re so far into changing people’s habits at this point that getting back to where people have a comfort level with being in the pew at a large, mass gathering is going to take a long time,” Butler said.
Big drops in donations
Two groups — State of the Plate and CapinCrouse — have polled U.S. churches to gauge the effects of the pandemic on donations. State of the Plate said 65% of the churches it polled reported a drop in donations, and CapinCrouse said 56% of churches in its poll had seen donations fall.
As stay-home orders went into effect in late March, many churches moved seamlessly into a fully online experience by expanding existing Facebook pages and websites with worship services, Sunday school classes, prayer meetings, morning and evening devotionals and Zoom discussion groups, along with secure online donation portals. Others had to scramble but managed to launch some of those within a week or two.
Some churches still have no online presence.
In the polls, some churches actually reported seeing an increase in giving, which Butler said appears more likely to happen with institutions that enthusiastically embraced online ministry opportunities. Some pastors and rabbis in the Triangle said in April they had greater online attendance at their post-shutdown worship services than they typically had for in-person events held before the pandemic hit.
Christine Dodson, treasurer of the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, said the newly discovered popularity of internet-based worship and fellowship will be one of the silver linings of the shutdown.
“Some good will come from the way churches and other non-profits are reaching out and building relationships with people that they may not have had before,” Dodson said in a phone interview with The News & Observer.
Immediately after the governor’s original stay-home order, the conference, which represents about 800 congregations throughout Eastern North Carolina, added a link on its website that church members could use to make a donation to any church in the conference. So far, Dodson said, people have used the portal to donate to 122 different churches, many of which did not have their own online donation portals.
Congregational leaders say comfort with online donation tends to vary by demographic group. People in their 20s and 30s are the most at ease with it, but usually have the least amount of disposable income to give away. People ages 60 and above, who can afford to donate to their church and may be committed to doing so, tend to be less comfortable with sharing banking information online.
During the shutdown, some donors have continued to mail checks to their churches or drive to their churches and drop them off.
If you go, leave a legacy
The North Carolina Conference also shared information on its web page to help churches apply for funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. The program offers federal guaranteed loans to small businesses and churches, with the provision that the loans may be forgiven if borrowers keep up their payrolls during the crisis or restore them afterward.
Funds in the program are limited, however, and small churches with less sophisticated bookkeeping systems may have a hard time competing with larger churches who have access to accountants.
The conference also set up a COVID-19 Fund, to which churches and individuals my donate. The conference itself put money into the account, Dodson said, using reserve funds that in the past have been used for such things as hurricane relief.
The COVID-19 fund can be used to help churches pay their bills during pandemic, or to support church ministries, which might include feeding the hungry or helping to house the homeless.
Butler, of the Baptist Convention, said some churches in the state may have to fold right away as a result of the shutdown; others may stay barely afloat for a year or two but still not make it.
He hopes those churches that aren’t able to recover financially on their own will find a way to live on either by merging with another congregation or arranging a sale or gift of their properties to another faith-based organization.
“What we’re hoping is that we’ll be able to work with churches before they dissolve and close their doors,” Butler said. “What we would tell them is, we hope you can leave a legacy, so that the reason you were there in the first place — to reach that community with the Gospel — is still going on. Let somebody who can still be relevant to the community get started and use those assets.
“Let’s find a way that you can still be the body of Christ in that community 20 or 30 years from now.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 6:34 PM with the headline "This pandemic will be fatal for some faith institutions, too. Giving is way down.."
