September 24, 2010
Congregations Reeling From Decline in Donations By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Late this summer, as the country’s economic slump entered its third year, Bishop Robert E. Girtman met with the board of his church to discuss finances. The weekly collection of tithes and offerings, routinely $4,000 before the recession, had sunk to barely $3,000. Some members, newly jobless and ashamed, turned in tithing envelopes that were empty. Others skipped church a few Sundays a month to avoid the awkwardness of having nothing to give. So the question for Bishop Girtman and his board at the Church of the Living God in Port Chester, N.Y., a suburb of New York City, was how to respond. They could run fund-raising events. They could hire fewer gospel musicians. Or, as one board member told the pastor, they could just face facts and stop asking for donations for a year, praying that by then the economy might be healthy. “I was shocked off my chair,” Bishop Girtman, 67, recalled in a phone interview this week. “Because how, then, would the church live? You have the lights and the heat and all the other bills that go on.” Beyond the momentary jolt lay a broader realization, no less distressing. “I’ve seen recessions in the past when people didn’t give
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2010 Media Report Villanova School of Business