Charitable Giving Churches have historically been centers for charitable giving, organizing efforts to support local and international causes. This tradition of philanthropy has had a lasting impact on social welfare and humanitarian efforts. Religious congregations collect and distribute funds to support various initiatives, including poverty alleviation, education, health care, and disaster relief.
Churches collectively have done good for society for most of America’ s existence as a nation. While these efforts by congregations seem to have waned over the past few decades, churches have nonetheless been a positive influence for most of the nation’ s history.
We are now at the crossroads of several trends that will determine whether the church is ready to respond. Unfortunately, most of these trends are not good ones.
Church attendance continues to decline. Those who have no particular belief system, the Nones, now account for about one-third of our population, though the percentage seems to have stabilized. 2 Thousands of churches close every year in America. By our estimates, the numbers range from 7,000 to 10,000 closings annually.
The number of converts to Christianity has declined precipitously over the past fifty years. That’ s not a surprise since only about 5 percent of churches today are intentional about reaching people with the gospel of
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