Communions like the OPC (and probably the RPCNA) suffer from statistic-envy. We see other denominations that are bigger, congregations larger, and buildings newer (and owned). Turns out that small churches are par for the course among Protestants in the U.S. In a post about how much congregations would have to spend if Congress cut significantly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also came statistics about the average size of congregations in the United States.
177,000 congregations (59%) have between 7 and 99 worshipers weekly.
105,000 congregations (35%) have between 100 and 499 worshipers weekly.
12,000 congregations (4%) have between 500 and 999 worshipers weekly.
6,000 congregations (2%) have between 1,000 and 1,999 worshipers weekly.
1,210 congregations (.4%) have more than 2,000 worshipers weekly (megachurch).
As for finances, the average congregation’s budget is $55,000.
If SNAP were reduced from $133.5 billion to $36 billion:
asking a 75-member church to absorb $50,000 in increased ministry costs works out to about $666 per person each year, a 44 percent surcharge on the average worshiper’s contribution.
To make matters worse, according to one estimate, the average church budget is $55,000. In other words, saddling the average congregation with the costs of not renewing SNAP would mean almost doubling its entire annual budget. And of course, as Sullivan points out, SNAP is just one program among many that conservatives would like to slash. You don’t need a calculator to figure out that it’s more than the churches could keep up with.
I suspect that giving in some normal congregations is better than others. So maybe it would not be that hard a hit (assuming for the moment that the church in general has a responsibility to provide physical resources for the public in general). But why should Christians have all the good charity?
Old Life 
The biggest problem with SNAP (per my convenience store clerk daughter) is the lack of restrictions on what you can use it for. It sounds like it’s basically a government subsidy for the candy and junk food industries.
The really interesting question is, how many of our clergy are on SNAP?
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Amy Sullivan’s argument is built on a false, even slanderous partisan premise. The problem with these Gov’t giveaways isn’t giving food to the hungry. Nobody’s against that, not even Republicans. The problem is the other stuff, where food money turns into booze, drugs and lottery tickets.
Even a Pat Buchanan paleo-conservative should be smart enough to see that.
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As a former food stamp worker in the welfare system, I have to say that the trouble with comments such as the main posting is that they assume that the “need” for SNAP is a stable given. It’s not. People respond to stimuli and incentives. when I first worked in the program, one household member quitting a job without cause made the whole household ineligible for food stamps. In the rural county where I lived and worked, we would have known if this had led to starvation. It didn’t. But when they repealed that rule, it did lead to a lot more food stamps being issued. This was bad for everybody–maybe worst of all for the recipient families.
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Let TKNY redeem all the hungry in NYC. That should save the gubment millions.
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http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130719/NEWS/307190039/Forum-to-rally-evangelicals-pastors?Frontpage
Forum to Rally Evangelicals, Pastors
Activist is Working to Mobilize Conservative Voters and ‘Re-establish a Christian Culture’
Political activist David Lane thinks too many of Iowa’s conservative evangelicals are sitting quietly in their pews instead of rallying behind Christian conservative candidates.
“Our country’s going to hell because pastors won’t lead,” he told The Des Moines Register in an interview. “The goal is to march an army.”
Lane, the charismatic founder of the American Renewal Project, has been orchestrating conclaves of conservative ministers in politically influential Iowa for six years now, mostly avoiding reporters and publicity to quietly work behind the scenes to mobilize evangelicals.
The 58-year-old Californian has gathered an audience of 800 Iowa evangelicals in downtown Des Moines for a two-day, all-expenses-paid forum, featuring two top-name GOP politicians — U.S. Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, both born-again Christians. Underwriters are covering the $250,000 expense for a free hotel overnight and three free meals for the pastors and their spouses, he said.
Although Lane won’t get up on stage, he intends to convey this message: There are 65 million to 80 million evangelical Christians in the nation, and half aren’t registered to vote. And of those who are registered, half don’t vote, he will tell the pastors.
“There’s going to be a major push in Iowa to get evangelicals registered and practicing in the civil government arena,” he said. “You’ll elect every senator, every congressman, every state representative, every governor, every mayor, every city council member — you’ll own the whole deal if our constituency will engage.”
And that includes the next president, Lane believes.
His event, called the Iowa Renewal Project, began Thursday evening with a reception, dinner and praise songs at the Marriott hotel. It wraps up this afternoon.
Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, will speak during breakfast today. Paul, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, is the guest speaker during lunch.
Lane said he isn’t pushing anyone in particular for the White House. “My mission is to change America. It’s not about a candidate,” he said. “I’m going to get out early. I’m going to set the table.”
A third of Iowans are evangelicals
Nonpartisan analysts said there’s some element of truth to Lane’s theory: If more conservative evangelicals participate, their power would be magnified.
But a deeper dive into the numbers shows evangelicals aren’t any less registered to vote than any other group, and it would be difficult to find enough conservative evangelicals to achieve a majority vote — in Iowa or in the nation.
Not every Iowan who is an evangelical is a social conservative. Some consider themselves moderates or liberals, the Register’s Iowa Poll has shown.
And that mix of evangelicals makes up a minority in the general Iowa adult population. Thirty-one percent of Iowa adults describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, while 63 percent said they’re not, a poll in early June found.
They’re a minority among Iowa’s most politically active, too. They make up the low 20 percent range of likely Democratic caucusgoers and the high 40 percent range of GOP likely caucusgoers, data from five earlier Iowa Polls have shown.
There’s no evidence that white evangelicals are underrepresented in the political process, said Gregory A. Smith, director of U.S. religion surveys for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
About 19 percent of U.S. adults are white evangelical Protestants, Pew surveys in 2012 show. Among that group, 8 in 10 are registered to vote, which is slightly higher than the public as a whole, Smith said.
Expert: We’ve seen similar push before
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said a mission like Lane’s is always easier said than done. “A whole lot easier,” he said.
“If I closed my eyes, I’d swear I was back in the 1980s listening to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson,” Sabato said. “We’ve seen this movie before, and we’ve heard the predictions for decades. This sounds no different than the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition.”
Robertson is credited with organizing the Christian Right into a potent force in Iowa. He made his mark by beating then-Vice President George H.W. Bush for second place in the 1988 caucuses.
Bush’s son, George W. Bush, who’s an evangelical Christian, won the 2000 Iowa caucuses with an economy-focused campaign. Eight years later, evangelicals rallied around former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to push another evangelical conservative into the Iowa caucuses winner’s circle. But presidential candidates who have focused their campaigns primarily on their identity as Christian conservatives have yet to survive the nomination gauntlet.
Lane, who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., remains confident, however.
“I’m not a preacher. I’m a political mechanic,” said Lane, the stealth force behind the 2010 campaign to oust three of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who authored the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state. “And the Lord has given me this weapon.”
That weapon, he said, is his “pastors policy briefings” model, meant to draw in ministers to find ways to combat abortion and same-sex marriage as well as government overreach and overspending.
Registration drive planned in churches
One of Lane’s plans is to urge the pastors to do voter registration drives in 1,000 Iowa churches on three Sundays in September. His “Stand-up Sundays” idea, borrowed from his friend Falwell, the late TV preacher, goes like this: Pastors ask their congregation members to stand up if they’re already registered. Volunteers will then hand out voter registration paperwork to the adults still seated.
“The unions and the homosexuals on the left side over there, they have all their people registered,” Lane said. “On this side, half are not registered. We have to change that.”
When it comes to voter registration in Iowa, which is very high, it’s doubtful Lane’s numbers apply, pollster J. Ann Selzer said.
Only 9 percent of Iowa adults are not registered to vote, according to a check of Secretary of State data on registered voters and the U.S. Census number of Iowa adults age 18 and over.
“It’s just not mathematically possible,” Selzer said, “for half of Iowa’s evangelical population to not be registered.”
But Lane, who is also targeting evangelicals in about a dozen other states, believes that it’s worth the effort to push for voter registration and other forms of political activism.
“My goal is restore to Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establish a Christian culture,” he said. “We’ve lost that. We’ve lost our heritage.”
Some churches shy away from politics
Longtime Iowa evangelical activist Steve Scheffler said some churches, such as Point of Grace in Waukee and First Federated Church in Des Moines, are politically motivated, but many pastors are extremely reluctant to pressure their congregations to get political.
“The people sitting in the pews, they’re good people, but they’re letting the left change our culture,” said Scheffler, of the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition. “They don’t see even their minor involvement as important.”
Iowans who go to one of the state’s biggest churches, Hope Lutheran Church in West Des Moines, will never hear a minister preaching politics, said Chief Ministry Officer Gus Gustafson.
“We’re a welcoming church. We try to stay away from anything that could be potentially divisive from a political or social issues perspective,” Gustafson said. “There are churches out there that will say, ‘This is a candidate you should vote for or this is a political issue you need to work on to be a good Christian.’ That’s not Hope. That’s not our DNA.”
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Wow, an evangelical “political mechanic” with a “weapon” — what could go wrong?
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What did they say about a sucker born every minute?
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I have a feeling “Chief Ministry Officer [?] Gus Gustafson” knows nothing about Two Kingdom theology, and Hope Lutheran shies away from divisive theology, too.
(Who names their kid Gus Gustafson? The same sort who name their kid Marty Martin, Peter P. Peterson, and Garrett Garrett, I suppose.)
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Or Chortles Weakly. My wife’s name is/was Giggles Hardley. She’s a big lib-hyphen woman so she goes by Giggles Hardley-Weakly now.
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Lutheran Church of Hope is an ELCA Lutheran megachurch in Des Moines. Pretty light theologically, but not overtly liberal. Church for the upwardly mobile who don’t want to ruffle too many feathers either way.
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Joel Osteen for Lutherans.
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Meaning Joel Osteen with an affinity for and high tolerance of pilsner and lager?
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Nice one Chortles! That Osteen would be a step in the right direction.
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Half a six pack every night and ol’ Joel would really be blinkin’ and smilin’… and still heresificatin’.
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If middle-class citizens weren’t forced to pay upwards of 40% of their income on various types of taxes then they’d have more money to give to their churches and to charities. The assumption that civil governments deal with poverty better than churches, private organizations, and families could in a freer society is a bad one.
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Lane, after a dozen years of tax work at a firm I found that people in the upper income brackets gave a pittance in charity, defeating the view that “if only we had more $$$ in our pockets we would give so much more back…”
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Kent,
So that automatically applies to the entire middle-class as well? It seems non sequitur to me. Nevertheless, truly free markets, putting the tax question aside, would bring greater prosperity to the greatest number of people, minimizing poverty. Governments only introduce bureaucracy, waste, and inefficiency into the “welfare” process.
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Lane, giving is a matter of the heart.
Maybe I will see truly free markets in heaven, they will never exist on earth…
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Kent, giving IS a matter of the heart, and something not to be forced. Having our government play Robin Hood by stealing from one group and giving it to another is evil. God calls that stealing. Notice that God never called for Israel’s government to give to the poor. God left that up to the volition of the people. Once the coercive force of government gets involved, it quickly makes a mess of everything.
imho
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I’ve audited church books and the giving of people without great means puts people to shame who make multiples of what they do.
A government safety net is provided for those who need it.
None of us are in a position where we are guaranteed to be exempt from relying gov’t assistance.
drive safely every day…
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