In an effort to maximize the work of the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission boards and other ministry groups by boosting giving through the Cooperative Program, Ken Hemphill has developed a new resource called “Making Change: A Transformational Guide to Christian Money Management.”
“There are some words that we remember forever. I suppose most of you can still remember when you heard the words, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ Well, the problem is multiple,” Hemphill, national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, said of money management during an Executive Committee meeting Feb. 21 in Nashville.
Hemphill identified the financial problem by noting that Americans spend $1.20 for every dollar they earn. In 2001, banks sent out 5 billion credit card offers, and Americans now have $600 billion in credit card debt. Many families have as many as three or four credit cards, using one credit card simply to pay the interest on the other credit cards so that the average debt is nearly $83,000 per family, he said.
About 14 percent of a family’s expendable income is used to pay the interest on their credit card debt, he added, and Americans are now saving at a level of about 2.2 percent.
“Would it surprise you then that I would tell you that giving through the local church now stands at an all-time historic low of 2.5 percent?” Hemphill said. “That has slipped about 2 percent in the last three years, so that’s pretty dramatic. If you go back to 1933, it’s been at 3.2 percent. This is the lowest level we’ve tracked.”
Furthermore, just 25 percent of church members are systematic givers, meaning they give on a regular basis and only at a rate of 2.5 percent of income.
“Now, the incredible good news of this is that if we increase 2.5 to 5 and increase 25 percent to 50, every church sitting in here would quadruple their budget,” he said. “Now you imagine what that would be at the end of the spigot in terms of what would happen for our mission agencies, our states. It’s phenomenal if you think about what God could do and wants to do.”
Of the total inflation-adjusted dollars given through the local church between 1968 and 2001, 93 percent was directed toward congregational finances, Hemphill said. The reason for that was not so much the selfishness of the local church but the requirement of more funds just to keep the doors open.
“So it won’t surprise you that churches’ Cooperative Program giving has declined from 10.5 percent in the 1980s to 6.8 percent today,” Hemphill said.
To address the growing problem, Hemphill has written “Making Change” as a comprehensive plan designed to address both personal and corporate financial matters from a kingdom perspective. The book will be available in June, and a 40-day study is due out next year.
“Making Change” is a scriptural study on personal finance, he said, and it addresses such issues as how to make money, how to spend money, how to manage debt, how to save and invest, and how to give money away.
Hemphill identifies a biblical model of cooperative giving, which is based on the offering for the saints in Jerusalem. He said it was a task too large for a single church, it required equal sacrifice but gave equal joy, it required and built unity, it was administered with integrity and efficiency, it met the needs of the saints and glorified the Father, and it manifested a kingdom focus.
“Our conviction is that the Cooperative Program is not a budget to fund a denomination,” he said. “It’s a local church’s budget to assist in a partnership for the accomplishment of the Acts 1:8 commitment to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”