July 5, 2011 | The recession offers an opportunity for Christian leaders to break their silence on talk about money, said William G. Enright, executive director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Evidence suggests that American congregations can be divided roughly into three categories, Enright said: one-third who haven’t been affected much by the recession, one-third whose budgets have remained the same, and one-third whose budgets have shrunk.

But even those who are faring well should be careful, as trends show that religious giving has declined as a percentage of overall philanthropy and that “devout donors” may be motivated by faith but don’t necessarily give to religious institutions.

The lesson, Enright said, is to tell a story of transformation rather than just ask for money. “Increasingly, people want to know, ‘What difference does my gift make?’” he said.

Enright, who is the former senior pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Ind., spoke with Faith & Leadership about the effects of the recession on religious philanthropy.

Q: Three and a half years after the beginning of the recession, how are congregations doing?

We do a lot of work with congregations, and we’ve looked at a lot of studies, and it seems to me that we find that about maybe a third, a little over a third of the congregations say that they really haven’t been affected by this. About a third will say their budgets stayed the same, and another third or so will say that their budgets are declining.

It’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it generally fits, I think.

It has certainly been a belt-tightening time for congregations. We did some work on what we called tipping points -- three tipping points as predictors of the degree to which the recession might be affecting you.

One was if a congregation had an endowment, the degree to which they are reliant on the endowment for their annual operational budget.

The second predictor, we felt, was debt repayment: if the church had had a mortgage or if the congregation had debt repayments. We talked to a lot of people, and we said that if your debt repayment exceeds 4 to 5 percent of your operational budget, there’s a good probability that you have been adversely affected by the recession.

Then, of course, there’s what we just called the local demographic issues. Different parts of the country have been much more seriously affected than others, and that can even get down into local communities, depending on the congregants within a congregation.

Q: What’s at stake in these conversations about money? What are those religious and ethical downstream effects beyond just the survivability of the institution?

In the Christian tradition, Jesus had as much to say about money, even more, than any other subject -- that and the kingdom of God. He talked about money. He raised provocative questions about how do we use the possessions that we have.

What we observe is that in too many congregations those issues have not been raised. There has not been talk about what it means to be a good steward.

What does it mean to manage with integrity the resources that you have? Churches have not really been addressing that issue. I think the silence of the churches on what I would call “money talk” has had profound cultural effects.

The question that I’ve often asked myself is, “What if, for the last generation or two, the church had been more faithful talking about what does it mean to be a faithful steward of your resources? Would that have altered at all the economic predicament in which we now find ourselves?”

Sitting behind that there are ethical issues and concerns. What does it mean to be generous? How does one nurture this virtue of generosity, which is certainly pivotal to living a faithful life?

Money is like a vital sign of the much deeper issue of the health and vitality of a faith community. There’s certainly, sadly, the history that we Christians can be victimized by greed like anyone else. Or you’re just trying to keep an institution alive.

But really, how are you using your funds for the greater good, for reaching out and making a difference in the community?

Q: Are these indicators about long-term sustainability, or are they specific to the recession?

We think those are long-term sustainability questions. In fact, one of the things that we say is we don’t think that the recession told congregations anything particularly new. It just put on the front page what congregations were wanting to ignore: we are in a serious time of economic challenge.

When we look at the data we have from our own center, if you look at about 1970 to about 1995 and if you look at all charitable giving, giving to religion was roughly half of all charitable dollars. Since 1995, what was one-half has now become one-third.