From the Desk of Pastor Marsha, January 30th, 2025

What’s Happening 1.30.2025

The last couple of Sundays we have had two conversations about our 2025 budget, the new sound system, the proceeds of the sale of the rental property, upcoming building maintenance expenses for all three properties, and a renewed conversation about the possibility of selling the other two rental properties.

One point I made during these conversations was that the people who are currently attending this church are the ones with the resources to support this congregation. Those resources include both what we individually have and give, and also the collective power to decide how best to manage our shared resources. It is up to our current membership to decide whether to keep or sell our properties, how to navigate the maintenance of our building, and whether or not to kick some of those maintenance “cans” down the road to the next generation.

I thought it would be helpful if I did some research to back up and explain that point more clearly. In looking at our 186 giving units, 82% of them are 6o years and older. Specifically, 60-69 are 19%, 70-79 years are 31%, and 80-89 years are 33% of our givers.
In addition, those givers cover 92% of our income through offerings, with the dollar amount of giving increasing by age.

The problem is, in today’s economics, people under 60 may or may not have good-paying jobs. Even if they do make good salaries, they also have significantly more school loan debt, their housing costs take up a much higher percentage of their income than for previous generations, whether through rent or mortgages, and many have children to support. All of these factors affect what they can contribute to congregational ministry. Those factors also affect the kind of wealth they will have in retirement, which will, in turn, affect what they will be able to contribute in their retirement years. All of this is to say, that those who are over 60 in this congregation will be the last, at least in the foreseeable future, who have the kind of resources that will support ministry as it is being done today.

In addition, church attendance has been in decline since the 1960’s. For a couple of decades in the 1990s-2010s, the Evangelical denominations saw growth, but now, even they are losing members at a steady pace. Overall, 20-30% of Americans attend worship regularly, and the definition of “regularly” has changed from weekly to once or twice a month.

That is not to say individual congregations haven’t grown. Zion topped over 2000 in 2016, but that dropped to 1151 in 2017, meaning a significant "role cleaning" took place that year. We were steady at that number until the Covid years when attendance and membership took a hard hit for several reasons, as we all know. This isn’t to say we can’t grow in attendance and membership in the coming years. However, it is just going to be harder than it has ever been since fewer and fewer people are interested in participating in a faith community. I believe any congregation can continue to have a thriving, faithful, mission-focused ministry, but it just won’t look like it did a generation or two ago.

Perhaps more importantly though, is that we can’t count on the next generations supporting the church the way past generations have. We have to think about what we are going to leave to the next generation of Zion congregational leadership and members. Perhaps we could leave them a debt-free budget.  Perhaps we could leave them a building that has been well-maintained to prevent major mechanical failures down the road. Perhaps we chould leave them buildings that won't continue to need thousands of dollars of repairs each year. Could we leave them in a place where all their dollars are going towards ministry? All of these are questions we need to consider, if not this Sunday, at least in the months to come.

Think of what we do today as not only investing shortly but as setting up the next generation for mission with eternal purpose.                    ~ Pastor Marsha