Actscelerate.com

FINAL DOC - Top 100 Tithe/Attendance Synthesis (post 3 of 3)

Acts-dicted Posts: 7821 **11/5/07 8:02 am**

PDF Download of Top 100 Church Attendance & Tithing Comparison

The above PDF is a document that contains a synthesis of attendance and tithe stats (a 6 month average) on the Top 100 largest churches. From this document, you can get an idea of how heavily dependent corporate bureaucracy of the COG is on such a small number of churches and see the per capita break down of tithing of individual churches. The image (click to enlarge) below is a jpeg of the first page only of the entire 4 page pdf document.

Did You Notice?

Acts-dicted Posts: 8625 **11/5/07 5:59 pm**

Watch the per capita figures as you go down the list.

There is an orderly trend downward--maybe a buck or two or four. But when you get near the bottom of the second page, there is the huge discrepancy. It goes from approx. $70...to $57--a $13 dollar drop just like that.

And then, if you go on down, you see an even MORE PRECIPITOUS drop: From $41...to $25 per capita.

Now, it is entirely possible that this is all due to the church having a poorer socio-economic class in attendance. My thinking, however, is that it is just likely that someone figured out that, "Hey, if we don't mark it as tithes, we don't have to pay the tithe of a tithe on it!" That is, there's more giving coming in, but it's not being classified as tithes.

Nothing wrong with that. Had men at one church who would not longer formally tithe, because when the church was struggling mightily, the State Office would not allow the church to retain enough money to pay the pastor's salary! It cost the Church of God, likely, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS over that pastor's long tenure.

Play hardball--and the people play hardball right back.

Over 70%

Acts-celerater Posts: 534 **11/8/07 3:33 pm**

of my church gives their tithe in the General Fund category.

We do not promote this from the pulpit or even in private conversations.

We don't keep it a secret that the "Tithe" fund is subject to a 15% hit & so we have a big majority who give their tithe in the "general fund" category. On each of our offering envelopes we explain in percentages where all the monies go in terms of their use each month. With the economy bouncing around like it is we need the ministry dollars to sustain our budget.
_________________
Smytmark@gmail.com

Belt Jerker Posts: 511 **11/9/07 1:31 pm**

Travis,

Our attendance is 506 for this time. There is several more on here with either no finance record or no attendance because they did not make the top 100. Do you have these numbers?

If you dont people can help you with the state papers. Post the numbers of the churches who do not have top 100 in both.

This will give you an even better picture I think.

C. Chris Moody