The $4000 Effect
Photo by Erin Raffety
Shared with permission by Rev. Dr. Erin Raffety. Visit her Substack and the original article!
Here’s something I wrote about research with churches, though I think the insights could likely apply to other organizations, like nonprofits and corporations, too.
A few years ago, we did several years of research with a diverse cohort of thriving congregations across the country. We didn’t set out to understand how congregations could thrive amidst a global pandemic, but those were the cards we, and everyone else, were dealt. From 2020-2022, our team of researchers from Princeton Seminary attended worship services, Bible studies, and session meetings online, as well as did interviews and focus groups with pastors and congregants. Fortunately our guiding question made all the more sense in a time of great uncertainty: we were asking not just how congregations thrive, but how it is they continue to do so?
No congregation felt at their best in this time of deep anxiety, so our research allowed us to provide the affirmation they so badly needed: we reflected back where we saw God working in their past and present, we engaged their imagination in who they were uniquely called to be, and we resisted the simple, yet false impression that thriving meant money and members pouring in. We knew this, not only because established research teaches us that congregations of any size can thrive, but that it happens not just through financial stability but through things like dynamic preaching, shared leadership, creative worship, and even, healthy conflict, just to name a few.
We began to see the adaptability of this work as they were pressed in the pandemic: Westminster Presbyterian Church in Trenton, New Jersey found ways to keep feeding those who were hungry and keep people safe; Urban Village Church in Chicago, Illinois found ways to adapt their neighborhood community to shelter vulnerable people, including trans and disabled folks, online; and Bethel Presbyterian and Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York was one of several churches whose online worship testified to the multilingual, transformative work of the Holy Spirit.
After seeing these churches in action, we coached them to consider how a small-scale project could contribute to their continual thriving and their efforts did not disappoint: two immigrant churches decided to give their money to the youth in order to empower them but also heal intergenerational divides; several urban and suburban churches doubled down on arts initiatives that fostered the expression and engagement of children and young people; and throughout each project, justice-making reverberated as the heartbeat of the post-Covid church.
There were so many things we learned in this process of research and listening, including that thriving looks different amongst immigrant and Black churches for whom their very survival is part of God’s mission. Thriving can sometimes be mistaken by others and even by Black and immigrant churches themselves, for (mere) surviving, so sharing and amplifying these particular stories is vital. Further, we learned that while post-Covid research has focused on the great pastoral exodus and the need for clergy support, congregations need affirmation, too! We can imagine, for instance, post-Covid storytelling community exercises where congregations can reflect accurately on losses but also gains. By telling these stories of how we came through the pandemic with one another, we can give that much-needed affirmation that God is still with us and working in us!
Finally, some might say we contaminated the “experiment” by giving these congregations $4000 to complete their projects, but that was actually always our plan. In fact, $4000 wasn’t an arbitrary, but a carefully calculated number. In a few previous grants carried out by Princeton Seminary, grants of $10,000 and even $15,000 were given to churches to stimulate congregational projects. Yet, our colleagues found that those numbers were actually intimidating to congregations: they felt reticent to spend so much on themselves, their communities, let alone on things they hadn’t done before and didn’t know would work.
Yet, $4000 didn’t leave any of our congregations shaking in their boots. A few even said they felt that the pressure was off, because it was enough money to do something meaningful but so little that if it didn’t totally work, they wouldn’t feel irresponsible. Of course, it also wasn’t their money. But when we did the math, $4000 constituted an average of 0.5-4% of their operating budgets, and if you take the average income of churches using the largest survey in the U.S. conducted in 2020, average church income comes in at about $120,000. So that means if churches took about 3% of their operating budgets and put it toward research and design year after year, they might have a meaningful instrument toward trying out innovation experiments.
Now, as we said at the outset of this article, money isn’t everything, of course, when it comes to congregational thriving and innovation. But in 2023, we did another phase of our research with local congregations on a more compressed timeline, so we gave them $2000, and there just wasn’t that same level of risk in the projects churches tried. It could have been the compressed timeline of the research and coaching, of course, but it also could have been that there just wasn’t quite enough skin in the game. Interestingly, several of the local churches had trouble deciding on one project, some carving up the $2000 in a few cases into scattered, less impactful efforts, or reverting to other more entrenched initiatives—let’s relaunch VBS, for instance.
Nothing against VBS or any of these churches, of course, but it seems that thriving churches continue to thrive because of the way they can imagine and yet also, reimagine their mission in the world by trying new, adjacent things, that become part of their unfolding work: because they try things, they sometimes fail, but they often succeed, and they always learn, and that learning makes them faithful. So could a yearly budget line item for research and design, just $4000, actually be the key to your church’s future thriving?
I am humbled by the testimonies of Mar Thoma Church of Greater Seattle (MTCG) and Bethel Presbyterian and Reformed Church (BPRC), two immigrant churches who began their discernment work knowing that they wanted to strengthen the relationship of their youth to the church. But in the process of coaching, they also realized that what it would be mean to be faithful with much would be to be faithful with little, and both teams of adults decided to entrust the youth leaders with the full amount of the money. Six months later when we interviewed them to learn how they were doing, both churches insisted on youth representatives being on the call and giving them the first opportunity to speak to what they learned. MGTC youth said that they now “have a position to voice the concerns of what the other youths want.” And a youth leader at BPRC commented,
For awhile there it felt like we didn’t understand some of the reasons why our ideas were being shut down or anything. We just thought that as kids we don’t necessarily understand things all the way. But to really be able to understand [the first generation], to be able to truly connect with them, was very important for us ... there is definitely something that is very noticeable now that [the older congregants] feel like they can reach out to a lot of the young adults.[1]
These testimonies from youth show that far from deepening a rift between the first and the second generations in immigrant communities, youth used this money thoughtfully and faithfully and it became an instrument to foster connection and healing across the church. Of course, not all research and design money will be or should be given to young people, but the testimonies of these immigrant congregations show the surprising good and impact of risk-taking with just a small amount.
We are reminded of the parable of the mustard seed and not just the difference a small investment can make, but our trust in God and one another to let God do these big things with small faith. We’re also reminded that the story we tell of churches in the pandemic needs to be more accurate: from our online vantage point, we saw churches reinventing ministry, meeting together in prayer more frequently than they ever did, offering multiple ways to worship when one way didn’t work for everyone, and reconnecting with leaders and members who had moved away. It simply wasn’t all loss; so much of it was actually gain.[2] Not discounting the losses of life and connection, the answer to the question of whether churches can continue to thrive amidst a global pandemic is actually a resounding yes.
But in order to continue to thrive, we know even more fully now that we cannot play small with all that God has given us. How will your church truly trust God with your uncertain future? How will your church choose to invest in not what is known but what is possible? How will your church choose thriving even when you know not what it is or where it will lead?
[1] For more on these intergenerational relationships in ethnic churches as related to the research, see Derek Wu and Erin Raffety, “‘Give the Grant Money to the Youth: From Youth Departure to Belonging in the Ethnic Church,” Ecclesial Practices 10 (2023), 182-201. Doi: 10.1163/22144471-bja10052.
[2] For more on this perspective as related to the research, see Erin Raffety, “Cultivating Digital Reflexivity as Resistance to Digital Dualism: Doing Digital Ethnography with U.S. Congregations during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Ecclesial Practices 10 (2023), 18-35. doi: 10.1163/22144417-bja10045.