By Pastor James Ross, First Baptist Church of Niceville
It seems as if a popular narrative in national media outlets is that people do not see the value of the Church in our society. In an article featured in the Washington Post, writer Dylan Matthews references common critiques about how churches do not pay property taxes on their buildings, do not contribute to civic enhancement and create division as they propagate their beliefs. It is interesting how often and loudly these messages are communicated and yet the Church continues to have an incredible influence in our culture. If you take a look at the factual data regarding the presence of the Church in our country, you will find out that the majority of Americans see the value of having Churches in their community and that those Churches are making quite an impact on their communities.
In 2016, Brian Grim of Georgetown University published The Socio-Economic Contribution of Religion to American Society; An Emperical Anaylsis and reported that despite declining religious affiliation in the U.S. population and economic decline, religious organizations tripled the amount of money they spent per year on social programs, increasing from $3 billion in 2000 to $9 billion in 2015. In his research, Ram Cnaan of the University of Pennsylvania concluded that it would cost the city of Philadelphia $250,000,000 year to replace the services provided by the churches in their city to their community. According to Grim, if Churches and religious organizations were to cease to exist tomorrow the economic impact would be worse than the closing of the country’s top ten tech companies combined, including the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google.
There are 384k congregations in the U.S. and 135K of those congregations provide parenting assistance or education programs, 132K offer some type of marriage counseling, 130K directly support alcohol/drug recovery programs, 68K are a part of a feeding program, 18K are involved in disaster relief, and the list of community services goes on. In our small town of Niceville, local Churches give over $400k per year to needy families to help with lodging and utilities, there are tutoring programs for many of our schools, partnerships to strengthen government programs, and many of the non-profits in our community receive funding, volunteers, and support from the local churches. In addition to these items, our churches provide countless opportunities for children, students and families to be developed spiritually and emotionally.
The Church has her issues and needs to continue to evaluate how it can better demonstrate the love of Christ and on guard towards humanly desires distracting it from that goal. As we continually work on the ways that we can improve, let us also rejoice that even with our imperfections, we can see the fruit of our faith and let us be encouraged that the Church is indeed a vital aspect of this country. When government, business and the church work together for the common good, respecting each’s role in society, we truly thrive as a community.
