How Best to Pay for Your House of Worship
For anyone who spends time pondering the cost of keeping the lights on and the staff paid at their houses of worship, the Mormon tithing slip has a sort of utilitarian beauty.
Worshipers pick one up at their local chapel, fill it out and hand over their money to a lay leader (having annotated the amounts paid by check, currency or coins, per the instructions on the slip). No annual bill, no passing of the plate. Keep the canary-colored carbon copy for your records.
The fact that the slip looks a bit like something your dry cleaner might give you when you drop off your clothes is part of its appeal. After all, worship is a regular part of many people’s lives. We need to pay for it somehow.
But the how in this equation is something that has changed over time for many religions in the United States, from selling pews to the wealthy 100 years ago to electronically pulling money from people’s bank accounts more recently.
So as we approach a busy season for giving among believers, from the annual dues that Jews hand over each summer to the pledges that Episcopalians often make in the fall, this is a good time to ask whether we’ve settled on a form of collection that is both efficient and meaningful.
Whatever you may feel about the relative worth of tithing slips, the membership model or annual pledges, it’s clear that most religious institutions are at least a bit better at collecting money than they used to be.