Ever been priced out of church? We have, and we’re not even poor.
My husband and I used to live in the DC suburbs with four teenaged boys. In that affluent region, we both worked in ministry occupations, so although margin was pretty thin in our monthly budget, our income was sufficient for our needs. We lived modestly and had no complaints.
To our surprise, it was in church where we most felt the rub in our family finances.
An Awkward Search
During a search for a stable youth group relationship for our kids, we first tried a church respected for its teen Bible teaching, small groups, compassionate outreach, and fun activities. After a few weeks, we realized that we were way out of our cash-flow league.
Weekly small groups, we learned, included dinner for a requested donation of $5. We did the math. $5 per week, per child, totaling $80-100 per month for our family, would require an adjustment in our budgeting. What would we trim?
Two monthly events–an outreach day and a Friday fun night–sounded delightful. Ice-skating with a bunch of new friends? Why, yes!–except that each event at $25 per child added up to $200 for just our first month. Ouch. Outreach and a corn maze next month: another $200.
A spiritual retreat at $260. Beautiful idea. Which of our kids should stay home?
Summer church camp at $500-plus. No can do.
After fundraising, the missions trip to a storm-battered US city “would only be” $675—or $2,700 for four, payable in installments.
Two other churches shared similar descriptions of activities and costs. To their credit, all three mentioned caveats for families unable to pay. We appreciated that gesture.
But who wants to be that family, especially when there could be others with less, in both financial resources and spiritual climate at home? What parent wants to be saying no all the time to good activities? Wouldn’t sporadic participation have kept our kids on the awkward fringes of the group, where no teen ever wants to be?
Thankfully, our children did eventually find a sense of church home elsewhere, but the shame-laden search for a church we could afford! changed our thinking.
What We Learned
We started asking three new questions in our areas of ministry influence.
First, whom does a particular ministry effort or action aim to reach, intentionally or unintentionally? There’s nothing wrong with tying costs to activities that local people can afford. The question is which local people.
Maybe the churches we visited were intentionally embracing a silk strategy to reach affluent DC-area families with the gospel. Maybe they set their costs and fees according to the turn-key expectations of their members and neighbors. I suppose it’s even remotely possible that the pricing reflected a deliberate class-conscious strategy to keep the low-rent riff-raff out, though I seriously doubt that such favoritism was the case.
Our impression, though, was that these churches’ choices were far less deliberate. They probably simply offered what came naturally to them without second thought, which is what most of us do. I know enough of their ethos to suspect that just a little circumspection might have helped them to align their efforts more appropriately with their true missional commitments.
Second, what practical changes could make this effort more genuinely inclusive? The churches we visited advertised a broad welcome to everyone, perhaps never realizing the need to reconsider usual practices from the perspective of others—especially if they wanted to be accessible to the poor.
Though it takes extra effort, creativity, and awareness of community resources, a youth ministry can be more inclusive by aiming for cheap, relationship-rich fun. Whenever my husband and I organized youth events in the years that followed, we found that some group activities were within reach for almost all teens:
- Hikes around the lake
- $1 ice-cream or hot chocolate at McD’s
- Moonlight snack-swaps at picnics by the river
- Board games during cold months at the church or in someone’s home
- Meet-ups or music in a park
- Free festivals, markets, or concerts
I understand that not every activity can be free or nearly free, and I also get it that an extra factor for our family was the fact that we had four teens in our nest at once. Still, a lower price of admission allows for a wider gate of welcome.
Third, does everyone have access to the most impactful discipleship opportunities? Or, asked another way, are some people missing out because of money, and what can we do about it?
During our years at a church of homeless and financially struggling people, there were some events—like our own denomination’s outstanding youth camps and teen conventions—that we simply (and sadly) did not promote if we could not raise the money through donations or fundraising events. Neither could we encourage spiritual retreats, ministerial training courses, conferences, or scholarship funds to Christian colleges, all of which required fundraising above and beyond our usual fundraising. Though we raised plenty of money and cultivated stalwart partners, the reality was that these opportunities were last in a long line of needs. Our folks lacked the personal social capital to do much fundraising on their own, and church leaders were spread thin.
Is it possible that the rich get better access to discipleship? I never thought I’d say so, but that experience showed me that they probably do.
Is it possible that the rich get better access to discipleship?
If I were to seek out the information or conduct a study (and maybe I should), what would my own denomination’s numbers reveal? What percentage of churches sending kids to youth camps and teen conferences could be considered low-income? How many send youth to denominational universities? How do churches explain their decisions to pursue these discipleship opportunities (or not)? My hunch is that such decisions quite often come down to the ability of families and churches to pay for them.
So What?
What if we were to discover an unjust reality? What if we learned that our most attractional and impactful discipleship efforts were engaging only those with the means to pay? If we did, what could we do about it?
Many churches actively give and serve strategically to respond to the material and social needs within their communities. Occasionally, churches partner with one another in this effort. Is the same true of discipleship?
Just as they offer material support through toy and clothing drives, could churches support quality discipleship beyond their own congregations? Could they, for example, build into their own fundraising goals some support for teens at other churches? Could congregations contribute to a need-based scholarship fund for denominational universities? Could they adopt a church for youth programming, or share discipleship materials when they no longer need them?
Such questions abound, if only we think to ask them. And when the whole body works together, I’m sure answers do, too.
In Conclusion
If your church wants to welcome people regardless of their income (of course it does!), then recognize that even voluntary costs filter participation. Some people–like my family years ago and many of your neighbors today–simply will not be able to keep up, and you’ll never even know you lost them. And when we’re talking about discovering Jesus and growing in faith as members of his body, well, letting any kid get priced out of that experience just feels wrong.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.” Matt. 19:14
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An earlier version of this post was first published in 2016 on the Leadership Network (formerly ChurchCentral) blog.
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