Church of­fer­ings are on the de­cline, dri­ven by a mul­ti­tude of fac­tors, in­clud­ing shrink­ing con­gre­ga­tion sizes, so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, and the long-term ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Though not vis­i­ble on the al­tar, the ef­fects are far-reach­ing for church­es across the coun­try.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in­ter­viewed six Chris­t­ian lead­ers from the An­gli­can, Pen­te­costal, Catholic, Methodist and Pres­by­ter­ian church­es, as well as the head of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO).

All but one said their church of­fer­ings are con­cern­ing­ly down.

On the con­trary, Mod­er­a­tor of the Pres­by­ter­ian Syn­od, Rev­erend Daniel Chance, said his church saw a sur­plus last year, dri­ven by pledges and of­fer­ings, and a re­turn to pre-pan­dem­ic crowds. The el­der­ly, he ad­mit­ted, are al­so com­mit­ted to the fi­nan­cial wel­fare of the church. How­ev­er, it is an anom­aly.

Get­ting re­li­gious lead­ers to talk about the fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances of their or­gan­i­sa­tions is not for the faint-heart­ed. Church and mon­ey have not al­ways made for a good head­line. More than that, how­ev­er, there is some­thing of a tricky para­dox to ma­noeu­vre: preach­ing against the pros­per­i­ty gospel while bal­anc­ing the fi­nan­cial needs of a church.

Rev­erend Don Hamil­ton, who serves as Bish­op for the Pen­te­costal As­sem­blies of the West In­dies, Trinidad and To­ba­go, said the fi­nan­cial as­pect of the church is im­por­tant to speak about.

He even ref­er­enced scrip­ture, say­ing, “I don’t know that faith is ex­clu­sive from works. If I go to the Bible, in the book of James, it says faith is demon­strat­ed by works. Je­sus teach­es that any­one in­tend­ing to build a tow­er must first ‘sit down and es­ti­mate the cost’ to en­sure they have enough mon­ey to fin­ish it.”

Hamil­ton and his col­leagues have been forced to do the maths to keep their church­es run­ning. He added, “Many church­es have not­ed a marked de­crease in giv­ing in the post-pan­dem­ic era.”

When asked if he would at­tribute this to the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic or so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors, he stat­ed, “I think they are in­ter­twined, be­cause pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, there was cer­tain­ly some lev­el of so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges peo­ple were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, and the pan­dem­ic ex­ac­er­bat­ed that.”

Mon­sign­or Mar­tin Sir­ju, who serves as Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Ro­man Catholic Church, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. The Catholic Church, he said, is still go­ing through a pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery pe­ri­od and, when that is tied to the ris­ing cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion, of­fer­ings are af­fect­ed.

Sir­ju, how­ev­er, saw it com­ing. “It has not hit us sud­den­ly. We saw this com­ing. All parish­es have ex­pe­ri­enced a drop in in­come, and ac­cord­ing to our sys­tem, every parish is sup­posed to put a cer­tain per­cent­age of mon­ey in­to a com­mon fund that goes to­wards main­tain­ing the mis­sion of the church through the Chancery and its re­lat­ed de­part­ments. That is where the chal­lenge is, be­cause that mon­ey is af­fect­ed di­rect­ly by what parish­ioners put in the col­lec­tion, and since there has been a drop in col­lec­tion over the last two to three years, it means it is be­com­ing more of a chal­lenge to ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry out the mis­sion of the church.”

The Methodists have es­tab­lished a spe­cial na­tion­al col­lec­tion called a Care Fund Of­fer­ing every month that goes di­rect­ly to­wards the mis­sion of the church in help­ing the less for­tu­nate. It en­sures the church con­tin­ues its most im­por­tant work, no mat­ter the fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances.

Fund­ing that mis­sion is on­ly part of the sto­ry. Rev­erend Adolf Davis, Su­per­in­ten­dent Min­is­ter of the Methodist Church in To­ba­go, said church col­lec­tions have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the life of a church. He said some­thing like in­sur­ance for a church build­ing could be six fig­ures. Of­fer­ings al­so con­tribute to in­fra­struc­tur­al up­grades and re­fur­bish­ments, and Davis not­ed that while it has be­come com­mon­place in a post-pan­dem­ic world for church­es to host ser­vices on­line, in­vest­ment in the equip­ment to make that pos­si­ble is not cheap.

He ad­mit­ted that even the Methodist Church has not seen the same lev­el of con­gre­ga­tion num­bers com­pared to be­fore COVID.

“Re­cov­ery from the pan­dem­ic is tak­ing some time, and some con­gre­ga­tions are more af­fect­ed than oth­ers,” he shared.

An­oth­er of those af­fect­ed con­gre­ga­tions is the An­gli­can Church. Bish­op Claude Berkley al­so said his church has seen a “down­ward swing” in of­fer­ings since church­es ful­ly re­opened in 2023 af­ter COVID. He said the church is yet to come up with a so­lu­tion to fill the gap left by a lack of stew­ard­ship.

It is some­thing Hamil­ton has been pon­der­ing as well. He stat­ed, “The church should now be­gin to think of mul­ti­ple streams of in­come and not de­pend ex­clu­sive­ly on tithes or of­fer­ings. There needs to be di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in­to mul­ti­ple streams of in­come to con­tin­ue the busi­ness of the church, con­tin­ue car­ing for the poor and the needy, and sus­tain the mis­sion of the church. What some or­gan­i­sa­tions have done, for ex­am­ple, is de­vel­op rental fa­cil­i­ties to cre­ate in­come streams. Some have de­vel­oped shops and stores where goods and ma­te­ri­als can be sold. Some have moved in­to on­line sales. Oth­ers have es­tab­lished book­stores to fa­cil­i­tate Chris­t­ian lit­er­a­ture for their com­mu­ni­ties. It is not sim­ply a mat­ter of con­tin­u­ing with vol­un­tary-type of­fer­ings.”

It is a point Sir­ju has al­so been con­tem­plat­ing as the Catholic Church car­ries out its char­i­ta­ble work. As he ex­plained, “We are able to get by, but the signs are show­ing that we can­not de­pend on sim­ply get­ting by. So, as an arch­dio­cese, we now have to look at how we can am­pli­fy and ex­pand our fundrais­ing ef­forts.”

All of the re­li­gious lead­ers were al­so asked if they wor­ry about the fi­nan­cial stand­ing of their church­es. While ‘wor­ry’ is not a word most would use, they are deeply con­cerned.

Sir­ju said, “I do wor­ry about mon­ey and where it will come from. St Tere­sa of Ávi­la said, ‘Don’t let any­thing dis­turb you; let God be your peace and your trust.’ I have not reached that lev­el yet, and there­fore, the fi­nan­cial chal­lenge does dis­turb me some­times.”

Davis added that while the av­er­age lifestyle has changed in the coun­try, the church has a du­ty to help in­di­vid­u­als un­der­stand what is im­por­tant in their lives. He fur­ther stat­ed, “One of the things I am con­cerned about is en­sur­ing that we do not put the cart be­fore the horse. I am not en­tire­ly con­vinced that our great­est cri­sis in 2026 is a lack of re­sources, fi­nances, or funds. The av­er­age fam­i­ly in 2026 may have ac­cess to more re­sources than 40 or 50 years ago. Our lifestyle has changed, and that lifestyle change has al­so af­fect­ed the kind of dis­pos­able in­come we have. As a church, one of the things we are con­cerned about is how we help peo­ple un­der­stand what mat­ters most in life.”

For these church lead­ers, they have come to ful­ly un­der­stand the words of one for­mer Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter, who said it takes cash to care.