Hey Faith Friend,

If your church budget feels tighter this year even though the pews have not emptied, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone. Something real is happening with church money in America right now, and the churches that understand it are quietly getting stronger while everyone else wonders where the margin went.

Let me show you what the numbers say, and then let me show you what to do about it.

More people are giving. Each gift carries less.

Givelify's newest giving report found something that sounds like a contradiction. Weekly giving participation went up, from 21 percent to 24 percent. More people are giving. At the same time, the average gift fell from $228 to $207 after inflation. That is a 9.2 percent drop in what each gift can actually do.

Nobody in your congregation did anything wrong. Groceries went up for them the same way they went up for the church. The faithful kept giving, and the committed tithers largely held steady. The dollar itself just shrank.

Here is why this matters for your leadership table: if your church budgets 2027 on 2024 dollars, you will plan a year the money cannot carry. The fix is not pressure from the pulpit. The fix is reading your real giving trend, twelve months on one page, and building the budget on what is actually coming in. Stewardship, not pressure.

The doors matter as much as the dollars

While gifts are shrinking, the way people give is changing even faster. Digital wallet giving grew 120 percent in a single year. About 74 percent of churches now offer some form of digital giving, which sounds encouraging until you flip it around: one in four churches still has no digital door at all.

The generation that wrote checks is retiring. The generation walking in gives from a phone, and 62 percent of Gen Z prefer recurring monthly gifts. Recurring givers are worth paying attention to for another reason: they are roughly one in five donors but carry about 40 percent of total giving volume. A recurring base is what makes August and January stop being a crisis.

Four doors every church should have open: the plate, a give button that works on a phone, the wallet apps people already use, and a recurring option. Behind all four, one record, so every gift is logged, every giver is thanked, and every dollar has a name.

The grant money is real, and it goes to the documented

Now the part almost nobody tells small and mid-sized churches.

On June 24, FEMA opened this year's Nonprofit Security Grant Program: $300 million nationally, up to $200,000 per house of worship location for cameras, access control, lighting, and cybersecurity. Real money for protecting the people God gave you.

This year the Preserving Black Churches program awarded $13.5 million to 33 historic Black congregations, including churches organized before this country was a country. And starter money exists at the local level too. Churches in Cleveland received $50,000 pre-development grants to explore housing on their land. Charlotte offers $30,000 feasibility grants.

Here is what all of that funding has in common. None of it went to the biggest church in town. It went to the documented one. FEMA's program is a reimbursement grant that requires a vulnerability assessment, documentation, quotes, and clean records. Preservation funders honor history that is written down: deeds, photos, minutes, founding dates. The application does not ask how anointed your ministry is. It asks whether you can show your work.

"Your church does not have to be big. It has to be documented. And documented is a decision, not a size."

The funding readiness checklist

Six things nearly every application asks for, in one list you can bring to your next board meeting:

  1. Books current within 30 days. Not perfect. Current.
  2. Every fund named, every balance real. Designated funds with actual numbers end the guessing.
  3. Board minutes filed and findable. Funders read governance before they read vision.
  4. Insurance and assessments on file.
  5. A giving trend you can print. Twelve months on one page.
  6. Your story written down. Founding date, deed, photos, the names of the people who built it.

If your church can check all six, you are ready for almost any opportunity that crosses your desk. If you cannot yet, no shame in that. A no is just a starting line, and every item on this list is buildable.

Where to start this week

Two free next steps, and I mean actually free.

First, download the Grant Blueprint. It walks you through the readiness file step by step, starting with the one binder that changes what your church is eligible for: assessment, quotes, minutes, insurance, photos. Get it at grantblueprint.jessicashunta.com.

Second, join me Thursday night. Every week I host a live working session for ministry leaders, the Pastoral Briefing, Thursdays at 6 PM Central. It is live and there is no replay, on purpose, because the conversation is the point. We read real numbers together and build the giving trend, the named funds, and the readiness file. Bring your treasurer. Register at go.jessicashunta.com/registration.

The money is moving, Faith Friend. Let it find your house in order.

Decently and in order,
Jessica Shunta

Sources: Givelify 2026 Church Giving Trends; OnlineGiving.org 2025 digital giving report; FEMA Nonprofit Security Grant Program (FY2026); National Trust for Historic Preservation, Preserving Black Churches; Signal Cleveland; Spectrum News Charlotte.