1 in 4 Pastors Believe the Economy Is Negatively Impacting Their Churches

One in four Protestant pastors believe America’s economic picture is negatively impacting their congregation, a significant uptick from last year’s survey by Lifeway Research.

The survey of randomly selected pastors has been conducted annually since 2009 and involves 1,000 pastors. This year’s poll, released Tuesday, found dramatic changes in how the pastors view the economy’s impact on their congregations. The number of pastors who replied the impact is negative was 26 percent, up dramatically from the 14 percent who responded that way last year.

By contrast, more pastors (30 percent) said the economy is having a positive impact, but still a 15-point drop from 2018. Two in five pastors (41 percent) said the economy was not having an impact on their church, an increase from the 35 percent recorded in the last survey.

“Fundamentally, the U.S. economy is in a similar place that it was a year ago,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “Yet pastors are less optimistic about this outside influence on their church than they were in 2018.”

In looking at the trends, Lifeway noted that while the number of respondents who said the economy is having a positive impact dropped from 45 percent last year to 30 percent now, the response is still more than triple what pastors said in the first part of this decade. In the October 2010 survey, as America was…