ie:missional

Last week my friend Matt McGee of the Duke Law School emailed me with an interesting chart tracking the total membership of SBC churches as a percentage of the United States population since 1971. After seeing his work (the top line in the graph), I asked him to check the total attendance figures for the UMC (US members, second line), the ELCA (yellow line), and the PCUSA (purple line). It is plain to see that, as a percentage of total US population, the SBC has been in nearly unceasing decline since about 1985. Keeping in mind that “active membership” is only about twenty-five percent of reported membership, it appears that current active SBC membership represents about 1.3% of the U.S. population. With that as a backdrop…

By most reputable accounts we are entering or are already into an economic slowdown that will almost certainly turn into a recession. The housing market collapse in much of the country, the burst of the sub-prime mortgage bubble and related financial market uncertainty will take our country into places unknown to people under the age of 20. Writing in the March/April 2008 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Nouriel Roubini gives five falling dominoes which will lead to a “financial pandemic”: a drop in trade, the weakening of the dollar, worldwide bursts of housing bubbles (already happening in France, Greece, Hungary and Italy, on the verge in Britain, Ireland and Spain), falling commodity prices (projected to happen as the economies of the U.S. and China slow, though drops in oil and grain prices would be welcomed), and faltering financial confidence. He summarizes,

During the last recession, the United States underwent a nearly 6 percent change in fiscal policy, from a very large surplus of about 2.5 percent of GDP in 2000 to a large deficit of about 3.2 percent of GDP in 2004. But this time, the United States is already running a large structural deficit, and the room for fiscal stimulus is only 1 percent of GDP…President Bush’s fiscal stimulus package is too small to make a major difference today, and what the Fed is doing now is too little, too late. It will take years to resolve the problems that led to this crisis.

The Economist seems to agree. A lead story in the May 3-9, 2008 issue says:

The malaise that started the crisis-the American housing market-is still getting worse. The month-on-month decline in the Case-Shiller index of house prices in 20 large cities is accelerating; on the latest reckoning, it was down by 12.7% over the 12 months to February 29th.

Also, this:

After a long period with scarcely any bond defaults by companies, there have been 21 failures this year, according to Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency; some 122 issuers, with debt of around $102 billion, are deemed vulnerable to default. Ominously, corporate debt is the shaky foundation for trillions of dollars of derivative contracts.

Consumer confidence is in the tank and both individuals and churches will soon begin, if they have not already done so, making the difficult choices about which budget items will stay and which ones will go. Add to this (at least in the SBC) Dr. Frank Page’s warning that 1/2 of all SBC churches will close by the year 2030. Do we really think that 22,000 churches will suddenly call it quits on December 31, 2029? No, there will be a consistent downward slide as aging churches, refusing to move to a missional mindset, simply die away with neither pastor nor members to keep them alive. This recession may prove to be more than scores of small churches of all denominations can weather.

Many churches that do survive will, for the first time, begin to scrutinize their support of their denominational structure. They will begin asking about waste, mismanagement, bureaucratic overlap, and redundant ministries concluding that far, far too much of their donated funds are not making it to benevolent ministry, education or missionaries, but are going to support a structure. Many will conclude, as many already have, that if the only vision offered is to “keep Denominationalism alive” then it will no longer hold any appeal. (I recognize that giving has bounced back from recessions of the past, but during those times there were no legitimate options for “doing missions” except the denominational structures; that has now changed.)

Denominations’ tenuous relationship with technology will exacerbate the situation going into and leading out of the economic downturn. Most denominations would be satisfied to have their annual sessions broadcast live via streaming video and that would be fine…for a year or two. Why is it so stinkin’ difficult to grasp the concept of satellite feeds to multiple locations?

Way back when Dr. Jimmy Draper alerted the Southern Baptist Convention that the “younger leaders leaving the SBC” was at the “Severe” level, one of the commonly seen online suggestions was the exploration of multiple meeting sites and the ability to vote either online or at a satellite site. The ignoring of the money saving suggestions will come to haunt any denomination as a generation arises that is hardwired for efficient spending of Kingdom dollars. Through a video conferencing website called Genesys, I simulated an SBC meeting being held in Denver. The total estimated costs of video conferencing 7,000 delegates was about 17% of the cost of flying from various U.S. cities to Denver, saving an accumulated 31 years of cumulative travel time and 8,555 metric tons of carbon footprints.

The former print mag, Business 2.0 (now online here), in an August 2007 article entitled, “The Rise of the White Collar Nomad,” told of Anthony Page and Simon LePine, among others, who had ditched their offices (and sometimes homes) to spend the majority of their working hours out of doors. Armed with a laptop and a few hundred dollars worth of wireless connectivity equipment, these folks have taken moofing to a whole new level. Their offices were the entire outdoors. Mountains, lakes, London, Canada, India, they simply live where they want at the time, get paid through Pay Pal or other online account and see as much of the world as they desire. Sure, most of them are in consulting or sales, but it is technology that makes this wireless lifestyle possible. The same kind of technology could, and should, be helping denominations make better use of kingdom funds.

The Siemens corporation, as reported in Fast Company, September 2007, is working on a wireless check-in system for airports by which there would be no paper ticket, no kiosks, no boarding passes, only a bar code downloaded to your cell phone scanned at the gate and presto, you’d be good to go. Wouldn’t that be nice at the annual meeting? New Bethany’s partnership in Siberia is going to be strengthened as the M there takes advantage of a satellite connection that will allow video conferencing. Last year we hosted, via Skype, our missionary in Eastern Europe who actually taught three sessions through the video hookup and cost us absolutely nothing. Completely free. This while many M’s routinely have monthly meetings requiring multiple day excursions from their country of ministry. Some Regional Leadership even fly back to the states for meetings that could easily be held online or via satellite saving their denominations thousands and thousands of dollars.

Trustee meetings, board meetings, Executive Committee meetings (state and national) could all be streamlined and made much more efficient if advantage was taken of existing and developing technologies. In the Southern Baptist Convention alone, the six yearly meetings of one entity’s trustee board costs $500,000 of Cooperative Program missions giving. With almost no effort, change could take place immediately. But it will not and we all know it.

Instead, denominations will hunker down and try to ride out the coming economic storms. (In fairness, per capita SBC giving has been increasing over the past few years. IMO, that trend will change within five years.) As they prove more inflexible structurally and wasteful economically, churches of all sizes will conclude that money given to support the inherent denominational bureaucracies is no longer good stewardship of God’s money.

The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning. The fact of change itself is undeniable: it has happened, and will continue to happen.
Philip Jenkins, The New Christendom

Change brings fear and fear is the wrong state of mind to provide leadership. Where denominations are concerned, fear and limited perspectives put behemoth organizations at risk. In our day there is a shift of tectonic proportions taking place, but if we do not see it in the light of history it can provide a basis for fear instead of faith. It should not.

Consider these facts from Exploring World Mission: Context and Challenges:

–The Christian era began in the Middle East with largely Jewish believers, but within 100-200 years had expanded to Asia becoming largely Gentile in the process.

–By 600 AD, the church had spread to North Africa and southern Europe. It’s language was primarily Greek.

–By 1,000 AD, the church had been mostly displaced from by the influx of Islam shifting the center toward Western Europe where it was solidified by 1,500 AD. Theology and mission became largely European.

–By the mid-20th century, the church was declining in the West and this decline has continued unabated.

–At the beginning of the 21st century the center of gravity for the church on planet earth is in Latin America, South America, Africa and Asia. The church is now non-Western and its theology and mission are rapidly following suit.

–By 2050, only about 20% of the world’s three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites.

What do these last statements demonstrate? They mean that the center of gravity of the church (or, as Jenkins terms it, “the Christian heartland”) is moving. Most American Christians have no idea what is going on around the world and many seem to think that without the American missionary force the world would go straight to hell. While it is true that by the 1950’s America was supplying 2/3 of the Protestant missionary force to the world, it does not follow that converting the world’s population to Christ was dependent on Western missionaries. African scholar John Mbiti has said:

It is utterly scandalous for so many Christian scholars in [the] Old Christendom to know so much about heretical movements in the second and third centuries, when so few of them know anything about Christian movements in areas of the younger churches.

Consider that the number of Christians in Africa grew from an estimate 10 million in 1900 to a mind-boggling 360 million in 2000. This means that there are more Christians in Africa than there are people in the United States. Adrian Hastings, in his book The Church in Africa, said:

It sometimes startles [them] to see that the three combined bodies are from Europe, and along with them there is a title “Christendom”…If [Africans] had power enough to communicate [them]selves to Europe [they] would advise them not to call themselves “Christendom” but “Europeandom.”

Africans are dynamic about sending missionaries. While in Kenya in 1995, I met a young believer named David. David was 23 years old and served as a translator for one of the preachers in our group. In addition to English and Swahili, David already spoke four tribal dialects and was learning a fifth. Not only could he speak them, he was equally proficient at translating between any two of them! It was truly amazing to hear this soft spoken man who was passionate to get the gospel to all peoples in Kenya. He did not need a Western missionary to tell him what he ought to be doing in the kingdom.

We should not forget that South Koreans are sending missionaries, as are eastern Europeans. According to the East-West Church & Ministry Report, Summer 2005 newsletter, Hungary, Poland and Romania are slowly rising up as missionary sending nations having learned from western missionaries in their midst. “One Nazarene church in Bucharest consists of only six families, each with five or more children. Nevertheless, it fully supports a missionary family in Ethiopia because it has a vision to see that country reached for the gospel.” New Bethany’s strategy in Russia includes the possibility of sending Ukrainian or Belorussian, not only American, missionaries as they are the best adapted for the culture and the language. These opportunities will only continue.

As far as American denominations go, we should be assured that the King is well able to take care of His kingdom and that the passing of the era of Denominationalism poses no threat to either of them. Because we tend to view history through the myopic lens of our own lives, many do not realize that the West has not always been the center of God’s working in the world. From the Middle East to Asia to Africa and Southern Europe to the West and now to the South, God has always been at work. In the February 5, 2001 issue of Christianity Today, Philip Yancey notes:

As I travel, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God “moving” geographically from the Middle East, to Europe to North America to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where he’s wanted.

If Yancey is correct that God goes “where he’s wanted,” then that is a warning to Denominationalists in American: if we are not alert, we will find ourselves striving to save a denomination while claiming to be in pursuit of God.

Philip Jenkins warns of this mindset:

Southern Christianity, the Third Church, is not just a transplanted version of the familiar religion of the older Christian states: the New Christendom is no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity….If we are to live in a world where only one Christian in five is a non-Hispanic White, then the views of the small minority are ever less likely to claim mainstream status, however desperately the Old World Order clings to its hegemony over the control of information and opinion.

As the Kingdom moves, our temptation will be to find security in our institutions, the same institutions that are themselves fighting to maintain control and importance. Our denominational structures are a primary place of such security. Without an ability to envision a future without denominations, some will continue to put forth extraordinary amounts of energy to re-animate that which is dying or already dead. Such folks are not able to envision a future without denominations; I cannot envision a future with them.

One of the more replayed video clips over the last few years was that of NFL head coach Dennis Green of the Arizona Cardinals. Following a loss to the Chicago Bears in 2006, which his team had led 24-3 in the fourth quarter, came the inevitable press conference. An obviously ticked Green exploded like a man who’d been celebrating Cinco de Mayo for a month. “The Bears are who we thought they were,” has become a favorite line for sports fans ever since. What Green was saying was, “They had nothing on us. They were the team we prepared for and we let them off the hook. We should have won the game.” It was slightly more colorful in the original language.

In thinking through this series, the word “disintegration” was intentionally chosen over the word “collapse.” I do not think that we will wake up one morning in the next year to find that the United Methodists, the Lutherans, Episcopalians (in their various stripes) or SBC will have closed the doors and shuttered the windows. I do think that we will continue to see decreasing viability of meaningful gospel influence in these organizations to the point that, like water against a rock, the slow erosion results in an unstable foundation and eventual cessation of denominational existence.

Linked in Ed Stetzer’s warning shot were two papers by J. Clifford Tharp, Jr. one with the following chart indicating “Total Membership” and “Resident Membership.”

Tharp’s brief analysis included these three points: 1. Trends in Membership (both Total and Resident) are becoming very flat; 2. Total Membership is dangerously close to beginning to decrease; 3. The gap between Total Membership and Resident Membership is widening. Observant readers will notice that if the top line flattens and the gap between the two widens, then necessarily the bottom line is beginning or continuing a downward arc. On this chart, that means that Resident Membership is decreasing. As we know and will soon reconsider, Resident Membership itself is a misleading measure of biblical membership and should not be considered an accurate accounting.

We’re not who we thought we were.

A second chart (below) tracks SBC baptisms from 1950-2004.

As you can see, baptisms have remained virtually static for more than 1/2 a century (there is a minuscule increase of 45 per year). The US population in 1950 was 152,271,417. Non-stop growth brought us to 281,421,906 by the year 2000. In a non-scientific but well thought through series of observations, Nathan Finn suggests that the Southern Baptist Convention is probably reaching no more than 100,000 “unreached Americans” per year while in their book, “Who Will Be Saved?,” Paul House and Greg Thornbury write:

Statistics compiled by the North American Mission Board…reveal that as many as half of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are rebaptisms of persons already baptized by Southern Baptist pastors. Another 40 percent of adults baptized are Christians from other denominations who have never been immersed. Only ten percent of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are making first-time professions of faith.

And this from what is widely considered the most evangelistic denomination in the U.S.

We’re not who we thought we were.

In her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker takes both Southern Baptists and evangelicals to task for their faulty reporting of their actual membership totals. She notes, for example, that:

Only 7 percent of members who’ve been in a Southern Baptist church five years of less are true converts, meaning sinners who weren’t raised in the church but came through a profession of faith in Jesus. If you took out the Southern Baptists who married unbelievers and brought them to faith, hardly anybody would be left.

Behind the thesis is that there are not nearly as many committed, Bible believing, Bible following Christians in American as we have all been led to believe, the former Dallas Morning News writer (and former Southern Baptist) pegs SBC active membership at just north of four million. Though Wicker finds herself somewhere between an agnosticism and an reluctant atheistism, her understanding of what genuine church membership should be is decent. She refuses to acknowledge that the SBC consists of 16+ million members, stating, “How many members a church has is a pretty worthless measure of reality…[only] about two-thirds are even residents of the same town as the churches they belong to.”

We’re not who we thought we were.

Not content with exposing the SBC’s lack of clothing, Wicker also points out that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) does not have its claimed and oft trumpeted 30 million members. There are sixty denominations that make up the membership of the NAE including the Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene and the Evangelical Free Church of America. According to Wicker’s research, the total membership of the fifty member denominations listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2007, the American Religion Statistical Archives and the denominations’ own Web sites the grand total of the members is 7.6 million people. Active membership would be much less–less than half actually. So, what of the elusive 30 million count we’ve all heard. No one, not even NAE president Leith Anderson knows for sure. The 1990 NAE record listed only 4.5 total members.

We’re not who we thought we were.

What does this mean? Is the issue a matter of simple math? No. The issue is that, not only have we been well behind the population growth curve, we didn’t have as great a number in the starting blocks as we had been led to believe. Since every age group of baptisms is decreasing except those who are under five years old and since the number of those graduating from high school and leaving church is increasing and since the ranks of admitted unbelievers is the fasted growing “faith” category in the US, there simply are not going to be enough people to keep denominations, which are dependent on heavy financial investment, afloat. As denominationally oriented church members age and die (and they already are) younger people will not give tithes to churches that insist on supporting failing bureaucracies, thus leading further down the Post Denominational road.

We’re not who we thought we were.

Ten months ago when I began this blog, I purposed not to engage in discussion about the denomination in which I have pastored, the Southern Baptist Convention, unless it crossed paths with a subject about which I was writing. This is one of those times.

A recent report from missiologist Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Christian Resources indicated that the Southern Baptist Convention, once characterized (because of its cultural dominance) as the Roman Catholic Church of the southern United States, has entered a downward trend of growth which, he predicts, may not turn around. If you are among those who haven’t yet, you can read the initial report here and the follow up article here.

As would have been expected, the report was hailed in some places (see Ed’s comment threads) and questioned in others. The question that does not seem to have been asked during this is simple: Has the time for heavily organized, bureaucratically inefficient denominational structures passed? My thesis is a simple one and flows from what I see happening:

The era of denominationalism is ending, therefore, time and energy spent attempting to revive them is not redeemed time.

Rather than reviving them, we should be having a planned euthanization. I will not be arguing “post-denominational” in the sense of personal preference or lack thereof, but “Post-Denominationalism” in the sense of no SBC, UMC, PCUSA, etc.

Though Stetzer’s commentary is specific to growth patterns in the SBC, all other denominations in the United States are and have been in decline with the single exception of the Assemblies of God which counts but 2.8 million members (2005). Even the respected National Association of Evangelicals has lost some of its luster since the fall of Ted Haggard, though, as we will see, it never had quite as much luster as was thought. Regardless of the denomination none have matched, via conversions, the growth rate of the population (excepting possibly the AoG), so in percentage of population terms all American denominations have been in decline for decades. At best, a few denominations have grown at the expense of others, the common scenario known as “swapping sheep.”

Is the motivation to “save the denomination” a good enough motivation to go into hyper-drive in funds promoting or doomsday scenarios? I don’t think so. When Jesus said to the people of Jerusalem, “Behold, your house [the temple] has been left to you desolate,” He was warning them that there system of belief was coming to an end. There were no more sacrifices needed, no more pouring out of animal blood, no more Day of Atonement; it was over. Their mistake was that they continued to cling to a structure that God Himself had abandoned. Shall we repeat the same mistake?

Writing with an eye to the Southern Baptist Convention, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary prof, Nathan Finn, recently asked:

So does the SBC have a future? It depends upon what you mean by “future.” I suspect the name will be used by some Baptists until Christ comes back. I also think the people called Southern Baptists will always have denominational entities that they financially support. So in one sense, I remain confident that Southern Baptists are here to stay. But if by “future” one means a vital existence in God’s economy, I have my doubts. Collectively, I fear we are too insular, too sectarian, too pugnacious, too “Southern,” too reactionary, too pragmatic, and for sure too proud to have any real future.

While I appreciate Nathan’s balanced thinking, I, for one, am not convinced that any denomination is here to stay and am convinced that the era, like the telegraph, is passing into the historical record and that we have entered the Post-Denominational (PD) era.

Commenting on Ed Stetzer’s original post, SEBTS prof Alvin Reid noted,

For several semesters I have asked our students “how many of you came from an SBC church?” The vast majority. Then I ask, “How many of you want to go back and serve a church just like that?” Almost none. These are seminarians, the ones we still have, and they see a serious need for change. Again, this is anecdotal and simplistic, but here is another idea–have someone do a survey of current seminarians to find out who they listen to on podcasts? Might be revealing.

This is not merely true of the SBC as other denominations are dealing with the same issues. No one is important enough to have cornered the market here.

Also responding to Stetzer was SEBTS president, Danny Akin, who said,

I could not agree with your assessment more! I go to bed thinking about this every night and wake up the same.We are in serious trouble. Our denomination is at a crisis moment and we will either repent, seek the forgiveness and mercy of God and perhaps experience a true and genuine revival from our Lord, or we will continue our present course and simply fade away with the Lord Jesus justly removing His hand of blessing.

But what if no amount of repentance and seeking of forgiveness will bring revival and revitalization to the SBC or any other denomination? What if, like the sacrificial system, their time has run it’s course and God is preparing a new thing? I pray that it will be embraced rather than feared.

Over the next few posts, I will be exploring why I think we will continue down the road toward a Post-Denominationalism world. We’ll see that the SBC and evangelicals have not had either the numbers or the power that we’ve thought and will continue to lose both in the US; that the Kingdom of God is shifting again (as it has before) this time from dominance in the West; and that technology has rendered the need for heavily bureaucratic, densely centralized, financially profligate organizational structures obsolete and that the lessening of the influence of denominations in culture will be inversely proportional to the influence of local churches networking in culture.

Yesterday I took my 17 and 12 year olds with me to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new movie concerning discrimination in the scientific community regarding some scientists who hold to Intelligent Design. Hosted by actor/comedian/talk-show host/activist Ben Stein, Expelled attempts to demonstrate that a “Berlin Wall” has been erected in science and that only those scientists and theories on the “Darwinian” side of the wall are able to get a hearing, tenure and publication in scientific journals.

First, the movie itself. It was better than I expected it to be, though not as good as it could have been. There was almost a consistent use of video clips, some of which were funny, but many of which were just distracting or overblown. The way I see it, those clips will merely feed those who see the movie as primarily entertainment, rather than a serious documentary.

Most of the interviews were enlightening and informative. Anyone who has read ID materials would recognize the names of Stephen Meyer, William Dembski and Jonathan Wells. To their credit, the producers also include agnostics like David Berlinski rather than those who can easily be traced back to religion or “young earth creationism” (which, it seems, no one in the movie holds). Berlinski, a virtual unknown to evangelicals, was thusly described by Slate magazine:

A secular Jew born in New York City, the 66-year-old began his career in academia. After earning a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton, he spent time teaching at Stanford, working as a management consultant, and completing postdoctoral work in mathematics and biology. Nothing took—as he describes it, he “got fired from almost every job [he] ever had.” And then, at some point in the last few decades, he decided to remake himself as a maverick intellectual operating out of a flat in Paris.

For an entertaining and wide ranging interview with Berlinski see here. It didn’t take long to determine that he was probably the smartest person being interviewed in the film.

Interviews with Darwinists were also enlightening. One, with a prof named Provine, easily demonstrated that Darwinists are as closed minded as they accuse Christian fundamentalists of being. Atheist Richard Dawkins’ arrogance comes across as clearly here as in his books and debates. Interestingly, he does admit that an intelligence could be responsible for “seeding” life on earth, but said intelligence would likely have been beings from a super-advanced civilization from another galaxy who would “necessarily” have evolved according to Darwinian evolution. How does he know this evolution would be necessary? He doesn’t say.

(In an interesting turn, ID theorists tend to reject the idea of “alien seeding” even though the theory itself does not rule out that very possibility. Upon rejecting the possibility that super intelligent aliens could have planted the first cell which became the common ancestor, they have nowhere to turn for the intelligent source but God which then becomes self-fulfilling of the accusation that ID is mere religion in cheap scientific terms or creationism in sheep’s clothing.)

Second, as might be expected, the basis for the movie (loss of tenure and/or grants for ID promoting professors and scientists) has already been challenged. The website Expelled Exposed is claiming that there were plenty of extenuating circumstances in each situation that renders the claims of ID discrimination impotent. I am not persuaded by each of the arguments, but if you are going to debate the veracity of Expelled, you need to be aware of the objections as there are always two sides to each story.

The most important part of the movie, IMO, is not the ID issue, but the inextricable tie between Darwinian thought and both Nazism and eugenics. This was not news to me, but it will be for many who see the movie and while critics will cry “foul,” it will make no difference, it is absolutely true. But further, if Darwinism is true, then there was nothing wrong with either the holocaust or eugenics. Survival of the fittest, we know, is an ugly, bloody, violent concept and whether you are talking about lions, tigers, bears or humans, the ones who adapt and find a way to maintain their existence are the ones best suited for survival. Ergo, it matters not that huge gas chambers were built all over Europe and vast ovens for the disposal of corpses, the Nazis were simply better suited to survive than 13 millions Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and crippled. The same with eugenics: why cry over the fact that scores of imbeciles were sterilized? The strong and smart were simply asserting their superior fitness to survive. As ugly as it is, that is the logic of naturalistic Darwinism. To appeal to morality or conscience is to recognize an objective law or truth outside ourselves.

The reality is that we don’t need Darwin as an excuse to kill and maim each other; as sinful creatures we did that quite efficiently before he ever came around.

Expelled is rated PG for a curse word, thematic material and holocaust film footage.

The genesis of this post began about two months ago. As I have previously mentioned, I do the majority of the grocery shopping for our family and had just returned from the store where, for the first time, we had surpassed $400 for our monthly “mega-buy” (to be explained shortly). Though I knew we were in an inflationary economy, I was shocked at just how little my dollars were worth. To top it off, Sonya had to go to Sam’s Club to pick up some salad. She had convinced me that buying the big bag at Sam’s was superior to buying lettuce, spinach, etc and combining them, even if the big bag was not completely consumed.

A couple of hours later, I saw a receipt from Sam’s on the kitchen island for $55 and change. I had a meltdown. All I could think was, “She just spent $55 on lettuce!” I could not believe it (yeah, yeah, it wasn’t all lettuce you may have guessed). My meltdown led to a long conversation during which we resolved to find a solution to this dilemma. Before moving to the decision that was born from that conversation, there are two things that you need to do to win the grocery wars.

1. Buy a freezer, either upright or chest style, but upright will probably work best. To take full advantage of this strategy that we use you need to have cold storage. You can find a freezer at moving sales, scratch and dent sales, downsizing sales, etc. It does not have to be brand new, but make sure it’s new enough to actually be efficient.

2. Do a monthly “mega-buy” at which time you purchase all your non-perishable staples for the entire month storing it in your refrigerator, freezer and pantry. Sugar, flour, cereal, pop-tarts, pasta, canned goods, etc, will last until Jesus comes back. Unless it falls behind the counter and out of sight it will not expire on you and certainly not within four weeks.

In order to do this, the primary meal preparer needs to prepare the daily menu well in advance. Because of the nature of shopping like this, you will buy more than your kitchen freezer can accommodate, hence the need for an upright freezer. Doing a “mega-buy” saves time and money as your remaining trips from weeks 2-4 of the month are only quick stops for milk, bread, eggs or when guests are invited.

Another thing that you will find is that you don’t run to the grocery store as soon as you run out of something. If you run out of pop-tarts a week from grocery buying day, you tend to just write it down and then eat an orange or something. In the long run, you don’t buy as much because you aren’t going to the store once a week. If you don’t already have a frugal mindset, you will develop one soon.

3. Unless you are just loathe to do so, do your monthly “mega-buy” at Wal-Mart, Super Target or a similar store. Wal-Mart is where I spend an hour and a half once a month and it is well worth it. Grocery stores are 30-40% higher on almost every item than Wal-Mart’s regular prices. For lunch one day recently I bought a new snack cracker at Publix and paid $2.99 thinking, “That’s not really too bad.” A week later at my mega-buy, I saw the same ones at Wal-Mart for $2.00. This is true with virtually every item. Additionally, both Wal-Mart and Super Target (and other similar stores) take coupons which helps even more. The reality is that Wal-Mart’s normal prices are cheaper that most grocery store prices with a coupon.

We buy very little at Sam’s (coffee cream, coffee, garbage bags, paper plates, etc) as some of there bulk prices actually are not cheaper once you start pricing by the ounce. The mega-buy does not work as well at warehouse stores (Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s) unless you are John and Kate Gosselin since to get as large of a variety as you need would require spending $800 dollars on an estimated two tons of food.

4. USE COUPONS! Not using coupons is like sending back your income tax refund or turning down a love offering. It’s the same as rejecting free money. Yes, it takes a little time, but you can actually make a good “part time salary” if you will get a system and be diligent about it.

Coupons can be found everywhere, but many of them are hidden. Websites such as Mommy Saves Big are link sites for manufacturers coupons. These can be printed and taken to the store. If you do not subscribe to the Sunday paper in your area, then your are likely missing a bonanza of savings. (We have a daily subscription to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and receive the Sunday paper through it. Last week I remembered that one our local papers carries the exact same coupon bundle as the AJC. I went online and subscribed to the Sunday ONLY delivery of the Gwinnett Daily Post for $12/yr. Sunday came and we got $5.00 of usable coupons from the Post. That’s about a 45% return in 24 hours. Dang! Is Wall Street hiring??)

Another place to find coupons is in the grocery store. Near us, both Publix and Kroger have coupons in the front of the store, with Publix having 4 or 5 different small coupon magazines with both manufacturers and store coupons. Also, you know those little coupon dispensers hanging off the grocery shelves? Those are manufacturer coupons and can be used at any store including Wal-Mart. And you aren’t limited to one coupon!

Still another source are manufacturers websites. On many (we’ve done Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Nestle, etc) you can receive email coupons. If you don’t want to clutter up your email, then set up a coupon only email such as “martyscoupons@email.com” to get them all.

5. The real money is to be saved with a coupon strategy that involves your local grocery stores and your local drug stores like Rite-Aid, CVS, Walgreen’s, etc. This strategy will only be effective if you have these type stores in a reasonable cluster. Suburban shoppers will benefit much more than rural shoppers. The key is coupons and store specials. This is how is works:

Look through each and every drug and grocery store flyer in the Sunday paper. Drug stores especially like to do “buy 1 get 1 free” and “two for” specials to try and get people into the store. A recent ad for Rite Aid drugstore had Kashi cereal 2/$5. They listed the normal price at $4.49 per box which is outrageous. The special, though, made it cheaper than Wal-Mart. Almost every chain has those type specials every week, you just need to learn to watch for the items that you use and then use your accumulated coupons for real savings.

Recently, Publix grocery had Kashi cereal on sale “buy 1 get 1 free” at the regular price of $3.39 (it’s actually buy two at half price and you don’t have to buy two). Hidden in an organic products advertiser at the front of the store were coupons for $1.00 off boxes of Kashi cereal. I got four of the books and tore out the coupons standing at the register. (Did you know that stores allow you to use coupons on every item of a buy 1 get 1 free sale? That’s because the sale is from the store and the coupon is from the manufacturer.) After the sale and the coupons, I walked out of the store with 4 boxes of Kashi for a TOTAL of $2.98. That’s .75 a box for an organic cereal that sells at Wal-Mart for around $2.75 a box.

Our local Kroger store has 10/$10 specials every single week and they don’t require mix and match. In addition, they have other specials tied to the use of the “Kroger Card.” A couple of weeks ago, they had Scott paper towels (the large roll) at 10/$10. Sonya also had several coupons. She went to the register with nothing but 10 rolls of Scott paper towels and paid so little (between $5-6) that it invoked a question and admiration from the shocked cashier.

6. Always, always get the “Store Card” if they have one. Not a credit card, it makes you eligible for in-store specials each week. (Of course they are tracking your spending habits; so what? They are, in essence, paying you for it.) Kroger, Ingles and CVS in our area all have this card as does PetSmart for our animal stuff. CVS is far and away worth getting because of a single thing: in store cash. I’m not exactly sure how they figure it, but with many CVS purchases in which the card is used, there are 2-4 additional coupons that print on the receipt. Weekly, they have an in store special that generates even more savings through “in store cash.”

A couple of weeks ago the CVS in our area had a special on Softsoap Body Wash. It was $4.99 per bottle. With her purchase of two bottles, Sonya received an “in store cash” receipt for $9.50. The next week they had liquid detergent on buy 1 get 1 free for $6.00 and Sonya had two coupons ($1.00 each). She was able to get two regular size liquid detergent bottles and a some other stuff for a TOTAL of .09 cents. Yes, you read that right. Nine cents.

This week Kroger has Clif Bars on sale 10/$10 (Clif Bars are organic energy bars). Left over from the organic magazine from Publix were 4 Clif bar coupons for “Save 1.00 on 3.” Since I eat a lot of Clif bars hiking I bought twelve, plus Snickers at 3/$1. When I looked at the receipt, I had saved $5.39 and spent only $5.93. Clif bars are normally $1.35-$1.45 each.

7. If you aren’t able to get a freezer to store frozen goods, create places in your house to store your stash of food. The garage, the tops of kids’ closets, under the bed (in the grocery bags), the laundry room, etc can all serve as places to store extra food and supplies.

The primary danger here is not being disciplined on the “mega-buy” after stocking up during the previous month. You can’t buy all the junk food that you usually had skipped simply because your buggy looks empty. Rejoice! That means it is working and you are saving money.

Last month, the month after my meltdown, is when we started with the strategic coupon buying. Our “mega-buy” for this month was only $225 and we’ve already saved on next month with all the special buys and buy one get ones. The total we spent on specials was $116. We saw an improvement after only one month and it will improve more as we learn how to spot more specials and locate coupons.

With enough effort and some invested time, most any family can see a real savings each and every month (or week if necessary) keeping some cash rather than sending it to the local “grocery syndicate.” Give it a go; I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

(All credit for our strategic buying goes to Sonya who did a truckload of research to figure out how to make it work. She used The Grocery Game (which is a pay service scaled to how much information you want to access) and The Coupon Mom (which is less detailed but costs nothing).

Has Paula Abdul ever said anything original IN HER LIFE!??!?!?!

That’s it.

There are lots of ways to save money with minimal effort. This post deals with lifestyle changes that, added together, can cut living costs substantially.

1. Learn to live with heat. During spring time, allow the house to get as hot as you can stand it before turning on the AC, then keep the temp around 77-78. You will acclimate to the temp as it will still feel cool after a hot ride in the car or working in the yard. If you have a two story house, keep the upper story cooler by a degree or two. You’ll be surprised at how this will keep the lower story cool as well.

2. Walk when you can. You may live so far out that you have to go hunting toward town and, if so, then this may not be practical. We live about a mile from a Kroger grocery store and, on occasion, I will walk to the store with a backpack and buy the few things needed. In addition to saving gas, the exercise does not hurt. One day last week my “spare donut tire” went flat at the Kroger. Once home in the afternoon (after getting a lift) I walked to Kroger, removed the tire, carried it to the repair shop about .25 miles away, back to the car and then drove home.

We have a mall near our house that has several out-parcels with various stores. When comparison shopping, I will often park equidistant from Best Buy, Circuit City and H. H. Gregg then walk to all of them. Throw in Target and I’ve saved a lot of starting and stopping as well as cranking and shutting off the engine. (Shopping online cuts down even on the cost of driving to the mall, but one must plan far enough ahead to consider the shipping time. That’s a tough one on me.)

3. Reclaim your water. When you warm up your shower, you lose anywhere from 1/2 to 1 gallon of water-multiply that by everyone in the house and number of daily showers and it adds up to a lot over time. That water can be used on house plants, yard plants or even to refill the toilet tank after a flush (once you work on your speed). A plastic bucket in the shower is a very easy way to accomplish this.

For less than $50 you can purchase a 50 gallon plastic drum and convert it to a rain catcher (attached to a gutter downspout) complete with mounted spigot. It would only be good for outside watering, but it would save you some money on municipal water.

Also, as mentioned in the previous comments thread, skip a shower on your day off…unless you already smell like the goat man.

4. Buy clothes on clearance. Some clothes just never go out of style and those clothes can be gotten for a song at the end of winter and summer. Thursday I got a sweater for $4.00 and a long sleeved, solid color shirt for $3.40 at Kohl’s. Don’t buy faddish clothes on clearance-it’s too late by then.

Some very good deals can also be found on every day wear. I like colored tee’s that can be worn alone or under another shirt. Picked up two Jerzees at Target for $4.99 each. If they fade too badly, they become working around the house shirts that I can keep (literally) for years. I still have a shirt from high school (Riverdale, GA, class of ‘81) that I wear to change the oil in the cars, etc. If you have to wear Polo to cut grass, you have some serious issues ;^)

5. Buy clothes that last. No, this is not contradictory to #4. For me, this depends on what I’m buying. Hiking-wear is inherently expensive, so I’m willing to fork over the extra. There is an art to packing a backpack and every ounce counts. Forty-five bucks for quick dry nylon pants is far superior to packing jeans that hold every drop of water for hours. (Although, I did pick up a couple of Columbia nylon shirts for $9.99 each at Target. Similar shirts would have been $14.99-19.99 at REI.)

Shoes are another place that I don’t cut too many costs, though I still look for savings. As one gets older, the feet need special attention so the shoes that I wear a lot I’m willing to spend $90 or $100 to get. For me, those are going to be Montrail, Timberland, The North Face, etc, not patent leather that I will only wear a couple of hours a week. On those I will spend just enough to get by, provided they have good arch support.

6. Don’t allow your kids to become “brand conscious.” You’ll go broke trying to help you kids keep up with Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Hollister’s or whatever else is the rage. Many teens could set their own style if they would follow Napoleon Dynamite to the local thrift store where they could find cool shirts for $2.00 that would run $32.00 for similar ones at the mall.

Shop for kids under middle school at Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s, TJ Maxx, etc. Kids don’t stay the same size long enough to justify spending $25.00 or more for a pair of tennis shoes or $40 for some silly sailor outfit.

The same can be true for adults. I am hard pressed to spend $40-50 on Levi’s or Lee jeans when I can get Wrangler or Urban Pipeline for $12-15. They all last the same length of time.

7. Combine errand trips. Taking ten trips to go ten places is just bad stewardship. Keep a list on the refrigerator or the kitchen chalk board for a few days and run errands on one trip rather than five.

8. Call home before coming home. Cell phones are a God send for communicating with home base. Call home when leaving the office to see if anything (milk, bread, last minute dinner ingredient) can be picked up while driving by the story anyway.

9. Work from home or a coffee shop a couple of days a week. During this time of skyrocketing gas prices, churches should understand that the pastor can get as much done at home and should bless him by allowing him to save the money. Concentrate as much office work as you can around two or three day during the week and work from home (prepare sermons, write, make phone calls) the other day or two. Cell phones and the prevalence of the internet at coffee shops and restaurants should make us more mobile, not less. Besides this, working from home means you don’t have to wash, dry and iron another set of clothes.

10. In the summer, avoid using the stove. Grill out or eat sandwiches. The stove not only takes a truck load of power to run, it heats up the house requiring more power to cool it. Buy a griddle for breakfast foods or grilled sandwiches.

After using the stove in the winter leave the door open for a few minutes to allow the remaining heat to warm the kitchen. (If you have small kids or clumsy family members, this may not be practical.)

11. Cut down on household waste (limits trips to the dump or recycling center). Fruit peels, coffee filters and grounds, egg shells and more can be used for compost. A large, thick “bean bag” from Starbucks can be used to store them under the sink until taken to the compost pile or bin. Many Starbucks stores also have used grounds available for customers to use at home in gardening. Those grounds are usually in the silver bags referenced above. (If you do not garden, you probably have a neighbor that would love to have it.) Find out if your local government allows trash burning and create a small fire ring in your back yard, thus saving gas or cost of a trash hauling company. Our county does not allow trash burning, but has set up numerous recycle centers around the county so that conscientious residents can recycle a LOT of household trash and dispose of the rest.

12. Change the filter on your AC/Heat unit according to the schedule. It both keeps the air clean and allow the system to run more efficiently.

13. Gradually change over to fluorescent lighting. Incandescent light bulbs use more energy, don’t last as long and bring more heat into the room. If you use lots of lamps, you’ll have to make sure that the shade attaches in such a way to allow for a non-round bulb. Some of the florescent bulbs, such as n:vision available at Home Depot, are now as small as regular bulbs. That particular brand is warranted to last nine years.

14. Turn the heat down at night. That’s why God created blankets and Grandma makes quilts. Flannel pjs for the kids are fine. Why run the heat at 72 degrees when no one is awake to enjoy it? Turn the thermostat down to 65 or lower and cover up! (Turn it down during the day, too. A shirt and sweater will keep most people warm in a 68 degree house. Besides, it’s good stewardship.)

15. Invest in a freezer. A solid upright freezer can be gotten from moving sales, estate sales or your local appliance company. Make sure it is not too old or the efficiency will simply not allow it to pay for itself. In my next post, I’ll talk about why it is so important.

16. Buy groceries once a month. Get into this habit as quickly as it is possible, perhaps when your tax return or tax rebate arrives. You will not believe how much money you will save with just this one move. (More on this one in the next post).

17. Trade the gas hog for economy. Prices are not coming down so now is the time to trade the Suburban, Expedition or Mammoth Car for a 4 cylinder or hybrid. I’m so thankful for my 30 mpg around town Accord, but we’re really debating what to do about our 18 mpg truck. If it can reasonably be worked out, it’ll be gone.

Coming next: Saving Money Through Winning the Grocery Game

I don’t know about where you live, but “consumer prices” here in the Southeast are waaaaay out of control. Gas is up about 50 cents a gallon in the last 6 months and about 20 cents a gallon in the last two weeks. Emails about boycotting certain gas stations to force lower prices (which will not happen) will be circulating again soon and the “lowest gas prices in your area” emails have started now. I’m more seriously than ever considering buying a (used) hybrid vehicle as I don’t see that gas prices are ever going to fall substantially. Perhaps back down to $3.00, but not lower than that.

Because of an argument with Sonya over grocery prices about a decade and a half ago I am the primary grocery purchaser in our family. We do pretty well for a family of five (until August when it becomes four) but have seen our grocery bill skyrocket over the last few months. Due to the water shortage in Georgia local water prices have risen about 8% for 2008. Building materials and supplies are up. I haven’t checked clothes lately, but we’re about to have to spend a king’s ransom to provide proper attire for our two youngest.

I think I inherited frugality from my Mother. As early as I can remember she was clipping coupons and looking for the grocery store that had the best prices. Gas, at 40 cents a gallon, was hardly a concern. Most any of my kids would bear testimony to my unwillingness to eat out, leave lights on, buy branded clothing and probably things I’ve forgotten. Thankfully, Sonya balances me though we’ve had quite a few “discussions” over the years.

Over the next couple of posts, I’m going to deal with practical, easy ways to save money. Much of it will have to do with a grocery buying strategy that can save up to 30% of your monthly grocery bill. Some of it will have to do with utilities and living expenses. Perhaps you’ve put some of them in practice, perhaps some will be new to you but it will be an exercise on how to squeeze blood out of a stone.

You cannot imagine how bad these are:

Worst Album Covers