c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) _ Summer can be a tough season for churches. As temperatures inch upward, pews grow emptier with each service _ and so too does the collection plate.

But for a number of Lutheran congregations around the nation “summer slump” no longer has to be a fiscal bane. Their peace of mind comes courtesy of the Lutheran Brotherhood’s “Simply Giving” program, which gives parishioners the option of paying tithes electronically, whether they’re at the beach or in the pew. Under the program, tithes are automatically deducted from a parishioner’s bank account on a regular schedule.

Approximately 2,760 Lutheran congregations nationwide have adopted the Simply Giving program since Lutheran Brotherhood began offering it two years ago, said Lutheran Brotherhood representative Royce McEwen. Lutheran Brotherhood is a fraternal insurance organization that serves members of Lutheran churches across the denominational spectrum.

This year alone Lutheran congregations have garnered approximately $18.3 million through the program, McEwen said.

At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Irvine, Calif., approximately 38 percent of the $316,737 the church has collected in the first seven months of this year came from the Simply Giving program, said the church’s pastor, the Rev. James Hale.

“In the last two years we’ve actually been ahead in July, August and September,” Hale said, noting that a third of the church’s 1,800-member congregation has enrolled in the program since it was implemented there two years ago. “I absolutely think Simply Giving is part of the reason.”

The program also helped Grace Lutheran Church in Hatsfield, Pa., shore up its coffers said church council president Kay Stone.

“We saw that last year we weren’t behind $5,000 or $6,000 in August like we usually are,” Stone said. “We didn’t have to play catch up.”

Not only are church coffers buoyed by the program, accounting offices receive a boost too, Hale said.

“The work of our booking office just went down by a third,” he said. “We save a little money because we don’t have to buy and mail out so many offering envelopes anymore, and the money count is more accurate because it’s being done electronically. It’s just made a huge difference.”

That’s equally true at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, N.C., according to church treasurer Al Port.

“Bookkeeping is easier when contributions are coming in on a regular basis,” said Port, who estimates some 10 percent of the church’s budget is derived from Simply Giving. “The church can keep its financial commitments much easier when people donate regularly at a set time. I know that people tend to forget to give when they’re on vacation, so it makes me feel a lot more comfortable _ I know that the money is coming in so that I can pay the bills.”

For parishioners, the program “is a blessing,” Stone said.

“My husband and I do travel a lot to visit our kids and go to Penn State football games in the fall so we wind up missing a Sunday or two every month,” she said. “This way, our giving never stops even when we’re not in church.”

And, she said, parishioners don’t have to worry about falling behind in their donations to the church.

“Some people get to the end of the year and realize they haven’t given as much as they had planned,” Stone said. “This way they don’t have to play catch up _ every month what they’ve decided to give to the church is already given.”

“The convenience of it all” convinced Judy Pascoe of Eastern Lutheran Church in Eagan, Minn., to enroll.

“It’s sort of a scramble to find the checkbook and the offering envelope on Sundays,” Pascoe said. “We don’t have to do that anymore.”

Convenience is also a draw for church members who are physically unable to attend services, Hale said.

“We have some people like shut-ins who can’t always make it to church,” Hale said. “This is perfect for them.”

Tithing electronically is “just a natural thing” given the popularity of electronic payments to cover everything from mortgages to car insurance, Hale said.

“My wife and I automatically have our house payment, our car payment, our insurance payment and other things taken out of our account,” he said. “This was just a natural thing for us.”

DEA END DANCY