ATM Machines installed in Churches
Pastor Dale Morgan
At Church, an 'ATM for Jesus'*
Pastor Marty Baker's 'Giving Kiosks' are catching on. Members say they
use credit cards for everything else -- why not tithing?
/*Worshiping The Electronic money god*/
By Richard Fausset
Times Staff Writer
September 29, 2006
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Pastor Marty Baker preaches that the Bible is the eternal
and inviolate word of God. On other church matters, he's willing to
change with the times.
Jeans are welcome at Stevens Creek Community Church, the 1,100-member
evangelical congregation Baker founded 19 years ago. Sermons are
available as podcasts, and the electric house band has been known to
cover Aerosmith's "Dream On." A recent men's fellowship breakfast was
devoted to discussing the spiritual wages of lunching at Hooters.
It is a bid for relevance in a nation charmed by pop culture and
consumerism, and it is not an uncommon one. But Baker has waded further
into the 21st century than most fishers of American souls, as evidenced
one Wednesday night when churchgoer Josh Marshall stepped up to a
curious machine in the church lobby.
It was one of Stevens Creek's three "Giving Kiosks": a sleek black
pedestal topped with a computer screen, numeric keypad and
magnetic-strip reader. Prompted by the on-screen instructions, Marshall
performed a ritual more common in quickie marts than a house of God: He
pulled out a bank card, swiped it and punched in some numbers.
The machine spat out a receipt. Marshall's $400 donation was routed to
church coffers before he had found his seat for evening worship.
"I paid for gas today with a card, and got lunch with one," said
Marshall, 30. "This is really no different."
Baker came up with the kiosk idea a couple of years ago. He had just
kicked off a $3-million building drive, but noticed that few people
seemed to keep cash in their wallet anymore for the collection bag.
So he began studying the electronic payment business. He designed his
machine with the help of a computer programmer who attends Stevens
Creek, and found ATM companies willing to assemble it for him. In early
2005, he introduced the first machine at his church.
Since then, kiosk giving has gradually gained acceptance among his
upper-middle-class flock. The three kiosks are expected to take in
between $200,000 and $240,000 this year — about 15% of the church's
total donations.
"It's truly like an ATM for Jesus," Baker said.
This summer, Baker and his wife, Patty, began selling the devices to
other churches through their for-profit company, SecureGive. They are
its only employees, but a handful of contractors help them custom-tailor
the machines for churches.
The kiosks can let donors identify their gift as a regular tithe or
offering, or direct it to building or missionary funds. The machines
send information about the donation to a central church computer system,
which shoots the donors an e-mail confirmation.
The Bakers charge between $2,000 and $5,000 for the kiosks, which come
in a variety of configurations. They also collect a monthly subscription
fee of up to $49.95 for licensing and support. And a card-processing
company gets 1.9% of each transaction; a small cut of that fee goes to
SecureGive.
So far, seven other congregations have installed or ordered the
machines. All of them are Protestant, and most are in the South. If the
idea takes off and makes the Bakers rich, Patty says they will thank the
Lord — and give a significant sum to their church.
The concept is in its infancy, but it is part of a broader attempt among
houses of worship to boost donations using modern technology. Among the
most popular are "e-tithing" systems, which allow churchgoers to set up
automatic contributions from their bank accounts — much as they would
their Netflix dues.
But Baker — a 45-year-old preacher who grew up in the Pentecostal
churches of South Carolina — sees a more dramatic change afoot in the
culture of church giving, as Americans increasingly turn to plastic for
their everyday expenditures. That has certainly been true outside of
church: Six years ago, debit cards were used in 21% of in-store
transactions; today they account for a third of them, according to the
American Bankers Assn.
At church services, Baker said, the next few years could be comparable
to another upheaval centuries ago, when offerings of grain and animals
were replaced with what was then the newfangled medium of money.
"I'll bet that caused a stir, too," he said, chuckling.
Baker assumes many churches are not yet ready to change. The need to
generate earthly revenue can be a sensitive topic for the clergy;
lampooning their less subtle solicitations has been a sport for
generations of critics, from Chaucer to heavy-metal bands.
The Bakers have heard naysayers at trade shows mutter disapproval of the
kiosks: Some church leaders apparently fear that a technology so closely
associated with commerce might come across as crass.
"Not in our church," Baker recalls one group saying as they passed a
SecureGive display.
Those kinds of reservations emerged in Baton Rouge, La., before Baker
went into business. About three years ago, the Roman Catholic diocese
there worked with a Canadian company to produce a machine that would
accept bank card donations from churchgoers. Church officials hoped to
place it in the Cathedral of St. Joseph, an imposing Gothic Revival
building near the banks of the Mississippi River that dates to the 1850s.
It's not an Aerosmith kind of place. Church officials eventually changed
their minds.
"I think that when it actually came time to put a kiosk in the back of a
cathedral, it just wasn't quite, well — I'd like to say 'kosher,' but
we're Catholic," said Mark Blanchard, the stewardship director for the
diocese.
When the board of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church considered buying
one of Baker's machines more recently, the issues were both generational
and doctrinal. Nate Gibson, chief financial officer of the Tipp City,
Ohio, church, is 25 and reckons he'll live to see a post-cash society.
He was an early fan of the kiosk. But it took a vigorous debate before
older members of the church board decided it was appropriate.
The board had another concern: The kiosk accepted both debit and credit
cards, and Ginghamsburg advises its members to avoid credit card debt.
So the Bakers said they would tweak the machine to accept only debit cards.
Ginghamsburg's machine was delivered late last week, and Gibson expects
it to be rolled out for use in the next few days. He said that with
5,000 weekly visitors to the church, his only regret may be that he
didn't order two: Debit cards hardly seem like a passing fad.
"Things are not going backward," Gibson said. "We're not going to sit
here in 10 years and say, 'Dang, we shouldn't have put in a debit card
machine because no one's using them anymore.' "
The churches that have installed the machines are noting the changes in
the way people give. At Family Church, an evangelical congregation of
700 in West Monroe, La., some members choose the kiosk because they can
earn bonus airline miles when they charge their donations, accountant
Kristi Young said.
At Stevens Creek, volunteers such as Jeff Asselin still pass around the
wooden-handled collection bag. But Asselin said it is considerably
lighter these days — although some people who donate at the kiosk drop
their receipts in the bag as a vestige of the old ways.
"The Bible talks about bringing your offerings to the church, and they
like the feeling of dropping their offering in the plate," Patty Baker
said. "And we also believe that your offering is part of worship, so
that's how they participate."
Asselin and his wife normally donate to the church by writing a check.
But he said they had been experimenting with the kiosk — and modifying
their traditions accordingly. In the past, they would pray over their
check together, asking God to ensure it is used for good works. Now
those prayers are offered in the glow of the kiosk monitor.
At the Wednesday service, 27-year-old Sally Rice chose the traditional
method of giving. As a Gap Kids store manager, she's more familiar than
most with the way debit and credit cards work. But she hasn't made the
switch at church.
"I still balance my checkbook the old-school way — I write it all down,"
she said.
Rice, however, said she had no qualms about the machine itself. She said
she might make the switch when she runs out of checks. "I think it's cool."
The Bakers figure most people will give up on checks before they give up
on their faith. The question is whether churches will adapt.
If they do, the Bakers say they will be ready with their next idea:
donation machines that attach to the backs of pews.