While churches today are being asked to do more, they are having to accomplish it with less.

“We are constantly, and have for many years actually, tried to evaluate regularly everything that we do to make sure that we get the best ministry impact,” said Todd Wright, who pastors one of Carroll County’s largest churches, Midway Macedonia Baptist on Highway 61. “We’ll have to do that even more so now.”

While the church is still growing, its donations have not kept up with expenses and needs and the church board has had to make some tough decisions, including letting at least one employee go.

Midway Macedonia is now in the same predicament that many churches find themselves in -- as the economy has sunk into recession, the need for charity is rising, but donations are not keeping up.

Rising inflation coupled with stagnant wages means more and more people are finding themselves unable to meet their basic needs. At the same time, rising unemployment and underemployment mean that many people have fewer resources to tap to contribute to churches and other organizations that rely on donations to do their work. It’s not a regional issue, Wright said. Many other churches nationwide are feeling the same effects.

Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt told Wright that the issue is nationwide and some of the hardest hit states are Florida and Texas, Wright said.

Back in July, in the midst of the skyrocketing gas prices, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church let one of its priests, the Rev. Juan de Dios Oliveros, transfer to another parish.

“We just looked and recognized that it would be better for me to go back to what I had been doing before, which was serving both the English and the Spanish-speaking communities, than paying another priest to serve only the Spanish community,” said the Rev. Paul Williams. “That saved us enough money that we could stay on the plus side in our books.”

It also allowed the church to hire some part-time employees, such as an assistant for the youth minister, to deal with the growing number of new parishioners. The parish has had another 100 families register in the last year and is expecting similar increases this year.

Both Wright and Williams said their coffers had been affected by the high gas prices last summer. Both churches serve multi-county regions and some of their families travel a long distance to attend. When the gas prices were high, some of those families stopped attending every week and stopped donating every week.

In June, Midway Macedonia went ahead with some expansion, purchasing 22 acres of property including a church and school building from the First Redeemer Church. It was a decision made out of necessity to accommodate a growing church, Wright said.

First Redeemer Church closed this summer after seven years at its location at 3160 Highway 166 just outside Carrollton.

Gary Spangler, the former pastor of First Redeemer, said the decision to close was not made from a financial standpoint but a practical one.

“Every ounce of effort had to go to basically keeping the doors open,” said Spangler, who now attends Midway Macedonia. “We weren’t reaching people. We weren’t helping people.”

When he heard that Midway Macedonia was looking for a satellite location to expand, it seemed an ideal solution, Spangler said.

“The job of the church is needed right now, more than ever,” Wright said. “It’s a challenge. The need is always there.”

In his eyes, the church members need to become more service-oriented. Instead of sitting in the pews expecting to have a paid employee take care of the necessary work, the people in the pews need to take on more of that responsibility themselves, Wright said.

Williams noted that the Catholic church isn’t structured in a way to rely on paid help, but the recession is forcing parishioners to prioritize.

“The level of giving has remained the same,” he said. “They have maintained the same level of giving more or less, and that has required a little sacrifice. That meant they had to cut back on other areas.”

The Rev. Eddie Herring of the First United Methodist Church in Carrollton is also seeing the same level of giving at his church. The church is in the midst of its pledging process for the year and is still waiting for the results, but the economy is a worry.

“Our budget is pretty close to what it was last year,” Herring said. “We’ll have some people who for whatever reason will have to alter theirs but for the most part most people will try to meet their pledge.”

The church is putting off raises for its employees in order to keep from burdening its members, but Herring doesn’t think the donations will go down tremendously. People give to their church not because they have excess, but for spiritual reasons, he said.

“God’s not dependent on the economy,” Herring said. “Our faith is the one thing that remains constant when the economy goes up and down. Our faith stays the same.”

While Midway Macedonia was expanding, Our Lady of Perpetual Help postponed some expansion plans to keep from burdening parishioners. The church had planned to start a capital fund drive for a new $1 million youth center, but put off the project until the economy turns around and people are more able to contribute.

“It would be unfair to them and we wouldn’t make our goal,” Williams said.

Instead, he is turning his attention to creating a stable source of income for the church in the form of a trust fund, through gift annuities.

The First Baptist Church in Carrollton is also trying to prepare for hard times.

“Nobody has a crystal ball to know what it’s going to be like, but I really expect a really tough year for some people,” said Dr. Steve Davis, pastor of the church.

The church is preparing its budget at the same level or even less, making cuts where it can, he said. The church is in the midst of a building project that is going very slowly so it doesn’t overextend its members. Administrators are also trying to limit costs on big events the church hosts.

The church has had to prioritize to figure out where it can cut, he said. Utilities and salaries have to be paid.

“We’ve also had some families to lose their jobs,” Davis said. “We’ve got a fund that somebody set up years ago. We’ve helped some families through this fund.”

Churches are coping the best they can with the need and the spiritual work they are called to do. But some look at hard times as an opportunity to create a stronger church community. In tough times, people tend to turn to the spiritual for strength and guidance.

“In attendance, in baptisms and personal growth, we’re setting record numbers,” Wright said. “It’s a great time for the church to make its best headway into people’s lives because they’re going to be open to the gospel and open to spiritual things perhaps now more than ever.”