The Value of a Congregation

From the Sept. 12th New Yorker. Malcolm Gladwell, "Letter from Saddleback: The Cellular Church," pp. 60-67, we find this passage, on page. 62:

Ram Cnaan, a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, recently estimated the replacement value of charitable work done by the average American church-- that is, the amount of money it would take to equal the time, money, and resources donated to the community by a typical congregation -- and found that it came to about a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year. In the city of Philadelphia, for example, that works out to an annual total of two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of community "good;" on a national scale the contribution of religious groups to the public welfare is, as Cnaan puts it, "staggering." In the past twenty years, as the enthusiasm for publicly supported welfare has wanted, churches have quietly and steadily stepped in to fill the gaps.

That's a lot of nickels in the collection plate.