The State of the Southeast Conference and Seventh-day Adventists within the Church and Religious GroupsIdentification Industry's "About 270,000 religious congregations in the United States have a combined annual income of $80 billion. . Just over 50 percent of Americans belong to a religious congregation. In terms of membership, the largest religious denominations in the United States are Catholic (about 25 percent of the population); Baptist (16 percent); Methodist (7 percent); Lutheran (5 percent); Presbyterian (3 percent); Pentecostal (2 percent); and Episcopalian (2 percent). Church membership statistics are notoriously unreliable. » (Hoover, 2008) “The size of individual congregations varies. Catholic congregations have an average of 2,400 members; Jewish congregations, 1,500; Baptist congregations, 580; Methodist congregations, 300; and fundamentalist Christian congregations, 180. About 50,000 congregations have 1,000 or more members, including about 25,000 Catholic congregations. Congregations are generally limited in size due to the practical necessity of meeting for religious services. Geographic proximity and the physical size of a church building are limiting factors, as is members' desire to be personally known to the clergy. Many congregations may coexist in the same geographic area due to the diversity of religious beliefs in most American communities. (Hoover's 2008) This is the industry within which I find the organization of which I am a part, the Southeast Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. This is an environmental analysis of this organization. The macroeconomic variables that affect my organization as well as the internal variables that relate to these different macroeconomic variables will be addressed in this environmental analysis. External macroeconomic variables: how they affect the Church. Societal changes: changing member preferences. Government changes: new legislation: impacts what can and cannot be preached Economic changes Changes in real personal income: impacts on tithing Competitive changes: new competition, new products Supplier changes: number of ordained and licensed clergy I be part. I will discuss two of the macroeconomic variables most relevant to this industry and how they affect the environment for this assignment. The organization I belong to is the Southeast Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. It is a conference of Seventh-day Adventist churches located in the South Georgia and Florida area. The two macroeconomic factors that I believe are affecting this industry are economic changes. I will describe how the job market and how this has affected tithing within the Church. “By comparing the gross domestic GDP of each country