Friday, August 3, 2018

Fundraising for God: Keeping Gerry Flurry's Family Jet In The Air




The Philadelphia Church of God, in its quest to imitate Herbert Armstrong in all things, decided that Gerald Flurry needed his own private jet so that he did not have to sit on public jets next to unwashed or germ-laden commoners.  An appeal was sent out to the PCG faithful to help him raise money to buy his family their own luxury private jet.  Church members held garage sales, bake sales, sold fruit, cashed in retirement programs and took loans on houses and business.  The coffers of PCG filled up.

Now, Gerald Flurry has to face the harsh reality of having to pay for this boondoggle.  All of those trips to England, Irish dance competitions, and to a select number of church areas soon started draining the coffers of God's most important work ever created in human history, as the mighty PCG boldly proclaims the Stone of Herb as the salvation seat for all humanity.

Directives have gone out from the holy city of Edmond to the faithful that they need to step up to the plate and keep Gerry's plane in the air.  They are to hold more garage sales, bake sales and to engage in any fundraising activity they can get involved in.
Illinois and Wisconsin Members Sell Concessions to Support Aircraft Fund
ILLINOIS—An average of 17 Philadelphia Church of God members from northern Illinois and from Wisconsin worked together at three separate evening events in January and February selling concessions at the Sears Centre Arena under the direction of Associate Pastor Eric Anderson and Chicago deacon Jim Privratsky Sr. 
The first event was a sell-out country music concert that took place the night of January 20. By the end of the show, 18 PCG volunteers had brought in a record-breaking sales commission of $3,080, plus $813 in cash tips.  
At the second event, 15 PCG volunteers raised $1,158 during a Monster Truck Nationals show the night of January 27.
On the night of February 3, 18 PCG volunteers raised $2,463 working a third event—a Professional Championship Bull Riders competition.
The combined profit from the three events amounted to $7,515. The funds will be added to the northeast region’s annual summer speedways and fall fruit sale proceeds and sent to headquarters in early 2019 to support the Church’s aircraft fund.
Wisconsin member Ben Tryba added, “This fundraiser was a great opportunity to spend time working with the brethren from Chicago.”
Chicago member David Privratsky noted how these types of fundraisers help unify the brethren, saying that working together was “a unique and special opportunity to interact with God’s people apart from weekly services; it helped strengthen the spiritual family bond.”
Did you notice the name of a couple people above?  Remember the Privratsky family from a few years ago?  Gerald Flurry's vile "no contact" policy led Janet Privratrsky DeGennaro to commit suicide.




Here we have her ex-husband and her ex-father-in-law raising money for the church that killed Janet.  Just how sick can people get?

The Church of God News further reports:

PCG members are being urged to take part-time jobs to help pay for Gerald Flurry’s jet – which he hasn’t used for ‘the work’ since his public appearance campaigns in January (Los Angeles) and February (Houston).
Fundraising for God’ (Philadelphia News, May-July 2018):
“God blesses us in many ways, and He asks for so little in return … tithes, holy day offerings and funds for building, airplane and other projects …
There are more than 100 Philadelphia Church of God congregations spread across the globe. Most of these congregations have few members … Even small congregations can make a big contribution through fundraising…
Chief financial officer Andrew Locher said that the Church received $200,000 in fundraiser donations in 2017…
So what are some practical fundraisers you can become involved in? Here are some ideas you can suggest to your local minister. One of the most profitable ways to earn money is to work concessions at sporting venues, which are always looking for people to staff their food and drink stands …
When I was serving as a minister in Michigan, we had a bake sale where one chocolate cake auctioned for $150! 



31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Disgusting.

These poor souls are using their entire everything to support Flurry and company's idolatrous and extravagant lifestyle. Absolutely appalling.

How many families are going hungry or being deprived of normal life's blessings so flurry can hop on an expensive jet for stupid reasons? How many people are suffering in the name of Irish dance?!

And if someone's going to buy a chocolate cake for $150 for "the work" - all I can say is that better be some dang good chocolate in that ol' cake. We're talking dark, double, fudge-laden chocolate that'll make you make a most "forbidden sound" that might be mentioned in some sort of "dimension" book. But I know a way to spoil the chocolate fun! Buy some "devil's food" cake mix and put that in there! ;)

It's all waste and vanity.

Anonymous said...

The part that says "God blesses us.. but asks for SO LITTLE IN RETURN ..tithes..offerings..funds" is embarrassing to read. One definition of money is stored productive energy. It represents peoples time and effort. It's life itself. It is not SO LITTLE. It's EVERYTHING.

Claiming that what the other party has to offer is near worthless (mentioned in proverbs) is a shrewd negotiation ploy, but dishonest, especially for a minister of religion.

Glenn said...

This outcome was obvious to anyone who spent 5 seconds thinking about it. The airplane, the Edstone campus in England, the Oklahoma campus, the concert/performance series, and his extended family will suck ol' Gerald's bank account dry. If any bank was dumb enough to lend him money they should be getting nervous.

Anonymous said...

They have to give their tips too? What a scam.

Allen Dexter said...

Unbelievable! We were dumb back there in the mid-twentieth century, but a great many of us wised up about 1975. We had been taking notice and knew something was screwy. What's it going to take to wise these people up? A f---ing jet is nothing but a money pit with it's gaping maw open every day and night. It has to be hangared, maintained, licensed, fueled, etc. The pilot and staff has to be paid regularly whether that plane flies or not. These people, if they voted, would surely support that money sucking and wasting president we have. This is small peanuts by comparison, but they're a small, poor group of people. Blindness knows no bounds. If I have a garage sale, that money is mine! No idiot like him is going to get it.

Anonymous said...

Fred Dattolo was always encouraging us to do fundraising in Canada. One year it was to sell flower bulbs for Mother's day. Other times it was yard sales which being such small groups for some of us was not feasible. We felt so guilty we would give of our own money instead.

EX-PCG said...

Jesus then admonished the Pharisees. “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Mat 9:13). He was quoting the prophet Hosea, who, centuries earlier, had condemned the Jews for attempting to excuse their idolatry and their oppression of the poor by offering the prescribed animal sacrifices.

God always values “mercy” over “sacrifice.” We all know that there is little mercy in PCG.

Anonymous said...

i have trouble believing in a God who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent... but is broke and needs your money.

Anonymous said...

Gerald Flurry is living the opulent lifestyle of a modern day Pharisee. The money source is the same as in Jesus time and the burden on the brethren in 2018 is no less than the burden on the ordinary Jews 2000 years ago.
They were condemmed by Jesus when he walked amongst them, as whitewashed,lime dusted sepchulars. No difference in this modern day.
The corruption must stink to the third heaven.



Anonymous said...

The 1986 movie 'The Money Pit' starring Tom Hanks was made for a reason. It's a financial drain/nightmare that many fall into.

Where are the open doors for which the plane purchase was justified? It's like a cargo cult. Create the outline, and magic will make the desired outcome a reality.

Interweaving God and the bible with any point of view/ideolgy makes for devastingly effective deception. It pains me to say it, cause I've been a victim, but it's true.

Anonymous said...

those folks are as deceived as any Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/Buddhist out there....

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Gerry’s taking a page out of Pack’s playbook.

What About The Truth said...

When the subject of money is associated with a COG it is the lay membership who is responsible to fund the extravagant lifestyle decisions made by their leaders while at the same time the leaders are preaching about the need of their members to live modestly.

Why is it that these leaders make costly fanciful decisions claiming to be stepping out on faith and then guilt and fear their members into paying for it?

When Dave Pack acquired land and started to build buildings with loans from banks, he stated that "little do these banks know, we will be off to the Place of Safety in 5 years and these banks will never get their money back". Fast forward seven years, and guess who has and is paying those banks? The number two doctrine of the RCG became pay your "common" and fund-raise, and the number one doctrine is you have to believe and obey all that the church teaches. So the members are told to sell all their possessions and live by faith while the leader of RCG lives by every dollar he can coerce out of his membership.

The question every church member should be asking is; Is this how God would be doing his supposed final end time message as a witness to all nations? From the point of view of most outsiders there is a lot of "fluff and puff" but where is the witness?

Anonymous said...

None of the ACOGs would recognize the end time events in advance in order to warn the world in the first place. They weren’t expecting an attack on our soil coming from Arab nations on 9-11 (they’ve always been waiting for the Germans), and they’d never expect a Republican president to get the rest of the world hating us and to ruin the economy.

So far as an end times message is concerned, despite their so-called “test commandment” and the understanding it supposedly brings, Armstrongism became divided and of confused tongue with the splintering in the ‘90s.

DennisCDiehl said...

?The variable costs of operating a Gulfstream G450 vary according to the number of hours operated and distance traveled. Assuming 423 operational hours per year, and 175,000 nautical miles traveled, annual variable expenses of $1,616,591 can be expected. The largest of these variable expenses is fuel costs, estimated at $2,280 per hour from a total variable cost of $3,822 per hour. The table below shows the breakdown of variable hourly costs and assumes a fuel price of $4.41 per gallon and a usage of 517 gallons per hour. Maintenance labour charges are assumed to be $105 per hour, with 1.12 maintenance hour required per flight hour.?"

Seems the Brethren bought Gerald a couple hours in the air and if you include all other costs...

Variable Cost per Year
$1,616,591

Fixed Cost per Year
$878,884

Depreciation
$4,315,000

Total Annual Costs
$6,810,475

Costs per hour

$16,100

Crew Salaries - Captain
$144,000

Crew Salaries - Co Pilot
$108,000

Crew Salaries - Flight Attendant
$76,966

Crew Salaries - Benefits
$98,690

Hangar - Typical
$81,300

Insurance - Hull
$34,520

Insurance - Single Limit Liability
$12,500

Recurrent Training
$107,200

Aircraft Modernization
$33,333

Navigation Chart Service
$18,325

Refurbishing
$154,350

Computer Maintenance Program
$9,000

Weather Service
$700

Total Fixed Cost per Year
$878,884

….they probably didn't even earn him enough to push "Start Engines"

https://sherpareport.com/aircraft/costs-gulfstream-g450.html



Anonymous said...

Dennis,
I wonder if any PCG members ever looked up the operating costs of the G450 on the internet like you did. They don’t have a clue what that G450 costs. Good job of pointing out the various expenses.
Jim-AZ

Anonymous said...

Dennis,

You may safely deduct about $500,000 from your itemized expense list, to allow for the fact that aircraft staff are already on the PCG payroll and doing "double duty" or are donating their time (as in the case of Church member pilots), and that the hangar is surely on PCG property and essentially free.

In fact, if PCG accountants play it right, they can probably take advantage of the jet's depreciation to camouflage other PCG losses associated with their albatross-Auditorium.

HWA was an expert at convincing people to identify themselves with his extravagant expenses. People who could barely afford a car felt warm inside that they were making HWA's jet travel possible. Wouldn't you agree that donating money so your church can relive WCG's glory days is likely to be a more inspiring waste of money than, for example, donating to put new carpet in an office with a panoramic view of the Giant Eagle supermarket?

nck said...

Crew Salaries - Captain
$144,000

Yes, that is correct.

The book of revelation speaks of the "sealed 144.000" for the wings of an eagle.

nck

Anonymous said...

Dennis.

If the PCG took the amounts you listed above, and divided them out to all the PCG members, I don't think one of them would go hungry or have an unpaid bill to their name.

All that money and where is it going? For the elite of that "church" to run around and act all that.

The members of the PCG are throwing their life's work to support an egomaniac who wanted a big jet and wants to be big and important like Herbert.

They're giving all of this money to someone who is idolizing a rock. a ROCK!

and about that rock. Is there a difference between condemning a cross as an idol, and then worshiping a rock as an idol? Give me a freaking break already! Jesus Christ DIED on a Cross - and yes, an actual roman cross used for crucifixions, and they can't look at a cross because it's origins are so pagan. Show them a rock that a high-school drop out salesman they think knelt at but didn't, and they drool over it like it's some sort of aphrodisiac. I can't even.

Unknown said...

Great, as a member of PCG , you can operate your own "lemonade stand" right in your own front yard in order to give "more offering to the church".

Why doesnt Flurry just cut to the chase, be honest about and require all members , male or female, or any age, to become "street walkers" , or minimally , beg for money at freeway offramps.

GERALD FLURRY = PIMPER OF THE BRETHREN

Allen Dexter said...

Thanks for the figures I was too lazy to look up, Dennis. Anyone who runs a cost vs. benefit analysis on this boondoggle has to be astounded at the sheer idiocy of it all. But, then, it isn't any money out of my pocket. I woke up a long time ago.

Anonymous said...

A comment was made that about 500,000 could be deducted from Dennis’s estimated costs. Crew costs are already on payroll and plane hangering would be free because it would be on PCG property. A hanger would need to be built and maintained. Pilots have to have recurrent training every 6 months. A paved runway of a least 5000 feet would have to be built and maintained. The pavement has to be able to bear the weight of a G-450. They would need to have an instrument landing system such as ILS. The runway would have to meet FAA standards. It would require inspections at given times. With the weather that central Oklahoma gets, they would need a facility that is up to date. I don’t think all this would be exactly free. Paving and maintaining such a facility is not cheap.
Jim-AZ

Anonymous said...

I know Grant Turgeon and Paris Turgeon (Gerry's grandkids) serve as stewards on the plane. But who are the pilots?

Anonymous said...

The only positive I see in Gerald Flurry having a jet is that it might crash. Of course, he could also slip in the shower.

Dumbhead said...

nck,

maybe someone makes 666,000 and then we may have found man of sin:)

Stevereno said...

Does anyone know if Gerald Flurry met with any world leaders since he got the plane? That was his number one reason or getting it if I recall. Ya know, like HWA meeting with world leaders to not talk about God. And if he has met with any is there any kind of recording made where PCG members could listen to it? After all they are paying for Flurry's high class travel.

Anonymous said...

From the PCG twitter feed you can see the plane is flown from different airports. They might be in some kind of exclusive plane owners club, pay a yearly fee and have access to various hangars and runways and pilots.

Anonymous said...

AZ Jim @ 12:40AM seems to have forgotten that PCG's compound already has an airstrip; Flurry bragged about it years ago when he first purchased the property. He also seems not to realize that PCG member pilots already need their recurrent training, whether or not they are flying GRF, so this is not a cost borne by PCG. No, PCG's jet boondoggle isn't cheap, but Dennis's estimate was rather on the high side.

Anonymous said...

There are also what amounts to timeshares of jets, motorhomes, and other luxury transportation.

To determine what size corporations generally need to be in order to support a corporate jet, the best way would be to analyze the financial statistics of companies that do. We’d quickly see where PCG stood within that range, if indeed it was inside of the range at all.

I suspect that PCG could easily support a Piper Cub or Cessna, but a Gulfstream is a stretch.

Allen Dexter said...

People who are smart and frugal travel in what makes economic sense. Our second car, which we use most of the time instead of the gas guzzling Town and Country, is a little Chevy Spark. Not great on luxury features, but when I gassed it up this morning after a month, it took less than $20 worth even at these inflated prices. We drive as little as possible even then. Having that big jet is such an obvious case of runaway lust for status and show as one can imagine. Chartering occasionally would make a lot more sense, but who wants to accuse an HWA wannabe with having fiscal sense?

Anonymous said...

The plane is being used to do the Personal Appearance Campaigns, Gerald Flurry never mentioned about meeting world leaders.