It looks like the folks in England don't care too much about UGG's Beyond Today, a bad imitation of the old Plain Truth.
Prayers for Subscriber Renewal in the British Isles
October 7, 2021
David Fenney, chief executive officer of UCG-British Isles and pastor of the Preston, Sheffield, Ballymena and Stirling congregations, mentions an ongoing challenge with a very low renewal rate for Beyond Today magazine. He wrote: “Recently our subscription level grew to nearly 10,000 copies per issue, but now it is dropping back as subscribers do not renew as the end of their 6-issue subscription approaches. Prayers would be much appreciated that subscribers will be increasingly motivated to renew and that our office personnel can be inspired to enhance our renewal process if and where necessary.”
Thank you in advance for your prayers!
—Peter Eddington, Media and Communications Services
17 comments:
If you can't deal with rejection Pete, maybe you are in the wrong line of work. People are more sophisticated now than they were in the times of HWA. They don't attach terribly much value to anything that is free. The are also accustomed to manipulation being based on supposedly dire emergencies. That's why so many people initially believed that Covid 19 was a hoax, and some still do. It's just the way things are.
UCG advertisements often misrepresent the magazine. Naturally, then, people ask for it, innocently assuming the magazine will be what was promised. When they've had six issues and realize they were duped, they don't renew.
The articles on Beyond Today are so fundamental that they are boring. There's never any new or novel ways of looking at anything. By contrast, conservative sites are saturated with interesting facts and counter arguments to the left wings ongoing assault on Christian values. The UCG's no new information or ways at looking at things must a deliberate policy of keeping the sheep ignorant and dumbed down.
Growing in wisdom and understanding is a personal responsibility and should never be sub contracted out to some corporate church. They eat you alive for the crumbs that they hand out.
The renewal rate for the Beyond Today is less than 50% after the first year, and then declines 25% per year thereafter. Thus after just 5 years the amount of original subscribers still on the list is just around 12% or so.
Thus the constant marketing to try and fill the pipelines with new subscribers by using newspaper inserts or the like. The other COGS suffer from similar stats.
UCG spent $1 million for a new studio but does not have any major television coverage in the USA, with only a few local cable access channels in its TV Log. Fewer than 100 people have been baptized in the last year in the whole USA, with virtually all of them relatives/children of current members. The amount of outsiders coming in is virtually nil.
UCG is dead in the water, with virtually no growth, an aging membership, and no producing marketing. It is slowly fading into the sunset as obsolete , stuck in marketing, governmental and sociological constraints from the past, with no desire to recreate or innovate to be relevant in the present.
“England Ignoring UCG Literature”
Good for England!
The UCG will talk and talk and talk, and write and write and write, but in the end it is full of godless behavior. It is a complete waste of time and money.
Rebels you've gone too far this time.
Hmmmmmmmm why post this NO2HWA??? Strange and weird. Would you turn on your own now ??
This and the fact that I was listening to a Buffalo Springfield CD from back in the day as I went to the QT this morning to gas up for the week, and get a large Mocha got me to thinking of the better reception the World Tomorrow and Plain Truth got back in the day. Buffalo Springfield was on top when I was a young Amballador Cossage student, but most of the AC students never heard them because rock n roll was banned by HWA. What I didn't realize back then was that there was an interesting synchronization ongoing in that just as WCG and GTA and the PT were reaching their zenith, the country seemed as if it were falling apart. Conservative mainstream people were totally freaked by the fact that it appeared that all of the nation's youth was rebelling against the draft, staging demonstrations and chanting "Hell no! We won't go!, dressing in "homeless chic" and skipping their baths, also doing prodigious amounts of mind-altering drugs. Consequently, a little third world (at the time) nation was whooping our butts. The dollar was sliding against the gold standard, environmental pollution was incredibly bad, and the media seemed to be popularizing and glorifying the counter culture. But, somehow we were all encouraged, because it seemed as if more and more people were turning to the WCG for answers at the time. Little did we know that by the end of the '70s, many of these national factors would have turned themselves around, and that the WCG would have blown it with their blatant setting of dates, and then lying denial. In the meantime, we got to listen to an amazing array of rock n roll, and what an incredible sound track it was!
If anything, conditions are more dire at this point. America is polarized. Climate change is totally undeniable now, and incredibly, a huge segment of the population has bought into ridiculous fairy tales, a fact which has galvanized them and some of their politicians are actually suggesting secession. But, where is the end time Elijah who was supposed to get the message out with great power??? America is breaking bad once again, only this time, Armstrongism has reached its lowest point in decline. Surely, the tithe payers to all of the little splinters must see this and realize it, at least those from the baby boomer generation who remember the impact we were having back in the '60s and early '70s. The cookie cutter nostalgia imitations of the PT are serving up refried beans of the stuff that worked for HWA during the '60s, and it's quite obvious that it doesn't work today! Not that any of it is even visible. You can know this because the street buzz we had back then is nonexistent today! What I find shocking is that anyone in the ACOGs finds this shocking.
Despite the weight of the world, I did get a little chuckle. As I stared at the $44.76 price tag for my fill up, I noticed that someone had actually stuck a little die cut self adhesive sticker of a smiling Joe Biden on the tank, pointing to the gas price, and captioned "I did that!" As I drove away, "For What it's Worth" was blaring from my speakers, bringing back more memories of a bygone era, which had seemed bad at the time, but in reality was so much better than what we are dealing with today. Based on what ultimately happened back then, I can't help but believe that we will get this all turned around once again within a few years. The human animal is quite resourceful, after all.
These churches can't write anything new because few of them have learnedd anything new. They think that since HWA received God's truths, he received ALL of God's truths. "We know everything, nothing more to learn, thank you." Their idea of "growing in grace and knowledge" is simply repeating the same messages, in the same style.
When I see some of the leaders of these churches approaching retirement, some I knew at AC, I think, "What a waste. All those years with so little good fruit to show for it."
UCG in Latin America begins to fade, in Santiago de Chile it begins to die, from 140 attendees in 2010 after the division with COGWA, today they reach only 50 people, that is, less than a third of the original post-division membership.
UCG today does not generate any interest given the lukewarm way of applying its beliefs and in Chile the nepotic scheme where the same actors distribute the positions has discouraged the membership in general.
COGWA, on the other hand, despite its growth, carries a very large backpack of guilt and cannot explain to its members why the leaders are elected by votes against what the writing says or because they maintain the meeting room that they stole from UCG.
Alas, for the Armstrong churches. So much competition out there today.
With compelling messages of hope and grace and meaning for the individual.
It is the internet and social media I believe that have sped up the demise of these groups with the ready availability of information, that exposes the flaws in so much of their theology and the misdeeds of their ‘shepherds’. A house built on sand will at some time fall. And we are witnesses to this truth. The message of salvation will indeed go out, with or without these groups who will slip into obscurity.And be just a ‘blimp’ in time in humanities quest for answers. But that does not mean God is dead or asleep. The work of salvation continues, He chooses the hows and whys for each one of us individually.
Oh, you mean the magazine that proclaims British people are descended from the Israelite tribe of Ephraim, a "truth" "received" (actually recycled) by High-School-Dropout HWA (no evidence being given to support this extraordinary claim)
Good perspective contribution.
The blog post writers are showing their ancient age with this post. Who says UCG is defined by the magazine outreach anymore? To put all emphasis on a physical paper magazine is about 10 years or more behind the times.
Do UCG say that the paper magazine is all they have? No, they don't. United's website is outstanding and leaves all the other COG websites in it's shadow. UCG's recent music 'movement' is hugely popular amongst the brethren, it's cutting edge, highly professional and again all other COG groups, including COGWA, can only watch and try to copy.
UCG in the internet realm is leading the way amongst the Church of God movement. It's being noticed and it will inspire more to achieve. May our good God inspire them and us all.
This blog is stuck in the past, and can only complain about the past. You offer no solutions. This blog is stuck in the past because the future of the Church is not yours to claim.
While some say we should "grow in grace and knowledge", I've seen the prevailing view in the ministry since 1995 has been "contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." That is, the truth is regarded as locked-in and complete; the essential task is to safeguard it from a repeat of the Tkaches et al of 1995. So UCG is well prepared for a long stasis, while thinking stasis is a triumph.
“England Ignoring UCG Literature”
Why should anyone read UCG literature? It does not do any good. The people who hang out at the UCG do not seem to read, or believe, or obey, the UCG literature. They just go to the UCG to spout off their own religious theories that contradict all sound doctrine.
Take a HINT and dissolve your worthless corporate structure!!
Post a Comment