While the Living Church of God has had to publicly admit it had to cut back on its ability to preach its gospel message due to an income drop, Church of God a Worldwide Association has just announced they have had a substantial increase in income over the last three years so-much-so that they can now enlarge their media empire with new hires and gospel outreach.
This has to frost the butts of UCG, Gerald Weston, and Bob Thiel as they all languish trying to find money to do their pet projects and spread their so-called gospel messages.
From a COGWA source:
April 11, 2022
Dear Brethren,
In my most recent member letter, I wrote that it was my last letter prior to the Passover. But today I have such good news to share that I have chosen to write to you once again! Because of the increase in our annual income for the past two fiscal years and now continuing into the third year, we are ready to make a major investment in preaching the gospel.
Last year our increase in income made it possible for us to pay off two mortgages (one in East Texas and the second here in McKinney), thereby saving the Church approximately $230,000 per year. Our 2022 fiscal budget contained a substantial increase—some 30 percent—for Media to preach the gospel. But we weren’t ready in January to decide where those funds should go. We needed a plan, and after several weeks of meetings and many hours of discussion, Clyde Kilough, operation manager for Media, and the Media department have come forward with a series of proposals for investing these additional funds in our public proclamation efforts, beginning immediately.
My purpose for writing another letter prior to the Passover is to share the details of our updated Media plan with all of you. This plan will require some new hires in Media, and locating the right people will take time. But the other items will begin right away (some have actually already been implemented). Attached to this letter is a report from Mr. Kilough giving an overview of what we have planned. I hope you will be as excited as we are when you read the details.
Matthew 24:14 and 28:19-20 describe our mission to take the gospel message, the good news of the Kingdom of God, to a troubled world. In furthering that mission, the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, has made the commitment to advance the preaching of the gospel this fiscal year (2022) by more than 30 percent when compared to last year!
Please be assured that our focus on Media will not distract us from the second part of our mission— caring for the brethren. We have created a new educational program for pastors, we’re restarting the International Leadership Program in May and through our International Fund we are taking care of the congregational needs of brethren around the world. We are committed to preaching the gospel and caring for the brethren and doing both to the best of our ability with the resources that God has provided. We now have the resources to do more in one year than we have done in a decade.
I believe you will agree with me that it is great to have some good news for a change. Trials, suffering, wars and rumors of wars surround us, but they cannot defeat us. Please have a meaningful and inspiring Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread, focusing, once again, on God’s plan of salvation—the creation of His family.
Sincerely, your brother in Christ,
Jim Franks
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Upon learning of the financial boost to our department, a Media team met a number of times to brainstorm the needs and possibilities in three areas: video, editorial and engagement. From an initial list of about 25 projects—far more than what we could possibly do—we narrowed it down to the top 10 priority needs and what is actually manageable with our personnel and budget.
Some of these projects are going to be new, major, highly visible steps for the Church—more on these in a moment. Others are projects unseen by most people, but very important to the work.
1. Engagement. One of our greatest needs is to develop ongoing relationships with our visitors, engaging and encouraging them to use Life, Hope & Truth more thoroughly and frequently. Every month we gain several thousand new leads (those who download materials or subscribe to publications). These leads are very important because they have demonstrated more than casual interest, and they’re likely more interested in receiving other material. We need to reach back to them, which we can do by implementing workflows (a series of automatically triggered emails sent at regular intervals to offer related material) and email campaigns. While cost-effective, it’s labor-intensive and dependent on having personnel dedicated to the tasks.
Another engagement tool we can easily implement is a regular coworker letter from the president, and these will start soon. Our growing number of coworkers are valued members of the Church’s efforts to preach the gospel, and we want them to feel involved and know that their contributions are highly appreciated.
2. Editorial. We’re targeting several major projects in editorial content development. Discern is one of our highest quality products, covering a wide variety of doctrine, prophecy and Christian living subjects. People need Discern, and we want to see greater numbers accessing both the digital and the print versions, so we’re going to increase promotional efforts through investing in advertising and through email and social media campaigns. And, in order to give subscribers more frequent exposure to Discern, we sent out our first online bonus edition in early March. The bonus edition will be sent in the alternating months when we don’t have a print version, so every month subscribers will get either a print or digital Discern.
Life, Hope & Truth currently offers a vast array of content—literally thousands of blogs and articles!—educating people about God’s truth. But many people face a big challenge today in that while they want to follow God, they struggle with serious issues that hold them back. We see a need to help people understand and deal with such issues from a spiritual perspective, so addressing relevant social topics, such as sexuality, addiction and emotional problems, is going to be an area of increased focus.
We are also expanding and developing new blogging strategies to have more consistent writing on topics that are SEO (search engine optimization) driven. This will require a wider pool of skilled writers with different writing styles and expertise, assigning topics for new content rather than relying on volunteer submissions, and also updating and refreshing old content (both blogs and articles)
All of these editorial projects require skilled personnel, and I’m very happy to announce that
we have just hired another full-time writer, which will help us immensely.
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3. Video. Now—in what will be the biggest steps forward in Media since Life, Hope & Truth was launched—we are going to create a regular LHT program, a regular LHT podcast, and ramp up the assembly of video “shorts.”
As mentioned earlier, LHT is incredibly strong in written content—it provides excellent teaching and witnessing of the gospel through the written word. But we have lacked the same depth of preaching—ministers personally delivering the gospel through strong “evangelizing” on a regular full-length program. We need voices to give the gospel the type of power that can come only through the spoken word. Furthermore, increasing video production will not only bolster LHT’s rankings, but it can be placed on many other video outlets. YouTube, for example, is the second largest search engine in the world, and we need to be available on that— and all other venues possible—in video form.
Podcasts are already extremely popular and are increasingly gathering larger audiences. They reach people on the go, and young people especially really use them. This is another avenue for preaching the gospel through social media outlets, as well as on LHT.
And, while we already have several dozen video “shorts” (3- to 6-minute videos that accompany LHT articles and are posted on the Church’s YouTube channel), we could produce literally hundreds more. These offer quick explanations of various biblical topics—difficult to understand scriptures, biblical terms and definitions, etc.—specific issues people are asking about.
Steadily churning out such new videos will require a lot of planning and hiring several new employees, not only in the areas of technical production but also for presentation. We can only be strong in production if we have more people dedicated to it, both as writers and presenters. Some big decisions lie ahead. How will we determine who, and how many, would be well-suited for presenting the gospel through video? What are the best formats for programs and podcasts? How can we most effectively promote and place these programs? Can the same presenters for video also do the podcasts? What about production for other video formats, such as TikTok?
This is only the briefest overview of the projects at hand. Even with hiring new staff in several positions, these undertakings are ambitious, and they won’t happen overnight. For example, while we have some prospective employees in video, they may not be available immediately. And it will take a while to put the programs together and have the right presenters selected and in place. But it will come!
It is exciting to be laying the groundwork for these major steps forward in preaching the gospel. And we are confident that, just as God has opened the doors financially, He will also provide the personnel and guide our plans. We have a dedicated team here at the office, and we know God’s people will be fully behind our efforts with their prayers and support.
14 comments:
I see that Bob Thiel had to claim his income is up.
Real estate prices have gone through the roof in many countries. So it's not surprising that as the membership dies off, their estates enrich their churches.
10:55. Do you really trust Bob Thiel to tell the truth about his income? When you only have 3-400 tithe paying members an increase of 30.00 is substantial in his eyes.
Church is a business in our day and time.
COGWA paying off the mortgage already will be a bonus. Maybe UCG before the split shouldn't have been so head strong against the new build ?
COGWA experiencing a boom in finances and expanding it's media puts more stress and importance on who UCG choose as the next UCG President. Especially when the road between COGWA and UCG is a frequently travelled one both ways. Interesting times.
Dozens more will be "enlightened" to the "truth" of British-Israelism
Cogwa's big increases are mostly hot air, there's no tv or radio broadcast. Have they actually increased their assistance to the needy? No they have not from any source that I have heard about. So, what are they really doing with all that money no one ever gets a clear picture like they did in the old world wide which even they did the smoke and mirrors type of accounting bamboozle? tHey used price Waterhouse until they were found doing some strange type of bookkeeping. The IRS seemed to have a different way of counting. lOl
what are they really doing with all that money
They're hiring the children and grandchildren of ministers to do Internet work that is supposed to impress people who aren't that knowledgeable about where Web advertising fits in the broad spectrum of customer engagement. COGWA's announcement is basically a slap in the face against UCG's highly produced but ineffective television efforts. On the other hand, it's a backhanded endorsement of the "Jelly" (silly short-form videos) approach favored by some in UCG.
The PCG Cult and NOT Preaching the Gospel
The PCG cult has the biggest financial advantage of all.
Gerald Flurry and his PCG cult officially teach that preaching the gospel ended with the death of Herbert W. Armstrong in 1986. Gerald claimed that his PCG cult had been given a new commission for a new church era. Gerald claimed that his PCG cult's commission is to warn the Laodiceans. This is all spelled out in Gerald's little Malachi's Mess. book.
The PCG cult has not spent any money at all on preaching the gospel in the past 30+ years. $0.00. Zero. Doughnut. Nothing.
All the money goes to Gerald Flurry and his new commission to rage away against any Worldwide Church of God people who did not go along with him and his PCG cult in suppressing the gospel over the past 30+ years.
For many years now, there is the claim by several COG groups of "expanded media presence", but seldom is there a report of "expanded results" of more butts in the seats.
The UCG for example, in COE reports , have only about 70 new baptisms a year, and it is likely that much more than half of those are "in house" second generation UCG folks. Thus for many millions of dollars expended each year, and a million dollar cost media center, the results are paltry.
Same goes for the other COGS as well. Having an acquisition cost of some $100k per new member is astounding actually. LDS , arguably a weird cultish religion that is not mainstream, have missionaries that go out for evangelism. The average missionary gets about 2 new converts in their 2 year mission.
The COGS could do better and cheaper, by following the LDS model, and just pay a bounty of lets say $50k per new member recruited , which would be cheaper than the methodology now.
Maybe go the AMWAY route, and receive overrides on the amount of tithe money that a recruit you bring in contributes. Something like a tithe of the tithe of a direct recruit, and an additional 1% override for the rest of your downline production! LOL!
The COGs getting their fingers in estates is thankfully a relatively short lived model. There’s not going to be enough estates in the pipeline once the people that were around in the Armstrong years are gone.
The elitist cogwads only care about their income and retirements, and by flying below the radar escape detection when in reality they are one of the most abusive, heartless and non-caring cogs on the manipulative market.
cogwa is the epitome of the cogs masquerading as sheep in wolves clothing. While the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of many cog leaders are blatantly apparent, cogwa lies low in a sinister way. Judgmental and condemning attitudes from the self-righteous hirelings are as rampant in cogwa as in other cogs, but just more carefully concealed. cogwa is a splinter founded on lies and slander more than anything biblical, harshly ruled by the cronyism, and for the financial support of, the good ole boy's country clubbers. It is a whited sepulcher to beware of.
Spiritual inbreeding and indoctrination from the AC and WCG years have seemingly produced a limited genetic pool in the cogs, no matter what their differences, as each claims either directly or by inference to be the only true cog.
In COGWA? or LCG ?
“As LCG Cuts Its Budget For Spreading Its Gospel, COGWA Makes a Big Jump Forward With Its Message”
The barely Living Church of Rod came up with such things as its two-fold or hybrid gospel message, marriage supper in heaven idea, and falling away in the world teaching, because it was full of leaders who wanted to make up their own teachings in order to put their own doctrinal stamp on their own religion business. Since some people might be suspicious of “doctrinal changes,” the LCG leaders called their new teachings “doctrinal upgrades” instead.
Roderick C. Meredith was such a competitive type that he just had to mess with something really big like the gospel by adopting Protestant ideas to try to show that he was smarter than Herbert W. Armstrong.
The LCG has come under the apostle Paul's double curse on those who pervert the gospel and will need to cut back even more.
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