One thing the church of God has always been good at, particularly regarding numbers pushing, is how well they could miniplate numbers to make them look better than they actually are.
Before the great apostasy of the mother church and the birthing of hundreds of harlot daughters, the accounting department manager admitted that they could take any number and make it look good and therefore beneficial as propaganda for the church.
With all of the splinter groups, it has been a numbers game from day one. Each has to be the biggest and best COG doing a work as the world has never seen. Just look at Bob Thiel's blustering about his group. No one in any COG has a one-eyed monster as sueprfantabulous as his. It's the biggest and bestest COG to ever exist in human history! No COG can ever compare to his nor can it ever do as big a work as he is.
That blustering, particularly by a heretical apostate of the Living Church of God has to frost their butts at times, which leads Weston and others to whip theirs out and claim they are bigger and better.
Dear Brethren,
On November 12, 2021, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Churches Changed During the Pandemic and Many Aren’t Going Back.” The article discussed declining attendance in mainline churches. “The number of churchgoers has steadily dropped in the U.S.… Covid-19 and its lockdown restrictions accelerated that fall. In-person church attendance is roughly 30% to 50% lower than it was before the pandemic, estimates Barna Group, a research firm that studies faith in the U.S.”
The article went on to say, “Barna Group’s research suggests that tens of thousands of churches are at risk of closing because of membership declines and other long-term problems that the pandemic made worse. A dip in tithes and offerings is forcing some to prepare for permanently smaller budgets, with less real estate, fewer staff members and smaller programs.”
This is not the case everywhere—and we are happy to report that the Living Church of God has bucked the trend. God has blessed us with far more than mere survival. We continue to see the Work of the Church going forward at an increasing pace. One might have expected that finances would drop off with many out of work—preventing us from expanding—but just the oppositetranspired! Regular tithes and offerings increased, and special donations gave us a real boost. Instead of laying off employees, we took on several new ones, including ministers. We also increased the number of issues of Tomorrow’s World Magazine each year from six to ten, and our subscription list increased by more than 230,000 from January 2020 to January 2022! How encouraging it is that the Work shot forward with ever-greater impact during the last two pandemic-stricken years.
This is good—no, wonderful—news. But the world around us has also changed dramatically in the last two years, and most of those changes are not so wonderful. Quite the contrary—our world, whether we look close to home or more broadly, is angry and fragmenting.
The only problem with all these COG groups is that when you get past all their blustering and chest-thumping, the vast majority of humanity has never heard of them. They have no real presence anywhere and the readership of their propaganda rags is minuscule. None of them have a real presence in their communities nor take part in their communities to the extent they let their lights shine magnificently. The COG has always been great at hiding their light under the bushel basket.
The only thing one needs to examine a COG group anymore is this:
17 comments:
Let the fiscal year end, bloated numbers game begin. Tally thus far, LCG 1, Tiny Bob 0. PCG 1, RCG O.
Too bad none of them have Jesus. If they had the slightest notion of His blessings, this numbers charade would not even enter their minds, much less their spreadsheets. What difference does it make if one has more employees or the other has more members, if none of them have Jesus? They just don't get it and likely never will. An entire life's work that adds up to a big, fat 0.
The problem with LCG's boasting is that, at this point in church history, according to LCG: BIGGEST = LAODICEAN. They can't call themselves a "Philadelphia remnant" if they are the largest ACOG.
He mostly kept it under wraps for several years after coming to Charlotte, but Weston is starting to display in Charlotte the same oversized ego he was known for in Kansas City and in Canada. When Weston had someone over him he would grudgingly listen to reason, but more and more he is going back to his old "my way or the highway" pattern that he has displayed for most of his time as a pastor and church bigwig. Dennis has written about this a few times as well. It's not something new for Weston. Bragging, and not just humble-bragging, has been part of Weston's character for decades. He is very, very pleased with himself and expects you to be just as pleased with him.
Armstrongism has a history of manipulating statistics and lying with them. If they wish for this glowing report to be believed, they should publish the supporting metrics in raw form.
They dilemma these splinters face is it costs more to add a titheslave than what the new titheslave can generate. Thus the superfantabulous RCG has to drop its TV show (costcutting) Next TV outreach to shut down will be LCG's, no later than next year. You read it here first!
This is really sad for the middle and low income families in the "church". Instead of taking care of their children they are taking care of the Pharisees of our times.
In ACOG-land, in some congregations, most members are in their 70s. So special offerings from members deceased estates will enrich these groups. But this hardly represents genuine growth.
The problem with this type of reasoning, I.e we are growing in numbers and wealth and therefore it is a sign of God's blessing, is two-fold: one, that when the inverse happens, you have to treat it equally. When money or numbers decrease, God must then be removing His blessing. This takes away any personal accountability in decisions. Secondly, if numbers and money or growth is Gods blessing, then we should join Hillsong, or even the catholic Church- look how big and rich they are!
All this "tithe has increased" bragging means to me is that they are somehow getting better at fleecing the flock for their own gain.
DW won the internet today.
The one person missing in each LCG congregation is certainly Jesus.
That makes each LCG congregation entirely too small.
Proof that LCG is lacking Jesus can be discovered in how LCG is blatantly lying about numbers to keep their members motivated, on the hook, on the line.
Over Thanksgiving, I spent time with an LCG associate who truly insisted that LCG had at least 10,000 members and was definitely growing.
This LCG member lives on the northern edge of one of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in the US.
He said that his house was equal distance from the LCG church in the principal city of this popular and rapidly expanding metro area and the LCG church in the capital city of a neighboring state, to the north of his home.
He said that the LCG congregation in this large metro area had eighteen in attendance, while the LCG church in the capital city of the neighboring state had fourteen in regular attendance.
I marveled at how this trendy and booming city could only have eighteen members and yet he felt LCG was growing.
The LCG dupe stated that recently a couple had joined the big city congregation; when I laughed and asked if the couple was really new, or had they jumped ship from another COG, like RCG, the LCG associate changed the subject.
Both the home state of this LCG associate and the neighboring state are each approximately 100,00 square miles in size.
Both states have two LCG churches apiece, each church is a couple hundred miles apart from each other – each are pastored by the same man, who also, according to the LCG website, additionally pastors three other churches in two other geographically large states (that’s seven LCG churches, in four huge and growing states, all pastored by the same person).
One person in our Thanksgiving gathering had a violent flu-like illness, so when my LCG associate declined to go to church that Saturday, I jokingly asked if it was because he knew he could potentially wipe out the entire elderly congregation.
He kind of acknowledged that the congregation was indeed frail and elderly and that one exposure could kill off half a state’s membership.
Although my vagueness has been motivated by a need to preserve the anonymity of my LCG associate (since one person who flits between a congregation of eighteen and another of fourteen persons could easily be identified by nosey LCG leadership) – I have actually given more hard LCG statistics than LCG has officially released.
How long will LCG members tolerate the blatant deception of their leaders?
If you are an LCG member, I encourage you to post the number of people attending your church and the number of those present at the FOT you attended – thank you.
Seth Forrestier, there's a lot wrong with LCG but we shouldn't spread falsehoods that will discredit us and give LCG apologists ammunition. LCG didn't drop from 12 magazine issues per year to 10, they increased from 6 issues to 10. You can go to their website and confirm this for yourself.
The LCG congregation in Little Rock is down to less than 25 to 30 when at one time it was 50 to 60. The minister there, a Phil West is a joke, who hardly ever shows up and has been running people away over the last several years. The LCG bosting of growth is nothing more than 100%, grade A bullshit. The membership is so brain dead asleep that they eat the bullshit as if it's truth IF they even pay attention. A sure sign of weakness is when you feel the need to bang your chest and boost of how great you think you are. I would ask that they put some numbers out there so we can see the growth they see, but knowing how much of a lying spirit is out there in Charlotte I wouldn't believe it.
I stand corrected, 6:43, they dropped the amount of content in each but increased the issues.
If I remember right it used to be one every month at one time.
That must be Little Bob reclining there. He has the littlest one of all... oops, sorry, meant to say, church of them all. Even God is laughing!
501c3 = 6 see 666. Come out of her!
5+1=6 see 3
The churches overall are just a tiny fraction of their former sizes so they feel a sense of desperation to over-promote the success of their work just to cheer their members up and to fulfill duty to God. It's called exaggeration, which has always been in the church. Butter up the good news and rationalize the bad news.
The church is called sheep for a reason -- not being very stable, sensible, discreet or reason-minded. They get over-emotional about their 1%, 2%, 3% increases in membership or corporate finances while they overlook and underplay mass departures and major splits. What?? The tiny gains offset the major fractures?? Come on. But that is how human nature works, being unwilling to see reality, being innately dishonest, proudly unwillingly to accept failure or for being the cause of it. No wonder they boast and refuse to repent.
They get more excited over printing magazines than they do getting depressed over losing their sheep, you see? It's called corporate idolatry where the socio-economic success of the corporate entity (in which they place their pride) is more important to them than the care of the individual members that make it up.
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