The United Church of God has been in existence now for around 27 years after their great apostasy from the mother church. Since their split off from the mother church, they themselves had a devastating split that they never have fully recovered from. Retention of members is also an issue as people come and go in UCG like a revolving door as people church hop to the next COG they think is doing the best "work".
When they split off in 1995 they had a chance to start a new church, free from any of the past rules, thoughts, and practices they had grown up with in their mother church. Sadly, it was business as usual with them, and the same tired and worn-out actions and policies were soon in effect leading many to say UCG was the most boring liberal COG out there.
Every year when the Council of Elders meets they are faced with many of those issues that they never had the guts to deal with in the first place. The COE met earlier this month and these are some of the things they still need to work on after 17 years:
Feast of Tabernacles: we had great attendance, numbers increased over last year with higher in-person attendance. We need to put perspective on the Feast of Tabernacles for what it truly is; we need to stress the value of the holy convocation, especially the opening night at the Feast of Tabernacles. The opening night service should set the tone – praise, worship, fellowship with God and family; we are there to worship God.
Every single COG is having a problem with members who do NOT show up for the opening night of their Feast.
Visiting local church areas: Mr. Shabi mentioned that it has been satisfying meeting the people and has found it very inspiring. He added that visiting the brethren is important to Him.Buildings owned by the Church: Mr. Shabi shared his thoughts about the benefits of them. When God opens the door to purchasing buildings, we need to pursue them and use them to help build relationships and educational opportunities.
One of the biggest faults of the COG is not having local buildings where they have a presence in their communities AND set an example by contributing to those communities. The COG has always been a transient church with no ties anywhere other than where their HQ's are located.
Congregational Care: We are commanded to take care of the sheep, the people (John 21), it’s an important part of our responsibility. We need to help congregations/ministers/members through education. Our lives are different, society has changed. We’re all trying to navigate these changes – we need to be guiding our brethren.
The COG tradition has always held the members at arm's length as if they had dirty diapers on. Engage with them when necessary or if you need money. Constantly berate them for never doing anything right. Blame them for the delay in the return of Christ or issues in the "work".
Talent: We have a ton of talent at the home office and within the church – we need to use it.
Mr. Shabi commented that the Home Office is in a unique position; we should be willing to set the standard for all congregations based on God’s vision for the church.
When has any COG HQ ever truly recognized "talent" in their employ or in the church as a whole? Pasadena surely never did and that tradition carries over into UCG and other COG's.
Ambassador Bible College: classes are in full swing; Mr. Shabi has attended some of the classes and is impressed with how it all works together, students and all. It’s an important part of the work of the Church.
The earth-shattering educational system of UCG is its ABC program which now includes 26 students. Let that sink in again, 26!
ABC is nearing the end of the first semester with 26 students, with the current expectation that three young ladies from Chile will join the class in January.
The home office: The facility itself is a beautiful place: we have a wonderful studio, it has a purpose and it will be used more and more going forward.
So, you dump money into beautiful buildings and studios and are not using them effectively now?
Media Department: Mr. Shabi appreciates getting to know the younger people who are working in the media department and the talent they possess. He mentioned that we need to tap into this talent and use it to effectively reach both the older and the younger generations alike.
- United News circulation is currently at 18,677, which is 1.2% more than this time last year and our all-time high.
- Our coworker count is now at 8,726—0.8% lower than the same time last year. Our all-time high was May 2022 with 9,023.
- Our donor list now includes 9,440 people—10.9% lower than this time last year. (Our all-time high was 10,913 in January of 2022.)
- Total Beyond Today magazine circulation worldwide is at 326,806 for the Nov.-Dec. 2022 issue—which is 0.1% less than the same time last year. Our Sep.-Oct. 2022 issue was 335,467—our highest since January 2013.
- U.S. magazine subscribers are at 277,363 for the Nov.-Dec. 2022 issue. This is 0.7% less than the same time last year. Our Sep.-Oct. 2022 issue was 285,250—our highest since March 2012.
- The December subscriber development letter from Rick Shabi is being prepared to send to 186,695 subscribers. It offers “Tools for Spiritual Growth.” Responses are expected to begin coming in during the final week of December.
- Those people on our U.S. file associated with the Church (teens, members, associated) as of November 30 is 11,937—1.4% lower than last November.
- The number of telephone and website responses from Beyond Today TV since 2006 stands at 401,172.
- The Church’s Beyond Today YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/BeyondTodayTV has had 15.25 million video views since November 2006 (a 5.8% increase since last November) and has 68,600 subscribers (a 4.9% increase since last October).
Are we being effective? We need to ask these questions and seek the answers on how God would have us be effective in our preaching of the gospel and taking care of His people.
UCG's current "effectiveness" translates in numbers below as incredibly sad. The impact is minimal, if at all, in the world.
The United Church of God website is a major key to what we are doing. The home page has been static for a few years. A home page redesign will be rolled out in Jan-Feb 2023.
New designs for web pages do not attract people to churches. The actions of the church and its members are what attract people to a church. If you can't even keep your own members engaged how can you impact the world around you?
We need to have that ladder of engagement: follow-ups, who is coming back, why, what caused this and how can we keep them coming back?
In the 80 some years of the Armstrongite era of the COG over 150,000 people had come and gone in the church (pre-1995). No one ever followed up or really cared. Instead, it was easier to call them Laodiceans and glibly state they had their chance at the truth and will now have to suffer till God wakes them up (while we, the Philadelphians, are in Petra).
The New Testament commentary needs to be finished ASAP.
Holy Hanna! We do not need another COG weighing in on how scripture needs to be interpreted with an official commentary! The church has its own version of the Bible, thanks to Fred Coulter, so I guess it should have its own Bible commentary. It's strange that they chose the New Testament since they care so little about what its central message is as compared to its worship of the Old Testament and all its laws.
The United Church of God international ministerial work: Although a large portion of our membership is based in the United States, we have to keep in mind that we are an international work. We need to engage and work even closer with our international ministry and membership so that we can understand their needs and how best to support them.
Ask any person on the street in any city in the U.S. or any other nation and no one will be able to tell you who they are. Ask any person on the street what they teach about Jesus and no one can tell you.
In the 80 some years of the Armstrongite era of the COG over 150,000 people had come and gone in the church (pre-1995)
ReplyDeleteThat's actually not true. The peak Feast attendance for WCG was around 150,000. But even back in the years of 30% annual growth, the defection rate was huge. This is one reason why WCG left the mark on American society that it did. Though it never had more than 150,000 members at any one time, nearly three-quarters of a million people were part of HWA's church at one time or another between 1940 and 1990. Most were gone within 1 to 3 years.
We have a ton of talent at the home office
ReplyDeleteLess than you think, Mr. Shabi. What you have are a lot of people who think very highly of themselves, and a lot of experts at office politics. That's not the same as having a ton of talent.
"In the 80 some years of the Armstrongite era of the COG over 150,000 people had come and gone in the church (pre-1995)
ReplyDeleteThat's actually not true."
I was in Pasadena when Church Ad made this estimate on how many people had come and gone in the church since HWA started in Oregon. While we did have a peak of 150,000 there were also another 150,000+ from the 1930-1990's that joined and then left the church.
Random observations: Wouldn't it be funny if people were subscribing to "Beyond Today" and then cancelling as soon as they discovered they had made a mistake, thinking that the name of the publication was "Beyonce Today"?
ReplyDeleteIntrospection is always good. Seems like it has always been a shallow process within Armstrongism. The fundamentals somehow never end up on the table. In this latest case, it would have been nice if some positives had been found. Ah well! In Armstrongism, those have to be invented anyway.
Lastly, I can see where these guys are caught between a rock and a hard place. If you don't publish a report, you are being cultic and secretive. If you do publish a report, everyone then knows that you are zero growth or negative growth. How are members supposed to have any sort of positive attitude with all the negatives of the world constantly being thrown at them, and apparently largely negative news regarding their "work" as well. Back in the day, news of growth in the work at least helped us offset having to watch all the hippies.
Ray Wooten told me years ago when UCG had their meeting in Indianapolis, (94-95?), that he had dinner with Dennis Luker the night before the conference, where he, Ray, laid out his vision for the new organization. He felt they should focus on the local congregations more, with a small HQ, saying that tithes, etc., should be collected locally, and contributions from them to support the scaled down HQ to do the printing, TV, or whatever. He said Dennis agreed with him, but when Ray got up to give his presentation the next day, Luker himself came up on stage and shut him down. Apparently others had gotten together and decided to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. There was no more cooperation after that.
ReplyDeleteRay Wooten told me years ago when UCG had their meeting in Indianapolis, (94-95?), that he had dinner with Dennis Luker the night before the conference, where he, Ray, laid out his vision for the new organization. He felt they should focus on the local congregations more, with a small HQ, saying that tithes, etc., should be collected locally, and contributions from them to support the scaled down HQ to do the printing, TV, or whatever. He said Dennis agreed with him, but when Ray got up to give his presentation the next day, Luker himself came up on stage and shut him down. Apparently others had gotten together and decided to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. There was no more cooperation after that.
ReplyDeleteThe COE..
ReplyDeleteWhat's his secret Salary?
I hear they set enormous secret executive salaries along the lines of Armstrong's money soaked WCG - thus he would be raking in ~$650.000 per year!
The opening night service should set the tone – praise, worship, fellowship with God and family; we are there to worship God.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Mr. Shabi is turning to the other side of his "opening night emphasis" earlier in the year - the platform side.
Rare is the COG that does "praise and worship" in the way the Tkaches encouraged after the changes of the mid-90s. Allowing freedom in worship, instead of stiffness and restrictions. "Going younger," some would call it. COG-Cincinnati is one that does.
The New Testament commentary needs to be finished ASAP.
Your comment on this shows you haven't paid as much attention to UCG as you think. The online "Bible Commentary" (the old Bible Reading Program) DOES have the O.T. - and only the O.T They finally got around to completing that with Ecclesiastes a few years ago.
Tom Kirkpatrick (who moved on to COGWA) said at a 2006 Feast site that the N.T. part of the commentary was "largely written." He was UCG Treasurer at the time, so he ought to know. Why it's never come out... well, who knows?
Wooten had a vision of a "congregationist" type of government , with local boards , and local collection of money, and having local ministers accountable to the local groups.
ReplyDeleteThe original name was thought to be something like "The United Churches of God" (note the plural churches) , and even although most of the ministry applauded Wooten's ideas at first, the backroom politics of the leading ministers , led to the idea of the centralized HQ government, and NO WAY that ministers were going to be accountable to the brethren in any way, and ESPECIALLY in regards to being paid.
Wooten, although a member of the original council, quit in disgust within just a few months of the forming of UCG, as not being loyal to the original inspirations and commitments of the Indianapolis meetings.
That would have been chaos with all kinds of apostasy going on.
DeleteI hear they set enormous secret executive salaries along the lines of Armstrong's money soaked WCG - thus he would be raking in ~$650.000 per year!
ReplyDeleteYou guys who talk about “secret” salaries crack me up. And the numbers that someone told you or that you made up yourself are so outrageous it’s comical. Look at their houses. Look at their cars. Look at how the retired pastors, including the big wigs, live. They’re not living like HWA or even David Hulme. They don’t even live as nice as Pack does. UCG is formally audited annually by an external firm and those reports are then made public to those who wish. Their bylaws require they publish the salary ranges ever year. The secret salaries you talk could never be hidden in todays day and age. Keep talking about the Illuminati, your flat earth or whatever other conspiracy theories your itching ears lead you to.
While I doubt UCG's top brass make that much money, when have they ever been truthful about salaries? Why don't they let members know the additional things they each get, housing and expense perks, car perks, bonuses, and Feast spending money.
ReplyDelete"UCG is formally audited annually by an external firm"
ReplyDeleteThat's the oldest trick in the book: Confidential audits don't enlighten contributors
UCG's budget is so small now that I doubt an expense account for their president, if one even exists, would be a fraction of the number that's been claimed. I'm sure there is hanky-panky with how things are expensed, just like in any organization, but $650,000 is not realistic with their budget. Maybe $6,500. But $650k? No way.
ReplyDeleteBesides, most of the people who have experience playing games with the money ended up in COGWA, LCG, and to a lesser extent PCG.
Awww NO2HWA on a Bob thief style downer ?
ReplyDelete@ 5:32 - what then are the top executive salaries at the UCG?
ReplyDeleteThe opening night service is not biblical. The church invented it to make sure people got settled into their hotels before the high sabbath began.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding the UCG
ReplyDeleteAfter the Great Apostasy of 1995 in the Worldwide Church of God, the income dropped so fast and so far that many WCG ministers got laid off. They then formed the United Church to hire themselves so they could continue to collect paychecks.
It was felt at the time that church people would no longer tolerate a hard-line approach and so they decided to take a softer approach and allow everyone to think and believe whatever they wanted to as long as they did not cause division. It was hoped that everyone would keep their craziness to themselves and not cause too much trouble. The result was that semi-retarded, demon-influenced weirdos who were not wanted by the stricter groups would go to the UCG to spout off their own ideas that all contradicted what Herbert W. Armstrong had taught.
The idea that love is keeping the commandments of God got replaced by the idea of putting up with the bad behavior of godless, wicked, and malicious people in the UCG congregations in order to “show love” to them.
The ongoing evil in the UCG was so great that it led to the big UCG-COGWA church split in 2010.
“ The ongoing evil in the UCG was so great that it led to the big UCG-COGWA church split in 2010”?
DeleteThe shenanigans that were notably happening in the newly forming cogwa of that time, trying to cause a split, certainly didn’t reflect godliness. Much cleaning up from the lies and deceptions needed to happen on both sides and continues among individuals. 2010 was about power, plain and simple. Most of the splits and problems in the orgs have been caused by those in “ruling” seats and not by the brethren. Our relationship should be with God and his Son, not organizations. When will people learn?!
There is ongoing evil in all the COG orgs because they all adhere to the WCG/HWA beliefs and structure. COGWA is no different than UCG in "righteousness" or "evil," although each group manifests it in different ways. COGWA is hardline on loyalty to the org, total agreement with their fundamental beliefs (as opposed to the word of God), and that ministers are essentially the middlemen between God and the members (as opposed to Jesus Christ, who actually fills that role).
ReplyDeleteUtter rubbish.
DeleteAnon 7:15 said "The ongoing evil in the UCG was so great that it led to the big UCG-COGWA church split in 2010."
ReplyDeleteIf you believe that, then I have a bridge for sale if you're interested.
My understanding is that 150,000 was the estimated peak attendance during a feast of tabernacles. And besides including non baptized family members, it's probably exaggerated in keeping with the church's reputation of dishonesty. When I joined in the late 1970s, a longer attending member told me that only a third of those in his spokesman club photo were still attending services. Which is a high churn rate. That makes the 150,000 prior membership on top of the 150,000 attending in 1986 sound too low. Going on antidotal evidence, it looks like about 500,000 were baptized in HWAs church. HQ must have known the exact number, which they kept secret.
ReplyDeleteAnother topic is how well were potential members counseled prior to baptism. It looks like numbers and financial support were put before members salvation.
ReplyDelete"Another topic is how well were potential members counseled prior to baptism. It looks like numbers and financial support were put before members salvation."
When I arrived at AC, Big Sandy I wanted to be baptized so I could partake in my first Passover there. I loved God and wanted to participate.
I had already had years of the Bible Correspondence Course and Plain Truth and was brain-washed well.
But I was told by a minister, whose name you would easily recognize, that I could not be baptized "because my personality was not out-going enough." I was banished to my dorm room during the Passover observance.
I was baptized a year later with no change to my "personality."
I once read some shocking quotes from HWA on the topic of introverts. He literally hated them.
ReplyDeleteHWA hated introverts?! God placed the spirit in man and made people who they are,with their own personalities. What right does anyone have to say they hate His created beings?
DeleteI agree with 7.15. The narcissistic abuse cycle is rampant in ACOG-land. All abusive relationships have a use-by date. That date was reached in UCG, leading to the break.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to note that mind boggling verbal violence is considered morally acceptable in these groups, as well as in other denominations such as the Jehovah Witness's. God says He abhors violence, but these groups believe that the narrow gate is not practical. It's bully mortality that delivers the goods. Yes, Esau did get his bowel of stew.
Introverts naturally occur in nature. They are part of God's creation.
ReplyDeleteThey definitely don't conform to Herbs view of the ideal church member. He preached "outgoing concern" (what happened to self concern?), but practiced the opposite. He pushed 1975, knowing full well that thousands would be seriously harmed.
It wouldn't surprise me that he travelled near non stop overseas after 1975, because he feared for his life from harmed members. You have to wonder whether his "outgoing concern" mantra was his way of fighting off the opposite in himself. Just as Rod Meredith's frequent gay bashing in his sermons implies that he was having gay issues of his own. After all, he was caught looking at a gay magazine at a porn magazine store.
WHen UCG formed, they had the commitment that the TOP 5 salaries would be published.
ReplyDeleteIM still waiting!