Melvin Rhodes, UCG Chairman has a letter on Realtime United detailing the latest UCG Council of Elders meeting. This apparently is the most cohesive and unified Council of Elders in Church of God history. Especially now since they have kicked out all there rebellious troublemakers and whiners that made UCG COE a very unhappy place to be.
For the first time in recent memory we managed to cover all the items on our agenda. This is testimony to the incredible spirit of unity and cooperation that exists on the Council of Elders at this time. This does not mean there was no discussion before decisions were made. There are 12 men on the Council and they have 12 different opinions, but we all share the same goals. Our purpose is constant—to preach the gospel and to prepare a people.
The letter quickly moves into the proverbial favorite topic of Armstrongism - money.
We were thankful to note that God has continued to help us through a calendar year of financial challenges. In serving our many congregations around the world we had to step out on faith, asking God to provide. And He always did and continues to do so.
With an 18% drop in income after the vast majority of UCG ministers defected to a new and improved COG and thousands of members jumping ship with them, they now are not able to do the things they want to.
Then they get to the real meat of why they want new members. It's not about redemption with the grace of God, but it is about money. The more people that they can con into joining the organization the more money they will have. They admit they do not have the resources now to do what they think they should be doing.
Our new budget for the coming fiscal year includes a “faith line” like last year. When it is presented, you will see that 30.5 percent of our income is now devoted to preaching the gospel. In spite of suffering a loss in income just over a year ago, we have been able to do more—going through doors as God has opened them. We do not want to let up on these efforts. While our current income will not supply all our needs, we are asking God to call new people into the Church to help finance further efforts.
I guess UCG has taken a lot of heat when it was shown that Living Church of God devotes way more money to spreading the "gospel" than they do. LCG uses over 40% of their money towards what they proclaim is a gospel message, while previously UCG was doing a little over 25%. The obvious factor here is that UCG is still spending most of it's money on minsters salaries and perks. A large percentage of UCG elders jumped ship from WCG in order to maintain their income and now UCG has to keep financing that amount above proclaiming a "gospel" message.
We preach the gospel through our varied media efforts including our website with over 300,000 unique visitors per month; our flagship magazine The Good News; Vertical Thought for our young people; the Bible Study Course for in-depth biblical teaching; and our dozens of booklets and other literature. All our beliefs are clearly answered in our literature, which is freely available to everybody who wants it anywhere in the world.
All of this costs money. With more money, we can do more. Please pray that God will add more people to His Church—people who can help contribute to our efforts.
There you have it, blatantly in print-more people equals more money.
UCG brass want s all of you deadbeat members to know that you need to start sending more money in. They cannot do the things they want to without you sacrificing more money. It's all YOUR fault! UCG seems to be reading from Dave Pack's 'con the brethren' financial model.
In order to devote more to our increased media efforts, our home office expansion proposal is “on hold” until our finances enable us to expand without borrowing.
If you start sending in more money then we too, can become the most important "Christian" web site on the net. That's going to be a pretty hard task since Dave Pack claims HIS ministry is the largest and most influential web site on earth today.
It is hoped that we will soon be able to expand the video studio—without which we are limited in what we can accomplish in keeping up with advanced technology like Internet television and an even more professional program. We would like to expand our production of short topical videos for our website that deal with the latest news and items of interest. Our goal is to make the United Church of God, an International Association, website the first Christian website people will turn to for biblical answers and a deeper explanation of what’s going on around the world. We have a long way to go, but are confident that this is the direction in which God is leading us.
Christians are NOT going to turn to UCG for Biblical answers. That is a proven fact through out the past seven decades of Armstrongism. Ultimately it has accomplished nothing other than creating over 600 splinter groups of which all are impotent wanna-be's.
Then they take a little slam against there boat jumpers who defected to COGWA. These men apparently had a lot of ethic's issues. Oh wait, since when has this NOT been a problem with Church of God ministers????? Almost every splinter group was planned, organized and incorporated while in the employ of a previous church. UCG's present group of elders are no more ethical than the elders in COGWA.
Here's a challenge for the UCG Council of Elders. If you are really men of faith, then take an immediate 30% pay curt. Cut off all ministerial allowances and perks. Steer that money into your pet projects and set an example for the rest of the church. Prove to your members that you really are ethical men with Christian standards.
