Samuel Martin On Paying To Support Church Leaders Preaching and Publishing

Samuel Martin posted a comment on an entry further down in Spare Not The Rod: Beat Them Into Submission?

His blog entry is Should we preach? publish?, or proclaim the Gospel - Yes? No? Maybe?

I like the following quotes from him:

Here is a well intentioned Christian brother living thousands of miles away from the region where the Bible was written, using a 400 year old Bible version attempting to bring information which in some cases is over 3,000 years old into our modern day.

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There is of course nothing wrong with preaching, publishing or proclaiming the Gospel. On the contrary. What is wrong, however, is misusing the Holy Scriptures to attempt to prove that a particular Church or religious leader must engage in preaching and publishing and that Church members should pay to see that these things take place. Preaching and publishing ministries are fine and excellent things in and of themselves, but one should not use these passages as justification for demanding that Church members pay the bills for these ministerial elements based upon a wrong understanding of Scripture.

Can you imagine Flurry, Pack, or Meredith all the sudden stop requiring church members to send in money to support their "ministries?"  

Being A UCG Minister Is Exhausting Work!!!!!!

I had to laugh at the comment in Melvin Rhodes letter to UCG minsters discussing the ministerial conference.

It is such a life draining experience and such hard work that UCG ministers will be exhausted from all that burdensome work.

My question is when have ANY of these men ever actually done a full day of hard labor?  How many have actually worked a full day in their lives?  They usually have everyone around them doing their dirty work, moving them, mowing their lawns, taking care of their houses, etc.

If you have pictures of any of them actually performing real work I would love to post them.

Thursday we met mostly in executive session to approve ordinations and to   approve a new hire for Media and Communications Services.

By Thursday at 3 p.m. we were all exhausted and ready to return home. We   are already looking forward to our next meetings at the end of February, 2012.

UCG To Start Begging Members To Fund New Buildings

After losing close to 50% of their ministry and well over a third of their members, UCG thinks it needs to build more buildings in Cincinnati.  Pretty soon the UCG will start a new building campaign for funding and chruch members will start lining up to donate.  Well, at least some of them blindly will.  Others are disgusted by the proposition of more HQ space being built.

As we strive toward our goals, the administration requested the Council consider   plans to expand the home office. This is primarily being driven by our need   to have expanded areas for our Media and Communications Services department   to more effectively and powerfully preach the gospel of God’s Kingdom. The  department is currently over capacity.

There are many needs, including a larger and more effective television studio   and a bigger meeting hall (which could double up as a permanent Feast site,   allowing 500 people to meet). There is also a need to provide additional space   for our young adults and ministerial education programs. Initial plans would   enhance this area, as well as our media department.

Some Council members expressed caution on taking on a loan at a time of economic   uncertainty. So after a great deal of discussion, a decision was made to go   ahead and hire an architect to draw up plans to give us a more accurate estimate   of costs. After seeing more concrete costs, and if the project is approved   by the Council in February, the money for it will be included in the 2012-2013   budget for approval by the General Conference of Elders in May. This will   also give us time to raise the funds in order to move forward in a measured   way. We would appreciate input from you and from our members, and are open   to a collaborative approach as we move forward. More information will be forthcoming.   We estimate that the final cost will be about two million dollars.

Maybe it is time for the members to give UCG brass a wake up call and call  halt to this program.  Why dump all of this money for new facilities when there is no need other than to pump up the egos of HQ brass so they can look more important!.