Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
United Church of God has spent 23 years hauling its train down the line and it still hasn't reached any destination. Twenty-three years as the "new and improved" Church of God and it still has nothing to show but new buildings and some questionable statistics. Membership has flatlined ever since they imploded and COGWA split off. But never fear, they want UCG members to feel mighty impressed that they garner huge increases in viewership and that UCG is in the top 14 Christian websites in the world. (Dave Pack has to be mighty butthurt at that revelation since he claims his website is the most astounding thing to happen to the world since the immaculate conception.) UCG has spent millions of dollars on those viewers while it has been incapable of drawing them in as members with open wallets.
Peter Eddington went through some of the following statistics as of Nov. 30 this year:
United News circulation is the highest it’s ever been since United began at 16,788.
Our coworker count is now at 6,338—6% higher than two years ago and 1.5% less than the same time last year.
Our donor list includes 7,300 people. Our all-time high was 9,564 in June 2016.
U.S. Beyond Today magazine subscribers are at 258,411. This is just under our September total of 261,408, which was the highest since March 2012. Our U.S. circulation has been right around 250,000 each issue for the past two years.
Those people on our U.S. file associated with the Church (teens, members, associated attendees) is at 12,418.
The Church’s Beyond Today YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/BeyondTodayTV) has had 9.5 million video views since November 2006, a 50% increase since last December. The channel has 41,243 subscribers (a 188% increase since last December), and hosts 1,868 videos, which is a 13% increase since last December. This is an average of 2,170 videos being watched every day, an increase of 36% since last December.
The average YouTube views for the past 12 months is 8,846 videos watched per day, an increase of 137% since last December.
The number of Google, Yahoo and Bing advertising impressions since 2004 stands at 12.1 billion.
UCG.org is currently ranked the 14th-highest Christian denomination website in the world. In the past we have been as high as 12th.
Rick Shabi, UCG Treasurer confesses to a 5% overall drop in UCG income so far this fiscal year.
He discusses this at the UCG Council meeting last week on this video. However, in the summary report (which is what most members will see) it only admits to "Mr. Shabi then turned the Council’s attention to financial results for the first five months of our current fiscal year (which began July 1), pointing out income and expense “trends” of which the Council and administration should be aware of as the budgeting process for next fiscal year begins. Some discussion ensued in regard to a few unfavorable trends."
Without them posting the actual negative numbers. Amazingly, this downturn has occurred during a period of full employment and economic expansion as well.
For a church that expects it members to keep Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday night and prohibits children from doing school activities on Friday night, I find it surprising that they are holding choir and orchestra rehearsals on the Friday night before their annual Christmas Winter Family Weekend. I guess because it is a directive from the boys in Charlotte it is ok. Seems pretty hypocritical to me, but then I'm just a lost back-sliding Laoedician.
Charlotte Family Weekend Update
We again welcome out-of-town guests to participate in the choir. There will be a rehearsal from 5:30 to 6:15 on Friday afternoon, December 21, for those who would like to be part of the choir. For music and more information, just contact Mr. Jonathan McNair at jmcnair@lcg.org.
If you play a musical instrument and would like to participate, that would be great also. We’ll have a rehearsal for musicians after the Bible Study on December 21. Contact Mr. Marcus McCullough at mmccullough@lcg.org for more information.
Schedule: Some of the events for the weekend include:
United News circulation is the highest it’s ever been since United began at 16,788.
