It has been a little over 20 years since tens of thousands of Worldwide Church of God members joined up with various groups of men who promised to hold fast to Herbert Armstrong's teachings and promises of treating members better than they had been in WCG. That ideal quickly faded into the Armstrongite sunset as one abusive leader after another started showing his true colors with more legalistic abuse than Worldwide ever imagined.
Warm tales of unity soon dissolved into one split after another as self-appointed vain church leaders imagined themselves better than the next and set off with thousands of members to form more groups.
In spite of these self-absorbed men imagining themselves and their new groups as God's one true church, each and every one of them are now stagnant or in a downward spiral. They are unable to draw in new members as old-time members either leave the church in disgust or die off. Their messages have no appeal to the world at large and is a direct turn off to its younger members.
As we enter 2019, each and every COG is having to face the cold-hearted reality that they are spiritual failures. Even the self-appointed upstarts like Bob Thiel and James Malm are men with no purpose and are doomed to failure as people start to wake up to the deceitful legalistic bullshit they practice.
Is Armstrongism finally in its last stages of existence?
At the annual Ministerial Board of Directors meeting in December, President Jim Franks listed 6 key concerns that the leadership needs to address.
1. How do we get the message out to the world in the most effective manner?“We still have a very healthy number of unique visitors every month to Life Hope and Truth – but how can we increase that number?”
2. What can we do about growth in the church?“We have seen some growth since we began in 2010, but not a lot. Our actual attendance worldwide is up, but only by a few percentage points, single digits actually.”
3. Increase in requests for international subsidies.“In our budget for 2019 we will be spending approximately $2 million in supporting congregations and ministers outside the USA. Because of our excellent financial position, we are hopeful to upgrade feast sites, build new meeting halls – you know there are still some areas where the members meet outside under the trees – and to train new leaders in all areas outside the USA. Because we will end this year with a surplus, we plan to send additional funds from this year to several areas in Africa, so we won’t have to impact next year’s budget.”
4. How will we replace ministers who will retire in the next 7 years?“In the next 7 to 10 years half of our current pastors will most likely retire. Not only is there a financial responsibility to provide for them when they retire, but how do we replace them? This will require judicious use of our resource,s and an increase to continue providing pastors for every congregation, which we are committed to doing.”
“Our current financial plan is to pay off the mortgage of the (new HQ) building within 6 years … this is about when we will see the largest number of men retiring.”
5. How will we expand leadership development in the USA and outside the USA?“We are working hard at developing a database of men and women who desire to serve in the church from our various programs. From this group we hope to take on new and younger leaders to take on more responsibility.”
6. We know that we have doctrinal challenges to contend with.“Paul, Peter and John all warned about false teachers and false prophets. It will come from among us. We must ask ourselves if we have done the best job we can in teaching our basic beliefs, especially among our young adults. Are we doing our best to help them understand some of the most basic teachings of God’s word? We all must be on guard against heresy. It will come and it has come. We must not tolerate it. We will be kind to everyone, but we will not accept erroneous doctrinal teachings.” Church of God News
