UCG having problems with employee retention?

 

Sadly, the Church of God movement has never really valued its employees as it should. The mother church (Worldwide Church of God) treated its lower echelon employees like chattel. Many were the times when employees went in and asked for raises and were told, "We don't owe you anything." These very same men who said this are now sitting in UCG and elsewhere. Employees who had to retire due to age or illness were left high and dry, even after church leaders stood in front of hundreds of employees and said they (the church) would take care of them.

The second area was to look at employee retention. The Council recognizes that although we have limited resources to accomplish all that we want to accomplish, the cost to the organization when we lose valued employees and the subsequent costs to hire and re-train, hinders our ability to “do the work.” The Council would like to explore additional benefit opportunities that could be made available to our employees. Some may not have a cost impact to the organization, unless utilized (such as continuing education or other forms of tuition reimbursement). This point of interest was to see what areas of employee compensation can be used to help benefit the employees and to evaluate salary ranges and other areas to explore to help retain employees. This was remanded to the Strategic Planning and Finance Committee (SPFC).

UCG Unable To Understand its "Essence" And Thus Members Do Not Share The Vision

 

The only "essence" UCG has is that it was formed to keep the elite ministers with a steady paycheck when they jumped ship from the Mother Church, WCG, after they had spent several years publicly supporting the changes.

UCG claims to preach "depth of truth". A truth that is so precious that they present it in "love". Cough, cough.

UCG blames its problems on the "clutter" in their competing market. The truth of the matter is that other churches preach a better truthful and loving message than UCG does. 

The third was in the area of our vision statement. Whereas most members can recite from memory our slogan, “Preach the Gospel, Prepare a People,” which is a shortened version of our mission statement, the Council began discussion on how we can get everyone to similarly focus on our vision. Brian Shaw presented this to the Council during the COE workshop the previous week, so he presented it again for the administration and elders. This process was begun eleven years ago when a project team worked with an outside firm to help us understand UCG’s critical essence. Their work was supposed to be reworked and made our own, but due to other pressing matters it was never completed. The COE now strongly agrees that the essence of what UCG offers is “truth” and especially depth of truth. There was also agreement in how UCG presents the truth, “in love.” He said that Ephesians:4:15 is one of the core verses of our vision statement and sums up where we are all to be and how we conduct ourselves. He then drew a competitive map so all could see that our competing clutter in the market does not speak to those who are seeking “truth in love.” This isn’t just a slogan, a theme or a tagline but a cultural change that will unify us and lead us all to developing the nature of Christ, as Ephesians tells us. The COE wants UCG administration to lead our ministry and membership in “truth in love,” and believes strongly that as this is reflected in our sermons, publications and video services, all those seeking to do the same will want to engage with us. All of the Council was excited to continue to move this forward with more emphasis on this condensed version of our vision statement and each member expressed this to the administration. The Council remanded this to the SPFC for policies that can be given to the administration for implementation.

UCG Ministers Critiquing Each Others Sermons

 

Imagine that, UCG ministers critiquing each other. All of that back-slapping must have been painful.

The Word Fitly Spoken Clubs: From all accounts received, the first round of The Word Fitly Spoken Clubs for all pastors was a great success. For eight weeks, eight ministers met online to critique one another’s sermons. There has been much camaraderie and good will in all groups and many have expressed how helpful it was in becoming more focused in their speaking.