A reader here has notified us of new fun things happening in the Church of God a Worldwide Association (COGWA).
Always eager to outdo the United Church of God, their spiritual mother, they continue to flaunt how rich and increased with goods they are. What is really obvious is how slick of a propaganda campaign they are doing to con members into the belief they need new facilities.
They announced two recent land deals that dumped a lot of money into their pockets. The reader here wrote:
COGWA just announced the expansion of their office building. Two articles have been published on their website. I find particularly interesting their comment about two property sales, one of a house they own, and another of some land elsewhere. I find especially noteworthy they make the claim that land is worth $1,000,000. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.
Here are the links:
January-February 2025 Special Member Letter
In the midst of all this sad news, there is some very encouraging news to report from the Church at the conclusion of another fiscal year. The fiscal year 2024, which ended on Dec. 31, produced the largest increases in the work of the Church that we have ever witnessed in a single year. Our income was 10 percent more than the previous year (2023). Our numbers in Media continue to increase as well. We had a record number of people contact us in 2024. These are primarily new people who are reading our literature or watching our video programs. Our Life, Hope & Truth Presentsprograms continue to improve and grow, and a couple of them have logged more than 150,000 views. We find this very encouraging for a program that only debuted in the fall of 2023.
I also have news about our proposal to build on our property here in McKinney, Texas. More than two years ago, in August of 2022, I proposed to the Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD) that our finances coming out of the COVID pandemic made it possible for us to build an auditorium/education center on the remaining 3 acres of our property. This was part of our original plan when we built the office back in 2018. In the case of the office, the Church paid cash for the property and then took out a mortgage for the building. That was indeed a leap of faith for us as a small organization that was still just getting its feet on the ground. But God blessed us abundantly during the two years of planning and construction, and we paid off the mortgage in June 2021, roughly two years after completing the office in 2019. The Church was debt-free at that point, and we have remained that way ever since.
Today, with four out of the past five years showing increased income, our amount of available cash has also increased. With no debt and a very healthy cash reserve, we are in position now to add the second building to our property. Following is an artist’s drawing of what the building could look like. Its outward appearance will be very similar to our current office building.
The seating capacity of the auditorium, as drawn, will be 466, but there will also be three additional rooms that can be used for overflow, bringing the total capacity to over 600.
There will be a separate section for Foundation Institute that will seat 48 students at tables. This section can be closed off so that classes can be in session while other events are taking place in the auditorium. And by moving FI to the new building, we will free up an additional 1,000-plus square feet in the office that will be converted to accommodate the growing needs of our Media department. We envision that this new space will be used for equipment storage, a second studio, offices and workstations for employees.
It is certainly appropriate to ask, What will the building be used for in addition to Sabbath services for the local Dallas congregation? In our discussions with the MBOD, we have all agreed that there are many possibilities. Here is a partial list.
- Home for Foundation Institute students and instructors.
- Home for our biennial International Ministerial Conference.
- Home for our Pastoral Development Program, which is also conducted biennially in the off years from the conference.
- Home for the FI continuing education summer classes.
- Home for occasional regional and national weekends.
- Home for a national Young Adult Leadership Weekend program. This year we had 150 who attended from around the country and a few from outside the United States.
- Home for national seminars on marriage and other educational topics. These would be developed as part of an overall education program for the membership.
- Home for a regional Feast site. Currently we don’t have any plans for such a site, but this could become a need as more people are unable to travel long distances for the Feast.
- Home for special combined services in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Sherman metroplex.
- Home for special social and sports activities. Currently we are running out of space in the office for our local FI and young adult weekend activities.
The Church is now in a position to pay cash for this new structure, but our proposal is to secure a mortgage for up to half the cost instead of decreasing our cash reserves to an unacceptable level. Our desire would be to pay this mortgage off within three to five years of the building being completed. We also own two pieces of property that we hope to sell in this current fiscal year—a house in Portland (donated to the Church a couple of years ago) and a 1.5-acre section of land that is currently on the market for $1 million. With no debt, a solid cash reserve and properties to sell, we have a proposal to cover all the costs for the new building without impacting our budget and still keeping an adequate cash reserve.
This brings me to an important announcement. On Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 21, 2025, the Ministerial Board of Directors unanimously approved our proposal for building a new auditorium/education center. We have already selected a builder and are currently working on a contract to build. If all goes well with the contract and the building permits from the city, we hope to break ground during the summer with a tentative completion date of May 2026.
One chapter in the book is all about planning. His logic is quite simple—have a plan for the future and make it as detailed a plan as you can put together. He titled the chapter “Hope Is Not a Strategy.” To hope things will work out is important, but without also having a true plan and a sound strategy, it rarely leads to the fulfillment of your goals. While I don’t base my pre-Passover plan on Admiral McRaven, I have found the idea of always having a plan extremely helpful, whether in preparing strategies for life and work or in preparing for the Passover. Scripture is very clear as to how we prepare for the Passover: “examine [yourself], and so … eat and drink of the cup.”
At the office we are now making plans for the new auditorium and education center. We have presented our civil drawings to the city and wait for their response. Our contractor feels that if the city approves quickly, we could break ground as early as April and hopefully no later than May. This is indeed exciting. When we built the office in 2019, our finances were such that we paid for the land but we had to borrow the entire amount for the construction. God provided, and we paid the office mortgage off in less than two years.
The Banned reader concludes:Now, because of the strength of our finances, we can pay for the building outright without affecting any of our programs. From a financial perspective, the past two years have seen excellent increases. Based on Admiral McRaven’s advice to always have a plan, we have put one together for the new building. It is our plan to borrow half the funds as a construction loan (paying interest only during the construction period) and pay cash for the other half. Then, after the building is completed, we will repay the money we borrowed either immediately or within a fairly short period of time. By following this plan, we will keep more of our cash in the initial stages of the construction.
If all goes well and the city of McKinney approves our permits, the breaking of ground for the building should take place just before or just after our international ministerial conference scheduled for the first week of May. We hold an international conference for the ministry every two years. Our past two conferences were under the cloud of the COVID pandemic. In 2021 we were still in the pandemic, and in 2023 we had just come out of the pandemic. To be planning a conference without this weight over us is truly exciting. We should have our largest attendance thus far for the conference, with many internationals planning to attend. Combined with the locals, our attendance should be around 350.
I find particularly amusing their list of reasons to justify this decision...
