FINANCE
Good Stewardship of Donations and Other Funds
Good financial stewardship will be essential to our cause. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. — Luke 16:10.
Peter and Paul both refer to money and capitalistic profits as "filthy lucre." (1 Peter 5; 1 Timothy 3; Titus 1).
It's true that money is filthy by nature. It's a nasty temptation until selfish motives are overcome by the single vision of the kingdom of God. There is no money in heaven.
Money runs exactly contrary to the giving-and-sharing-all and holding-all-things-in-common mentality. Where people are given what they need and give what they have, there is no need for money. Money is a contrivance of those who were looking out for themselves first and foremost. It wasn't about loving one's neighbor as oneself. That's for sure. I'll trade you, but I won't just give something to you without holding out for something in return. That's what money is about. It's about carting around amassed, contrived value (falsehood) in a convenient size and shape. Now, it's all going digital. There won't be paper or coins. That's their plan.
Well, money is filthy; however, we can make a tree bring forth only good fruit. We can convert money back into real value that which produces the real bounty, even edible produce, for free, from God, of course.
Throughout this process though, we must not fall to the temptations of money, to turn it to excessive, selfish uses. We must properly account for the funds entrusted to us, and we must properly employ them in ways that will only benefit or further the movement or cause. We must be responsible, in other words.
Start-up
Please see: Expense Sheet: Living expenses, housing allowance, and Internet costs.
At the start, we don't have sufficient funding to afford a certified accounting firm. When we have such funds, our board will select an appropriate firm. Undoubtedly, board members will be looking at experience and a solid reputation with no history of accounting fraud or scandal.
During the start-up phase, our financial ratios will be leaning way over to the top-heavy side. It's always that way with any organization that isn't heavily capitalized right from the start.
All donations and other revenue will be going to several things during the continuing start-up phase: Overhead (office rent, utilities, taxes, equipment), office staff, basic administrator living expenses (including housing allowance), website enhancement, and continuing fundraising. We need to break even right away on modest living expenses, housing, and Internet costs.
After basic living expenses and keeping the website and Internet fundraising effort going and growing, we'll fund office space and equipment where we will initially employ (members if practical; volunteers if possible) in bookkeeping, computer and Internet technology, phone reception, and general clerical duties.
Current Needs
First quarter of 2007
We need to reach break-even as soon as possible in 2007, or the Church will exhaust what savings it has.
2007
After reaching break-even on the most basic necessities, we aim in 2007 to obtain a location for the denominational offices with accouterments and a large enough area for Communion, fellowshipping, common meals, group study and discussion, Church business meetings and conferences, and other things.
Reaching a certain level within 2007 will also satisfy the requirements of the secular authorities for on-going tax-exempt status.
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Having regularly scheduled assemblies
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Having a reasonably developing course of study to assure that any congregation or commune shepherd and stewards are well-versed in the Real Liberal understanding
Tax-exempt status is not the focus, but it will help in fundraising. It will help donors direct more help toward the Real Church rather than to bombs and the evil that is worldly empire building.
As soon as we reach that level, highly preferable within 2007, it will be a matter of chartering affiliated house churches, cell churches, and any other congregations, and also a matter of saving for, and obtaining, real property (real estate), etc., for Real Liberal Christian communes.
Transparency
Our aim is transparency or what is called open-book accounting. With the exception of protecting donors and people under confidential pastoral care, we will lean toward sharing our accounting with our membership.
We will endeavor to post general accounting information on our website. It will be plain to see that we are frugal.
Of course, the aim of our Church is bringing forth the real bounty, which isn't wasteful. When God overflows the cup, God isn't wasting anything.
After Start-up
From that point on, all funding will go toward a balance between the following:
- general operations, keeping pace with a growing membership
and
- land
- housing
- furnishings
- offices (Denominational Headquarters may locate to the commune. Regardless, the commune will require management offices.)
- farm/ranch buildings
- greenhouses
- equipment
- materials
- livestock
- seed stock
- plantings
- testing (compost, manure, soil, water, tissue)
- organic fertilizers
- beneficial insects
- farming-records management
- etc., all for the first commune (the prototype).
Financing
With sufficient, steady donations and pledges into the future, the Church will be able to obtain financing (loans) at good terms for communal real property, equipment, and material, etc. This will leverage the donations and hasten the day when we have our first (prototype) Real Christian Commune up and running.
The crucial thing will be to stay well within means. We will keep a good financial reputation, but more importantly, we won't set up the Church for bankruptcy in a crash. In fact, the sooner we are able to reduce the leveraging (the percentage of debt to equity) the better. We won't want to be out on a limb of creative financing and sub-prime loans when the money changers strike, causing the downside of the so-called business cycle so they can pick up contrived bargains.
We won't be interested in low down-payments or adjustable-rate mortgages or huge loans relative to donations and income. Those things will work only when the Church is small and only at the very beginning of the business cycle. After that, the more that everything is paid off the better so that at the end of a cycle, everything will be free and clear.
The money changers hate this though. They hate it when people aren't left holding the bag. There's no evil gain in it for them.
We must clarify here. In the work There Is No Such Thing as a Conservative-Republican Christian: Jesus is a small-c communist and especially in the Supplement to that work, we express how interest (usury) is an evil conspiracy for the private gain of the overlords. So why would we borrow?
If the Church borrows and pays interest, those who made loans to the Church will be profiting off the charity of others, it is true; however, by borrowing and growing the capability of the communes to feed themselves and sell their wares and skills in a not-for-profit manner, the surplus will go toward the creation of other such communes, hastening the displacement of the system of usury.
The Church will not lend at usury. It will not lend, per se, money. It will be a giving and sharing society displacing the evil society. It is transformational.
You see, the motivation is good (a Real Liberal device, per Isaiah) and the fruit (result) will be also.
Governments have a choice of coercive taxation or the community-cooperative, barn-raising approach. They can borrow or simply decide to build something collectively, cooperatively. Governments have been established in such a misguided way (by greatly evil, greedy, covetous, violently coercive, hardened people) so as to preclude the proper method for development. The Church is forced to operate surrounded by a system often openly hostile to the Church's desired and correct methods. When the Church has grown enough to displace the improper system within a given locale, paying interest will disappear there. It is within this light that we approach financing.
Financial Statements
Our budget will be Churchwide. We'll strive for a 5-Year Comparative (Budgeted-to-Actual) General Ledger with all the appropriate Financial Ratios. We'll stick with General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
We should keep our books in shape in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) so that it will be a straight forward matter to produce audited financials prepared and certified by a Certified Public Accountant in accordance with Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS).
General Finance Department Responsibilities
The Finance section of the Church will be responsible for maintaining, among other things, the following: General ledgers, receipts and disbursements journals, payroll records, banking records, and invoices.
The section or department will also handle Sales Tax Exemption in each state, Minister's housing allowances and expense reports, and to start with, the Church's Purchase Order System.
Much of the Purchase Order System will move to the operations side of things when the first commune is really up and running. That will open up a whole new area on the website to mirror what goes on. That's where equipment, materials, and other operations management will also be handled.
Please help out with the finances for this project, movement, cause and encourage others to help too. It's the right thing to do.
By the way, the Real Liberal Christian Church is a United States Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3) Nonprofit, Public Charity, Religious Organization (ministry), as defined by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the principal purpose of which ministry is the advancement of religion, namely Christianity. Donations are fully Tax Deductible on U.S. Federal Income Tax Returns.
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Tom Usher
Standing Comment, all posts and pages:
To all homosexuals and their supporters, condoners, promoters, accepters, confirmers, and the like:
Unless you have something completely new that hasn't already been refuted, don't bother. It won't show up.
Rehashing what has already been refuted is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm not interested in casting pearls before swine, giving the children's bread to the dogs, or rebuking a forever scorner.
Learn or go away: There is zero wisdom in homosexuality. Homosexuality is wrong. Nothing any homosexual or anyone else can say or do will alter it. No one needs the Bible to know it either. It's prima facie. There's no such thing as an unrepentant-homosexual Christian. There never has been and never will be. That's the way of it. If you don't like it, change.
Do site searches on the various topics concerning homosexuality to determine if your "point" has already been handled. Currently, I provide three different search methods. The "WordPress" search is still the most thorough.
The same can be done regarding militarism, capitalism, coercion, and many other main issues and themes.
TREATMENT, RUDENESS, POLITENESS, OFFENSE, TRUTH
Many times over the course of this website's existence, I've had commentators complain about how I've treated them and/or others. Much less frequently has anyone taken exception to those commentator's comments. I assume that's because for one, I appear to be holding my own.
Often, I have raised the fact that Jesus called certain people "serpents." I've often also mentioned how he cleaned the temple with whip in hand, not that he used it on anyone. It certainly doesn't say that he did, and neither was he charged with it in the kangaroo court of the serpents who ended up murdering him by proxy just for, among other wonderful things, speaking out and speaking truth.
If I say that those who are engaged in serpentine behavior are the New Testament "serpents," then why take offense at my saying it rather than standing with Jesus and me about it?
If others don't like it that I treat others or them the way I have in this regard, why don't they take it up with the serpents and/or their own consciences and God?
If I wanted to catch flies, I'd use honey. I don't want flies on this level. Human beings aren't to be on the level of flies. If the truth is bitter as vinegar, then ask yourself why and learn to taste it as sweet but not sickeningly so. Why attack the message and messenger, as the serpents did, and become a serpent by so doing?
The issue is not "name calling" on some bratty, childish level. When Jesus said "serpents," he was not being as a brat. His level was completely adult to adults and children. He dared say that the children understood the clear and plain truth before the adults who, afterall, had been abused and socialized by the serpents. He still calls adults back. Those who hear him and know his voice (truth) turn around and do the other required things together as well.
What is it for a human being to be more serpentine or reptilian than what God initially gave? What was and remains Jesus's point? What is the reptilian brain versus the vastly higher human brain with its cerebral cortex and frontal and temporal lobes and specific areas of altruistic sentiments and abilities? What are those higher areas before they are damaged, before the communication pathways to them and between them are diminished by evil that is always some form of abuse? How are those pathways reestablished or created where they never were in this fleshly life?
The snake lays its eggs. The eggs hatch. The snake parent doesn't nurture or raise the offspring. It's every snake for itself. Human parents and family are not designed to be that way. Humans hand down the learning of nurturing. Many people get better training than do others, and many people have a greater aptitude for learning and predisposition for the higher and highest virtues. Many are less abused. People can change for the better and best though, no matter where the starting point. They only can't if they don't — if they reject it.
Snakes, of course, also come in venomous varieties and in strangling varieties, etc., such that they have been attackers and even devourers of humans for eons, guilty and innocent alike.
Now, Jesus knew that most people could relate to what were, and still are, largely considered "good" parenting skills and "good" "family" relations. He regularly used those concepts to get people to consider the wider implications for the whole of humanity. He did know that many would refuse. He let them go. He didn't demand secular or false-religion legislation to rein them in with threats of violence and imprisonment. He was not and is not coercive. Even his Church is a voluntary place to be.
What he still teaches (through the written words in the New Testament and as those connect with the Old and also teaches through the Holy Spirit he definitely sent as he said he would) is, among many other things, that "good" is vastly better than has been commonly accepted and that real "family" is everyone left after all the rest have rejected the higher and highest good. He raised the standards far above the Old Testament and far above the "modern" standard.
The American Empire and the American people in general aren't even touching the hem of his garment, let alone even attempting to stand upright and side-by-side with him.
I point out that Jesus was, and is, a Real Liberal Christian. He is the one who brought back this censored truth that is the light. After he had spoken it and lived it and was murdered for doing so, the censors set about to re-censor it and did. They couldn't put it out though — couldn't completely extinguish the truth. I wouldn't be saying it now again with all credit to God, just as Jesus, if they had been able to completely block it.
I point out that each of those terms ("real," "liberal," and "Christian," along with "Church") are actually redundant terms — synonyms that are so close that they become one. The term "liberal" here is not the common usage, which common usage is a deliberate corruption of the term. There is no harm in real liberalism. There is no vileness in it. There is only beneficence. "Real" may be understood as the opposite of false-hearted, dark side, and dead of the Holy Spirit. Christian is both real and liberal in those senses. To arrive at living, doing, being those full senses requires what Jesus lives, does, and is in the highest. Finally, the Church is the whole.
Who are they who want to drag it down, censor it, work against it, lessen it, ignore it, etc.? Well, who sides with Jesus and who sides against him? Did the serpents side with him then? Do they now?
We call war-mongers "hawks." We call "peacemakers" blessed and "doves." Why do the hawks not take offense at "hawks" but do take offense at "serpents"? "Hawks" is not yet as telling to the general public, but I must tell you that all hawks are serpents. Why do some say, "Greed is good" but take offense at "serpents"? I tell you there is no difference between the selfish and the serpents. Why do people take offense at serpents when they do not take offense at homosexuality? I tell you the homosexual spirit also comes out from the dark side. It is a choice. It is harmful. Many are abused with it. Many never overcome it. Their very brain matter is transformed by it. Then they claim it is good when it remains confusion and definitely wrong and harmful.
Many arguments were put forth in support of tolerance. I understood that Jesus "tolerated," as in he did not execute wrath but rather told the truth and let the blind follow the blind (blind to the truth) into the ditch of their own making. I have watched while the movement has been corrupted into condoning what was once only to be tolerated. I have watched further while it has moved from condoning to promoting even to the youngest children to get to them before the truth does. I have seen evil at work, and I sound the alarm. I face censorship and other negative reactions for it.
As the American Empire claims to be a light to the world, it murders innocent babies by Hellfire missiles fired from predator drones controlled by armchair, video-gaming serpents in uniform. It tortures those who are not even suspects. It spies on its own without even probable cause or reasonable suspicion. It lies its way into wars for spoils and control. It neglects its poor, whom it treads down for the sakes of the superrich — for the sake of the massive flow of mammon from the bottom up (no trickledown — trickledown is a farce and always has been). All is claimed to be okay in America though — that America is headed in the right direction — because soon, even "don't tell, don't ask" will be a thing of the quaint past and homosexuals may be able to sleep together and have sex in the barracks with the "blessing" of the Empire while they practice murdering the innocent for the sake of homosexual, greedy plutocrats who own them and who, in turn, are owned by the dark-side spirit named by God and Jesus as Satan.
Whose side are you on? I speak truth to warn. I don't tell the secular government what to do other than occasionally to say what at least would be less hypocritical within their fallen, unenlightened system. I do so for spiritual reasons. What I want is the Christian Commons.
Now, if you submit a comment:
What you write here against the Real Liberal Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ will mark you in the Biblical sense unless you show that you have turned and are repenting in time to escape the damnation of your own choosing. That's the way of it. Don't be tempted by the devil to stand opposed to the call of righteousness. Overcome such evil temptation. Help others to help yet others to come to righteous behavior through-and-through.
Check out how even after reading this, people will still take it out of context and twist it to an evil end.