Following the $$$?
How lucrative was it? Well let's objectively look at the #'s as we know them.
At the peak there were well over 100 congregations, in several countries - check the location index at the back of a "This Week" around 1979... This is s a certainty.
Yes, churches came in a wide variety of sizes and levels of wealth. It's hard to say if the $$ amounted to millions, but easily several hundreds of thousands per year... every year... from at least 1975 to 1983. (in those days $million was really a $million!) That's the money Martha was after.
I helped keep the books at an outlying local church. It was a larger group, we owned our own building, had paid staff, paid ministries etc. Nobody got rich, but do I remember some specifics about tithes and LW Inc.
First thing you need to understand is that these funds were tax free. Also, the LW organization was split up geographically. Each church congregation was expected to fund their own operations. (ie you paid for your own minister)
Tithes from outlying churches would have been deposited directly to LW Inc. I later came to understand that basically meant JRS and Blix etc.
Support for com-central was voluntary, but there was an expectation that local churches would send a monthly contribution.
Our church's monthly payments to LW Inc. varied based on monthly tithe income and our local operating expenses.
In our heyday, our church's payments to LW Inc. easily topped $5,000 month. That was a lot of money in those days. Com-central special fund raising requests generated $10k or even $25k., giving until it hurts... Special fund raising took place 2 - 3x per year.
I remember we had to keep careful records of $$ sent to Cali. Funds had to be kept separate because we were registered as an independent charitable org. separate from LWF. There were tax rules about the % of remittances that could be spent outside the local organization. We once purchased electronic equipment for Cali. and shipped it to them to avoid the tax conflicts - funny the things you remember...
I remember hearing about tensions resulting from "Timothy's" who were not tied to (ie paid for by) local congregations - and "who was going to pay for them" (if you remember, no-one in authority ever actually worked for a living) I remember a period where JRS asked that we pick up the salary for individuals at a Com-central "for a season". We were glad when that "season" was over.
One of the first phone calls to us from Marilyn after John's death was to insist that our monthly tithes had to be increased... no pressure but...
Shortly afterward we heard that Marilyn had initiated a legal effort to take over title of our local church real estate. Her efforts were only thwarted because JRS only had one vote on the board of the local church corp. I remember being told this set-up was partly to prevent Martha from ever having access... the irony of it all.
How lucrative was it? Well let's objectively look at the #'s as we know them.
At the peak there were well over 100 congregations, in several countries - check the location index at the back of a "This Week" around 1979... This is s a certainty.
Yes, churches came in a wide variety of sizes and levels of wealth. It's hard to say if the $$ amounted to millions, but easily several hundreds of thousands per year... every year... from at least 1975 to 1983. (in those days $million was really a $million!) That's the money Martha was after.
I helped keep the books at an outlying local church. It was a larger group, we owned our own building, had paid staff, paid ministries etc. Nobody got rich, but do I remember some specifics about tithes and LW Inc.
First thing you need to understand is that these funds were tax free. Also, the LW organization was split up geographically. Each church congregation was expected to fund their own operations. (ie you paid for your own minister)
Tithes from outlying churches would have been deposited directly to LW Inc. I later came to understand that basically meant JRS and Blix etc.
Support for com-central was voluntary, but there was an expectation that local churches would send a monthly contribution.
Our church's monthly payments to LW Inc. varied based on monthly tithe income and our local operating expenses.
In our heyday, our church's payments to LW Inc. easily topped $5,000 month. That was a lot of money in those days. Com-central special fund raising requests generated $10k or even $25k., giving until it hurts... Special fund raising took place 2 - 3x per year.
I remember we had to keep careful records of $$ sent to Cali. Funds had to be kept separate because we were registered as an independent charitable org. separate from LWF. There were tax rules about the % of remittances that could be spent outside the local organization. We once purchased electronic equipment for Cali. and shipped it to them to avoid the tax conflicts - funny the things you remember...
I remember hearing about tensions resulting from "Timothy's" who were not tied to (ie paid for by) local congregations - and "who was going to pay for them" (if you remember, no-one in authority ever actually worked for a living) I remember a period where JRS asked that we pick up the salary for individuals at a Com-central "for a season". We were glad when that "season" was over.
One of the first phone calls to us from Marilyn after John's death was to insist that our monthly tithes had to be increased... no pressure but...
Shortly afterward we heard that Marilyn had initiated a legal effort to take over title of our local church real estate. Her efforts were only thwarted because JRS only had one vote on the board of the local church corp. I remember being told this set-up was partly to prevent Martha from ever having access... the irony of it all.