by munchausen 50 Replies latest jw friends
With the elimiation of the Bookstudy, KHs can be used more effectively by several congs.
So much for their claim that they eliminated one meeting night a week so the bros could save money on gas. They "evidently" (to use a popular dub word) had their eye on consolidation all along.
The WTBTS will be asking for all members of the congregation
to make a least a one time donation for the construction of the
new assembly hall. Then at the circuit assemblies in the new
hall they will ask for more money for the loan to the Society.
In 15 years it will be paid off and not belong to the people who
contributed to it with money and free labor but the the WTBTS
( the bank ). Pretty slick. It is like going to the bank to borrow
money to build a house. You make payments for 15 years and
then when you have it paid off the house belongs not to you but to
the bank.
Sour Grapes
One of our families sources describes a similar situation in Texas.
The Bethel Service Committee has these JW's worked up into a tizzy.
Full of manipulative flowery comments, said spiritual brotherhood,
and the sales deals of "special privileges!"
Some of their brothers are being worked to exhaustion.
Husbands are left with little time for their wives, or children;
even older ones nearing retirement are racing around at a beat-neck pace.
Its sickening to observe the extent of incorporated usury under the guise of "a good cause."
Increasingly this is the way the WTBTS is raising capital. MacDonalds used to be described as a property business that sold burgers as a sideline - the WTBTS is a property business that sells religious literature as a sideline.
On an operations basis the WTBTS is running at a loss now , so they need to keep on flipping real estate to make profits. As well as raising much needed cash , it retains existing construction skills amongst JWs & trains up new members. It also gives the impression of an organisation that is making advancement & has Jehovah's blessing.
As a rough guide , labour costs are about 35% - 40% of build costs. The WTBTS in its submission to the Patterson authorities says that 75% of their construction labour is voluntary ( I imagine the real figure is somewhat higher) and virtually all of the legal & planning work is done in-house , so they must be building these new venues at almost 40% discount to the market price. Factor in the completely unnecessary appeals for cash to build the new halls (don't the local JWs wonder why can't the new halls can't be financed from the sale of the existing ones? ) and you have a very profitable project indeed.
There is a limitation to this strategy. Eventually they will run out of viable properties to sell especially in the current market. In a healthy business, money must be earned or made on a regular basis. The WTS typically did this through their investments, but the market has dropped out of that. Since the WTS no longer charges for publications, that avenue of funds has dried up. Ever since 1990, the WTS has been trying to find a substitute source. If my husband's experience as an accounts servant is any indication, only 2 or 3 jws ever donate any substantial sum monthly, many just small amounts that help cover utilities and mortgage, and others that have never given a dime.
Blondie- what was the Society charging for magazines when they switched to the donation program, was it .25 cents. That would make about 3.7 mil per issue if that was the price.
Update abt 5 months after announcing that the London Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana Assembly Halls will be sold and a new one to be built in the Cincinnati Ohio area, called the 'Southwest Ohio assembly hall' or something like that:
Indianapolis IndianaAssembly Hall is still for sale...
London Ohio Assembly Hall is not for sale yet; they keep doing necessary work on it, like putting in credit card machines for donations.
Congregations to be served by the new facility passed out a survey for the people to write down how much they could contribute to the new project. A special collection box was put in each of the congregations for the Southwest Ohio Assembly hall. In one local kingdom hall in Ohio, they have ceased showing on the accounts report how much is being contributed in the new box (it was about $1000-$1200 each month before they stopped reporting the collections for the assembly hall) The information from 5 months ago was that the project would cost $8 million and there would be about 300 congregations served.
So far the land for the new assembly hall has not been purchased, nor is there any definite purchase in sight...
The 'committee' assigned to find and purchase the land has some unusual members. Get this: at least one of the committee members is a 20-something who has no education beyond high school, has only worked part time to support her pioneering, with not a shred of experience in either real estate or finance.
It makes you wonder how serious they are in building the new assembly hall, or if it was just a way to ramp up donations.
I agree with Blondie - when I was doing the accounts I found that a handfull would give $20 - $40 a month by postdated check and toward the end of the year a few more would give a one-time $500 to $1500 donation, just in time to qualify for a tax receipt. Funds in the cong. bank account would start high in the new year and would carry us until the end of the year because collection during the other months alone would not have been enough to cover the KHall expenses. The amount collected for the WT Worldwide Work would have never covered the value of the litterature if they were still sold at the old prices. I'm convinced that the majority of publishers never put money in the WWW box for publications except for what they would collect...and in our congregation very few ever dare asked for donations...
There is a limitation to this strategy. Eventually they will run out of viable properties to sell especially in the current market. In a healthy business, money must be earned or made on a regular basis.
Blondie is absolutely correct. It is unsustainable because the cash cow from the throw-away magazine publishing is extinct.
What are they going to do? Sell Tupperware to each other? ---
Unsustainable.
