Kingdumb Halls...crying poor. Are they really?

by kwintestal 18 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  DaCheech

  Since I do accounting in KH I'll tell you our story:

  Every month: We pay

  1)Mortgage

  2)Gas/Electric

  3)Maintenance

  4)then we give fixed amount to society as what they call KHAA (kingdom hall assistance arrangement) this pays C.O.'s insurance/car/ and misc stuff

  5)we automatically give each month a set amount made by our elders to Worldwide work (on top of what publishers stick in that box)

  6) we pay a "contribution" to the circuit fund for the overseer's apartment

  7) we give Overseer his expense check

  8) we give bethellites that come to our congregation a expense check

  9) we give bethellites doing talk in our congr. a fixed amount of $20 per talk

  then if our savings go over a certain amount (to be determined by elders) we send to society for safe investing (they tell us we can have back anyyyyyyyyy time)

  So, when all is said and done we always have between $2,000 to $4,000 in bank!
• 

  Undaunted Danny

  I'll cry you a river.I was my cong's major ca$h cow and they gave me the boot. Click to enlarge.
• 

  Confucious

  I was the accounts person when I was an MS.
  
  Most of the time, I would treat it like I would my bills.
  
  I would decide who gets paid first, etc.
  
  We were almost always short.
• 

  Midget-Sasquatch

  The foreign language congregation I grew up in closed down because it was shrinking in size, and this led to almost an entire year of us regularly falling short of paying our share of the expenses. The other english congregation who we shared the KH with, just barely picked up the slack.

  Like it was already mentioned, the WTS though always gets its cut first. And if it says that a particular congregation hasn't sent in enough donations from the "World Wide Work" category, they send in a remittance that tells the congregation the balance owing for the literature ordered that year. So much for "you received free, give free".
• 

  DaCheech

  6) we pay a "contribution" to the circuit fund for the overseer's apartment

  For example this line expense is not really an expense, but we pay the congregation setting up

  his apartment. It's passing from one hand to another, and yet looks like to the congregation

  as an expense and reported as so. Therefore people see "we were short $150.00 or xx dollars last month", it

  would be nice if our good spirits will see what we can do to make this up!

  Inspiration to donate!
• 

  Nosferatu

  One thing that pissed me off (and also pisses my mother off) is when the Congregation does rennovations it doesn't need. I always loved when there would be a "raising of hands" to see who was in favor of the rennovations (in other words, a vote). Many would be in favor, many wouldn't raise their hands, and the ones with balls were opposed.

  In my old cong, the chairs were in good shape, the carpet didn't have dog shit stains on it, the walpaper wasn't peeling, but the entire place was rennovated (the hall was about 10 years old at this time, I remember the quick build). In my opinion, it was a big f#$%ing waste of money. More recently, the driveway was re-done. It wasn't crumbling (the hall was about 15 years old when this was done).

  So, how many of you rennovate your living room every 10 years? Do you really think a KH needs it done every 10 years, even though the place gets used about 2 hours a day?
• 

  DaCheech

  Ditto here: 100% to 0% are always in favor

  Seems like my hall replaced the carpet and chairs that were good. What happened is that the new

  carpet was too light and got the sh--t stained out of it in 3 weeks (a sister was an int. decorator and did the whole thing)

  My friends cong needed carpet and his witness friend (carpet salesman) was quoting carpet and installation for the company he worked for. Seems like

  the elders thought bethellites could do the labor for cheaper........ wrong! they quoted a price higher than the commercial place!

  Also, the elders bugged the sh--t out of the company for every nuisance (price, deliery date, scheduing, etc ec), and the Witnesses' boss said he would never deal with them again!
• 

  JT

  100% to 0% are always in favor--

  ##

  this is because of the unity that god's people have, don't you all know that
• 

  WTWizard

  Hmm. They seem to be running short on money for their bills, but they have enough to put in the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund. That is a huge waste of money.

  I can remember when I was in. They rarely, if ever, had more than about $4,000 in reserves. Each time the reserves got to about that, they would make a donation to the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund. That would bleed the account down to about $1500. Then they would get hit with a big bill for some repairs, and hound everyone for more donations. Had they kept the money that went to the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund, they would have had enough and then some.

  As far as I can remember, I was quite stingy with donations. I would frequently put in nothing, or maybe a couple of dollars at the most. When they paid for litter-ature, I would buy it. And, when they went to the "complete donation" arrangement, I didn't fall for the scam about the double donation when you were supposed to donate twice. I made sure, at least at first, that the total amount donated on any given piece of litter-ature was the correct amount, not donating the correct amount plus whatever I got in the territory. The worst I did was, when I found $200 in an air conditioner I bought from a "brother", I honestly told him about it and he wanted it donated to the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund. (Had I known at that time that a portion of it would protect pedophiles, I would have just kept the money). And I have been known to donate $50 for a$$emblies, at least in the beginning. Probably, my total donation out of pocket was around $1,000 or less.

  The thing that made me was when I saw people putting in $20 bills in the box. And, no those were not people that were making $2,000 and up a week. These were elderly ladies that were probably making less than $10,000 a year on Social Security and pensions, if that. They lived in poorly maintained houses, they complained about the high cost of living, and yet they happily donated those $20 bills faithfully. Somehow, there still managed to be deficits at times. With the amount of money that they donated, if it all stayed in the congregation, they would have had more than $100,000 in their reserve fund.

  I hope the Governing Body all got coal in their stockings this year.