June 11, 2015 Member Letter

Dear Brethren,

The first week of June was an extremely busy time in the Church. Here at the office in Allen, Texas, we hosted our third international ministerial conference, not counting our organizational meeting in Louisville in 2011. Many said that this was the best conference they ever attended! And coming from veterans of many ministerial conferences, that is high praise indeed!

I thought you might be interested in some of the statistics from the conference. First of all, the attendance was 268. That number included ministers, wives and staff. It was our largest conference since we began. We have 212 ministers worldwide, and 70 percent were actually in attendance for this year’s conference. Most of those who were unable to come had a conflict with work or a health issue or—in the case of several ministers in Africa and a few from Latin America and the Philippines—were unable to get U.S. travel visas.

In his presentation Doug Horchak, operation manager for Ministerial Services, provided some overall statistics for the Church. Britton Taylor, Church treasurer, gave a financial update; and Clyde Kilough, operation manager for Media, updated everyone on the work of his department. One of the highlights from Media was the showing of three sample videos to illustrate how the gospel can be preached via Internet TV. The videos were received with spontaneous applause!

Mr. Horchak gave our worldwide church attendance as 10,175 (from the Feast of 2014) and our U.S. attendance as 5,021 (from the spring holy days). We actually have 5,820 listed in our database as being assigned to 107 congregations in the U.S., but not everyone is at services on any given Sabbath. These numbers are slightly more than last year. We now have 8,200 on our U.S. list of active contacts (donors, coworkers and members).

One very interesting statistic is that hardly a day goes by when we don’t receive a note or donation from a new person. We currently have over 1,000 donors/supporters who are not associated with a congregation. Each time we have a new donor, we send a special thank you card with a note from me. Here is a picture of one of the cards, front and back.

Mr. Taylor reported that our income for the first five months is up about 8 percent and that we are 1 percent under budget in our spending. Having an increase in income and being below budget in expenditures puts us in a strong financial position at this point in the year. Of course, that will change somewhat as we get into the fall when there are more expenses to be paid.

The numbers are small for Discern magazine, but our current policy is to send the magazine to anyone who makes a request. Even without any advertising, we hope to reach a print run of 10,000 (including the French and Spanish editions) by the end of the year. Our total number of subscribers to on our Life, Hope& Truth website is now over 25,000. Media is also reporting that our new booklet on Revelation will be sent to all members and coworkers prior to the Feast of Tabernacles. I believe you will enjoy the booklet, although some of you may have read it online. It is titled The Book of Revelation: The Storm Before the Calm.
In my ongoing effort to keep you informed about our office situation, let me alert you to another development. We currently have 8,200 square feet of leased space, and in that square footage we have a classroom for 25 students and a large studio for our video needs. But we have now run out of room!

The Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD) has asked the administration to explore options to accommodate growth. Our lease runs out in June of 2018, three years from this month. While that sounds like a long time, we know that it will pass quickly. Since there is no more space in our current building, we believe we have three choices for the future: (1) lease a larger space in another building in this area; (2) locate a building that will satisfy our needs for the foreseeable future that we can purchase or lease; or (3) purchase land and build our own facility. God has been very merciful to us and all of you have been very generous. Depending on our finances, we will need to choose one of these three options—or develop another option—before the summer of 2018. I am simply making you aware of our circumstances and ask that you pray for us to have the wisdom to make the right decision when the time comes.

If you have not viewed the two special In Accord programs from the week of the conference, I would encourage you to do so. I believe you will find them encouraging, inspiring and filled with hope for the future. We know that God the Father is ultimately responsible for calling people (John 6:44), but we must spread the gospel message and be ready to shepherd those who will be called. Matthew 9:35-37 was read more than once during the conference. Are we living in a time when the “harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few”? Indeed, it seems so! The total population of the world today is approximately 7.4 billion. That is more people than have been alive at any other time in human history. Compare that to the time of Christ when, it is estimated, there were 300 million people on the earth. That makes today’s world population 25 times more than the first century. The fields are definitely bigger, and the potential for harvest is greater. And even though we are small, we must not forget that through the Internet we have the ability to reach more people with the gospel message than at any time in history.

What will God yet do? It is hard to know, but if we do our part—preach the gospel, care for the brethren and hold on to the truth—I believe God will grant growth. We know that it is His desire to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the work of the Church and that you will continue praying for the ministry and for the effort that is coming from the office here in Allen. We pray for all of you every day!

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks