December 2024 Member Letter

December 5, 2024

Dear Brethren,

The Church of God, a Worldwide Association, uses the calendar year as our fiscal year, which means that in four weeks we will complete our 2024 fiscal year. In order to prepare a new budget for the next year, we collect all the financial data from the current year. Since we haven’t quite completed 2024, there is some guesswork involved in coming up with the numbers for our income and our expenses going forward. Will we achieve our projected income for 2024? And will our expenditures be on, under or over budget?

Answering these questions before the year ends isn’t always easy. But I am happy to report that with one month to go, we are ahead of our budget for income and under budget for our expenditures. That puts us in a good financial position and makes our planning for next year somewhat easier than it could have been. But this isn’t unusual, we have seen our income increase every year but one since we began in December of 2010. And we have never been over budget in our expenditures in any single year. We have also increased our budget in all key areas, and we are planning to do so again in 2025.

In Media, for example, we have increased our budget by 71 percent in the past four years, and we are planning for another increase this next year. Of course, simply spending more money doesn’t automatically mean we will be more effective. Each year we analyze where we are spending our funds and how successful each program has been. Clyde Kilough, our operation manager for Media, is constantly looking at graphs and statistics to determine which projects are effective and should be continued. It isn’t always a matter of how much money you spend, but where you spend those funds. And probably the most important need going forward will be personnel—both for Media and for the ministry.

Media today is very different from what it was like 10 years ago and possibly even four years ago. It is constantly changing. During the recent presidential election here in the United States, we saw the effectiveness of a podcast. Some people are making the claim that Joe Rogan’s podcast interview with Donald Trump was the single most important event of the campaign. According to Newsweek, the program had 26 million views on YouTube during its first 24 hours.

In preparing for the annual meeting of the Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD), I analyze the state of the Church at the present time and our plans for the future. Along with my report on the state of the Church, I prepare a strategic plan that outlines our goals for the next year. Each operation manager—Dave Myers for Ministerial Services, Clyde Kilough for Media, Doug Horchak for the international work and Britt Taylor for finances—provides his own report on the conditions of his department and what he is planning for the next year. All of these plans must then fit within our proposed budget. Our documents require that we provide a balanced budget (income must equal or exceed expenditures) for the MBOD to review and approve.

Some of the most recent statistics from Media are truly exciting. The number of unique visitors to our websites each month is now between 800,000 and 1 million. Each month almost 200,000 of those are from our Spanish website. In 2024 we added two new booklets: The Middle East in Prophecy and The Spirit World: Facts and Fallacies. We now have 22 booklets and one book (Five Tools for Spiritual Growth). Of course, all our literature is free of charge to those who request it.

Hopefully, all of you are aware of our own podcast, Verse by Verse, which began two years ago. We have now produced over 300 episodes, and as of Nov. 20, there have been 177,652 audio downloads and 114,700 YouTube views.

Our mission is to preach the gospel to the world and care for all those whom God may choose to call. The number of people supporting our mission has grown by 30 percent in the past four years alone. We estimate that up to 10 percent of our total contributions are from these “coworkers” who are not connected to one of our congregations, but who regularly contribute to our work. We are happy to see this number continue to grow, showing the impact we are having on our audience, both those connected to the Church and those with no known connection.

As we look ahead to the future, we must look back on some of the basic scriptures that guide our path. We believe that we (the Church) were commissioned by Jesus Christ along with His disciples to preach the gospel “in all the world” before the end of this age (Matthew 24:14). We are compelled by what Christ, prior His ascension to heaven, told His disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19-20). We are also faced with the reality that Christ spoke about in Matthew 9:37-38—the shortage of laborers for the harvest. Our greatest needs for the years ahead are for individuals who are skilled at writing, working with video, and who understand social media, while being committed to this way of life. We need younger men for the ministry who can become, with training, future pastors. For this responsibility, we need men who have a good understanding of and a passion for the truth and who also have a love for the brethren. 

Before I conclude my letter, I wanted to bring you up to date on the future of constructing an auditorium/education center on our property in McKinney. We have now completed the plans and selected a builder. Our timetable is to discuss the project at the annual meeting of the MBOD, to be held the week of Dec. 9, and then wait to see how our fiscal year ends on Dec. 31. Then in mid-January we will convene a special meeting of the MBOD to make the final decision—to build, to not build or to further delay. We began this journey in December of 2022, so it does seem appropriate that we make the final decision in January 2025. We have not rushed into anything. Even if the decision in January is to build, we understand that with the amount of time required to obtain building permits from the city, no work could begin until the summer of 2025. That would give us a completion date of June 2026 at the earliest. Please join us in praying for the right decision, the one that will be pleasing to God and will further the mission of the Church.

Shortly after the MBOD meetings, Sharron and I will be traveling to the Philippines for a series of conferences associated with the International Leadership Program. We will be joined by David and Dorrie Baker and Doug and Tanya Horchak. I don’t look forward to the 15-hour flight from Dallas to Japan and then the five-hour flight to Manila, but I am excited to see the brethren. They are warm and friendly people! But I find that to be true of all God’s people, no matter where they live. Please continue to pray for God’s direction and His protection as we endeavor to serve His people in more than 40 countries around the world!

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks