January 2024 Member Letter

January 4, 2024

Dear Brethren,

This will be a different letter from the type I normally write. As we begin a new fiscal year, I want to share with all of you a summary of my report to the Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD) on the current state of the Church and our plans for this next year. These plans were approved by the MBOD at its annual meeting, which took place here in McKinney in early December of last year.

God has blessed us in so many ways since we began back in December of 2010. As we begin a new fiscal year, our financial position is very good. If the projections for December hold up (final numbers won’t be available until mid-January), 2023 will be the 13th consecutive year that the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, has experienced a surplus—that is, income exceeding expenses.

We have increased our Media budget each year since our first full year in 2011. And since 2018, we have increased our budget for Media by more than 70 percent. This past year we launched three initiatives that are beginning to produce fruit. We intensified the Facebook advertising campaigns for two of our most popular booklets: The Book of Revelation and Change Your Life. These ads produced over 250,000 downloads over the last year. We have since begun posting ads for other booklets as well, with similarly good results.

The second major initiative was developing Life, Hope & Truth Presents, a 20-minute video program to post on the Internet every two weeks. We selected four presenters and began the development of scripts this past summer. Since the Feast, we have posted six programs, one every other week. We’ve had over 30,000 YouTube views of these episodes and are in the very early stages of building our audience.

The third major initiative was starting the Verse by Verse podcast last January. Since then, we have had over 90,000 audio downloads of the 160 episodes and over 25,000 views of the YouTube video versions that began in August. This has quickly become our most popular podcast.

In looking into the new fiscal year, we have concerns about the development of leadership in general and about the training of new ministers specifically. In the spring of 2022, Ministerial Services introduced a new educational program, titled the Pastoral Development Program (PDP). In 2022, over the course of three sessions, all of our full-time ministers in the United States traveled to the office in McKinney for a long weekend of training. This program was designed to fill in the gap between ministerial conferences. Our schedule calls for an International Ministerial Conference each “odd” year (2023, followed by 2025, and so on). Since there was an International Ministerial Conference in McKinney in 2023, we plan to have another round of PDP classes in 2024, and then another conference in 2025.

The purpose of the PDP is to upgrade the education and development of our current pastors. To date, we have 45 pastors and associate pastors in the U.S. Along with their wives, they will come to the McKinney office for four days of training during 2024. With almost half of our pastors having no Ambassador College training, we believe that these classes are essential for improving our service to the brethren. Our current plan is to hold three sessions of these classes in March, June and July respectively. Each session will consist of approximately 30 ministers and wives.

It is our view that outside the U.S., we have reached a crisis in ministerial leadership. Our church attendance is around 12,000, and it is divided evenly between the U.S. and areas outside the U.S. But when it comes to ministerial leadership, 75 percent of all elders reside in the U.S., and 25 percent reside outside the U.S. That means 25 percent of our ministers are caring for 50 percent of our members. This has become increasingly more difficult in the past several years with the deaths of four pastors, three of whom served outside the United States. The three international pastors were Manuel Quijano, from Peru, who died in June 2017; Norman Julag-ay, from the Philippines, who died in February 2018; and Eriz Dizon, also from the Philippines, who died suddenly the day after Pentecost in 2022. The fourth pastor, who worked in the U.S., was Todd Carey, who died in May 2017. Replacing these men was a major challenge for the Church.

As an answer to the ministerial needs outside the U.S., the International Leadership Program was developed in 2017 and launched in 2018. The most recent phase of the program was completed this past year. It consisted of a weekend regional conference, where leadership seminars were presented to those invited from throughout the region. The day following each conference (Monday) was set aside for discussions with the elders who were in attendance. Our plans are to continue this program in 2024.

In this new fiscal year, we will continue producing our biweekly Life, Hope & Truth Presents video program, which will be posted on all our web platforms (YouTube, Roku and LifeHopeandTruth.com). We also plan to continue investing in advertising. We’ve been very pleased with the cost per response and number of downloads that have resulted from these ads, so we’re increasing the number of ads this next year to include several additional booklets.

I don’t have any news on the potential for adding an auditorium and education center on our current property. We are still waiting on five different contractors for bids on the actual costs. Originally, when we secured the services of Alliance Architects, we were given an estimated amount for the cost of construction, which was easily affordable and would not put the Church in any financial difficulty. We now need to confirm those numbers before we can decide whether or not to move forward. Hopefully, we will have an answer before the end of January. Thank you for your support and for your prayers that God will guide us in these important decisions.

It is humbling to see God’s hand in our activities. We believe God is the One who has blessed us, and we do not take His blessings for granted, as though we deserved them. But we do believe that if we remain humble and look to God for direction, He will continue to bless us (James 4:6, 10; 1 Peter 5:6). Humility is rare these days, especially among those in corporate and political leadership, but it must be part of who we are as Christians.

We are excited and sobered by the plans for this new fiscal year. World conditions meet the biblical description of the end time, and it has never been more important than now that the gospel be preached to the world. Our goal is to get this message out with as much power as we possibly can. We truly are at the stage where, as Jesus Christ admonished His disciples, we must pray for laborers because the harvest is plentiful (Matthew 9:37-38).

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Jim Franks