how organized religion is a scam. research included.
Put yourself in church. Your pastor just finishes showing a video and telling the heart breaking story of little Anna, who is four and lives in the Dominican Republic and she will starve if YOU dont fess up at least 15% of your paycheck. Okay, fine. so you write out a check blindly and toss it in the plate and you leave feeling warm and fuzzy, thinking that YOU, are saving Anna and helping her whole family because you gave double this time !! You even get a card in the mail with her photo and signature thanking you for your donations. But wait, how is it that only 10-15% of ALL donations go towards Ministry (("Outreach efforts including the facilitation of weekend services, children's ministries, outreach efforts, promotional materials, etc")) (??? Where does the rest go??
Missions & Evangelism - 10%-15%
Administrative procedure, development and maintenance of new and fledgling Foursquare churches within our movement, and local and foreign missions projects..
The maintenance, repair and improvement of our church facility.
Personnel - 40%-50% (a larger percent for small churches)
All full and part-time salaried employees (currently three positions) including benefits and federal taxes.
Miscellanous expenses, from office supplies and postage; to website mainenance and podcast costs
(ABOVE QUOTED FROM: http://www.capitolfoursquare.org/Church-Budget.html)
On that same web page, you will notice it also says this is a "healthy budget". People you are being sucked in by this HOAX !!!
And what about Mission Trips? The church I used to attend funded a "youth mission trip" to Costa Rico. Okay, let's break this down.on average, Tickets per person (minor- Younger than 18) range everywhere from 700$ to over 1,000 round trip. http://travel.travelocity.com/flights/AirSearch.do;jsessionid=BBDCC4C57128BD3699A660ED4CB96E66.p0743?intl=true&SEQ=13289493231671112012) ( My youth group consisted of 10-15 people at the time. So do the math, that's a shit ton of money that my small church spent on plane tickets alone. Plus meals, Plus hotel fair, Plus any Misc. I bet you could have given poor Anna a house full of food with all that huh? But no, it's all about the "experience", and, let's be honest, the "vacation aspect", I think that Anna having stable meals for a few months would make a bigger difference than a bunch of annoying teenagers coming for a week to paint a shed and teach them a few American Games. Unreal.
What if I offered got a tiny Hair Clip. Except it was truely the most sentamental object that I owned. It meant alot to me, but I wanted to offer it to God. I think the usher would laugh and give it back to you. Whose decision is it what an appropriate offering is?? Why don't I just take my "offering money" and directly use it to fix up a park in a bad neighborhood. Why don't I take my money and adopt a child? Well, because then you wouldn't be giving 85% to your Church leaders to do whatever they want with it.
Come on people. Let's be real.
Know what your spending money on.
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