"Here ya' go, Haffez...."
Posted on 01/02/2010 8:37:35 PM PST by Steelfish
Calif. Pastor Takes in $2.4M After Donations Plea
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: January 2, 2010
LAKE FOREST, Calif. (AP) -- Evangelical pastor Rick Warren's plea for donations to fill a $900,000 deficit at his Southern California megachurch brought in $2.4 million, Warren announced to cheers during a sermon at the church on Saturday.
Warren said the amount raised after the appeal was posted online Wednesday included only money parishioners brought in person to Saddleback Church by New Year's Eve. More was arriving by hand and by mail, he said.
''This is pretty amazing,'' Warren told his congregation. ''I don't think any church has gotten a cash offering like that off a letter.''
The pastor said he planned to talk further about the response in a Sunday sermon called ''The Miracle.''
''We're starting the new decade with a surplus,'' he said. ''It came from thousands of ordinary people. This was not one big fat cat.''
The posting on Warren's Web site read: ''With 10 percent of our church family out of work due to the recession, our expenses in caring for our community in 2009 rose dramatically while our income stagnated.''
Warren said the church had largely managed to stay within its budget during the year, but ''the bottom dropped out'' when Christmas donations were down.
The letter cited the church's accomplishments in 2009 and detailed how the donations would be used, including the church's food pantry, homeless ministry, counseling and support groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
[That Many Fools in CA?]
Yes
I agree with you. I had a middling respect for him prior to the election and basically benign now.
Rick Warren = Charlatan. Of course, the Church’s financial ledger cannot be shared with the public.
Of course, the Church’s financial ledger cannot be shared with the public.
Oh, really. And you know that...how???
This is the “religion” that keeps its financial records a secret. I’m amazed that sheep can be so stupid as to give their money without knowing the detailed budget. It’s crass and crooked. Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker and Jim Jones would be proud.
Yes but that was up to the McCain campaign, not Rick Warren. He asked the question, but the McCainiacs were too supine to exploit the answer.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
The church’s articles allow all members (and I don’t know how many there are...but there are several thousand) to vote on the church’s budget.
There may be a large contingent of “sheep” at Saddleback, but there are also a bunch of pretty bright people, including journalist, lawyer and author Lee Strobel.
Stupid people
*shakeshead*
Jim Baker would be proud..... =.=
Whether these churches survive will be one to watch. Such churches need a good economy to operate. Can they downsize and survive is the question to ask.<<<<<<<<<<<<<
In a town nearby, a large church took over an entire golf course property, paved it over, and built a giant church with a huge parking lot. I frankly preferred the golf course for a community asset.
I assume the golf course was municipal property, which they no doubt sold. I wonder what taxes are collected from the church for the property, assuming churches pay property taxes.
Ditto, most of the naysayers on this board, could not organize a beer concession for a Sunday School Picnic, yet they set themselves up to judge everyone.
“Rick Warren paid back Saddleback Church every dollar they paid him in salary after his 24th year. He now takes no salary from the church. Saddleback is coming up on its 30th anniversary.
He and his wife determined that their living standards would not change as the result of the book sales.
The Warrens “reverse tithe”. In other words, he lives on 10% of his income and tithes 90.
The 90% of proceeds from the book go to three foundations set up by the Warrens...they get nothing from those foundations.
To date his book has sold 52 million copies.”
Those facts and figures refute the ignorant charges made in this thread.
Other big churches in or near Orange County:
Crystal Cathedral (Robert Shuller)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cathedral
Calvary Chapel (Chuck Smith)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary_chapel
Harvest Crusade (Rick Laurie)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary_chapel
I’m sure fault can be found with them, too.
The churches pay no property taxes. I think it is one way to acquire lots of property, pay no taxes and, upon retirement, have a valuable asset to sell off.
What an asinine reply! As we've seen since, with an upgrade in salary Obama was gifted with the wisdom he lacked before the money? We already knew he approved of abortion up to when a child was due to be born. Call him deceptive, for one, and lots more.
I don't know when he thinks life begins and I frankly don't believe he gives a damn. Conception? The day before a baby would naturally be born? Even after the baby is born due to a botched abortion?
This huge mistake occupying the WH is amoral and I have a hard time believing that true Americans have no way of ousting him.
Bone up on the ones bringing in the big bucks and copy them. LOL
He’s not my cup of tea.
But as others have noted, he doesn’t take a salary, returned every cent of salary he ever made, and gives away 90 percent of his income. So the shortfall isn’t about him.
A large church has a large cost, maintaining a large campus, and usually a large salaried staff. The flip side of that is that they usually have money to take on projects smaller churches can’t. When you join a church, the work they do there is your work, their problems are your problems. If there is a shortfall, its your shortfall.
You don’t look for a fatcat, especially when your local fatcat is already giving most of his earnings. You’re a member, you have a responsibility. And in this case, the $900 thousand isn’t that large a percent of their budget, and it isn’t that much per member. They can do it, they just needed to know they needed to do it.
I didn’t care for the book, it again wasn’t my cup of tea. But a lot of churches have shortfalls this year, and a larger church with larger costs and larger ministries is going to have to either cut back or step up. It looks like they’ve decided to step up.
"Here ya' go, Haffez...."
He's just being, um... uh... "neo-biblical." Yeah, that's the ticket -- a Neo-Biblical mano-d-kloth. He's simply building on Paul's riff -- that business about being "a Greek with the Greeks, and a Jew with the Jews" has now been improved by the simple addition of "and a Muslim with the Muslims."
You can't get more neo-biblical than that! ;)
Cue the “Rick Warren is the devil” crowd in 3...2...1...
Don't be silly. The devil is "a man of wealth and taste."
I'd say Mr. Hawaiian Shirt has NO worries in that department!
The Warrens “reverse tithe”. In other words, he lives on 10% of his income and tithes 90.The 90% of proceeds from the book go to three foundations set up by the Warrens..
...
To date his book has sold 52 million copies.
Ah, math... fun!
Lessee... the last book contract I signed... bear with me, it's been a while, and I've been disabled for some years now, so I'm a tad rusty, but as I recall, the author's royalty came to something like three bucks per book sold. Now, it 'twern't a "spiritual" title (unless one worships his computer -- which, being a PC-owner, I don't), but, it was a fairly mainstream house (Addison-Wesley), so I'm guessing the numbers can't be THAT out of line.
Well, anyway, if we use $3/book as a starting point, and we multiply that by, hmm... fifty two million copies sold -- and then we deduct NINETY PERCENT (at the same time throwing out the window all that "Jesus-stuff" about NOT trumpeting your generosity -- and, that business about such folk "having their reward" in that low estate), we come to the pauperseque sum of a mere $15,600,000.
Good Lord, I see your point. How that poor man manages to scrape by on the piddling amount of $15,600,000 is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps the birds are feeding him too? Oh, wait -- that only works for REAL prophets, doesn't it.
Well, regardless, he MUST be managing somehow to live day-to-day on that trivially pathetic sum of $15,600,000, right? For that, we can only admire him. Or something.
PS: I'm assuming (stupidly) that that MERE $15,600,000 is his sole source of revenue, i.e., he has NO other income, derives NO interest or return on investment on that money (meaning he keeps it in non-interest bearing accounts, which any Muslim bank ought to be able to provide him), and so forth.
Otherwise, my guestimate would need to be revised, and as the old saying goes, frankly, my dear, I don't...
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