“The Church is not an automobile showroom – a place to put ourselves on display so that others can admire our spirituality, capacity, or prosperity. It is more like a service center, where vehicles in need of repair come for maintenance and rehabilitation.” Dieter F. Uchtdorf
I bought her a little pillow when my first baby grew old enough. My husband asked me about it. I told him it was just like those children’s books that described things like “What is a zebra?” So, we began to call it “What is a pillow?” I was going through a box recently and found it, still remembering.
Last week I wrote Christian Entities Like Samaritan’s Purse Claim They Are Churches to Hide Salaries and Donors. What Else Are They Lying About? It looks like this situation is garnering some interest on the part of legislators.
First, what is a church?
I know it is the entire body of believers. For some, it is a group of believers gathering around an agreed-upon definition of shared beliefs that meets regularly for worship. I found this definition to be helpful.
The Church Local Versus the Church Universal
The local church is defined as a local assembly of believers or a congregation that meets together physically for worship, fellowship, teaching, prayer, and encouragement in the faith (Hebrews 10:25). At the local church level, we can live in relationship with other believers—we break bread together (Holy Communion), we pray for each other, teach and make disciples, strengthen, and encourage one another.
At the same time, all believers are members of the universal church. The universal church is made up of every single person who has exercised faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, including members of every local church body throughout the earth:
Due to a confusing definition of what constitutes a church in the IRS coding, a number of Christian organizations have declared themselves to be a church. It appears that some politicians are calling “Foul.” Julie Roys posted Democrats Call On IRS To Review Family Research Council’s ‘Church’ Status.
House Democrats are asking the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of a prominent conservative advocacy group recently reclassified as a church, arguing the organization may be exploiting the designation to avoid scrutiny.
Forty Democratic lawmakers, led by U.S. Reps. Suzan DelBene of Washington state and Jared Huffman of California, outlined their concerns in a letter sent to the head of the IRS and the secretary of the Treasury on Monday, singling out the Family Research Council (FRC). According to a recent report from ProPublica, the FRC successfully applied to be reclassified as a “group of churches” in 2020.
Lawmakers say that while the FRC often appeals to faith and advocates for a “biblical worldview,” the status change “strains credulity” because the group operates primarily as “a political advocacy organization.”
Let’s look at the letter to see how these members of Congress/the IRS define a church.
The IRS list of attributes of a church, developed in conjunction with court decisions, includes the following:
- Distinct legal existence;
- Recognized creed and form of worship;
- Definite and distinct ecclesiastical government;
- Formal code of doctrine and discipline;
- Distinct religious history;
- Membership not associated with any other church or denomination;
- Organization of ordained ministers;
- Ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study;
- Literature of its own;
- Established places of worship;
- Regular congregations;
- Regular religious services;
- Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young; and
- Schools for the preparation of its members.
There is a limitation in the law which governs the amount of political activity in the said church. The definition hinges on is “substantial part of activities devoted to political action.” The members of Congress who signed this letter believe that it is clear that the Family Research Council devotes a significant amount of time to politics.
All section 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, “must not devote a substantial part of their activities to attempting to influence legislation, political activity, or public policy.”2 The FRC is primarily a political advocacy organization that is “committed to advancing faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview.”3 Recently, the FRC filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, advocated for legislation that would ban gender-affirming surgery, and sought religious exemptions to civil rights laws.4 FRC claiming to be a church strains credulity: they do not hold religious services, do not have a congregation or affiliated congregations, and do not possess many of the other attributes of churches listed by the IRS5. FRC is one example of an alarming pattern in the last decade – right- wing advocacy groups self-identifying as “churches” and applying for and receiving church status.
The following statement troubles me, not due to the actions of Congressional members but due to the perception that the FRC and other Christian organizations are ABUSING the tax code.
Given that the FRC is primarily an advocacy organization and not a church,6 we urge the IRS to swiftly review the tax-exempt status, and whether there are other political advocacy organizations that have obtained church status, but do not satisfy the IRS requirements for churches, integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches. Further, we urge the IRS to improve the review process for organizations seeking church status to ensure that organizations that are not churches cannot abuse the tax code. Finally, we request the IRS determine whether existing guidance is sufficient to prevent abuse and what resources or Congressional actions are needed to ensure adequate implementation and enforcement moving forward.
What happens when the actions of some Christian organizations are seen as just more groups out to play games with the tax code?
Is it worth the sacrifice of integrity to save some money? Yes, I know that it is not “their” money they are saving but the donor’s money they are saving. Some groups who have done this are:
- Samaritan’s Purse
- Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
- The Navigators
- Willow Creek Association
- The now-defunct Ravi Zacharias Internation Ministries
Guess what “churches” don’t need to report? That’s right, salaries.
Baptist News Global posted When is a ‘church’ not really a church? Only when defined by the IRS.
Through Form 990, any donor or interested person may easily learn about a nonprofit’s financial status and get an idea for how it spends its money. All Form 990s are available for public view on the IRS website and on the websites of other donor-focused sites such as GuideStar.
But that information is not required of churches. Thus, critics of Franklin Graham who believe he receives exorbitant compensation from Samaritan’s Purse and BGEV — reportedly more than $700,000 annually from Samaritan’s Purse alone — have zero access to documentation to prove their case.
It is one thing for a local church not to be required to report the $70,000 annual salary given its pastor. Still, quite another for a multimillion-dollar nonprofit to be able to shield from donors the $700,000 salary of its president.
Even SBC entities play this game. Did you know that the North American Mission Board’s salaries are hidden?
A small difference is that SBC entities are required by the denomination to file annual financial reports that are published online, while parachurch organizations like Samaritan’s Purse or Family Research Council have no such oversight and make very little financial information public. But the financial reports published by the SBC do not include all the same information required on an IRS Form 990 — specifically, compensation information for leaders.
Lately that has frustrated critics of the SBC’s North American Mission Board, who believe leaders of the Atlanta-based agency are living large on church offerings.
It’s not just the SBC agencies that get to shield such information by being classified as churches; all denominational entities in the U.S. are able to claim the same. It is the parachurch ministries that previously were left out because they can’t claim the cover of a denomination.
What is the Johnson Amendment?
Whether a nonprofit is classified as a church or not has no bearing on the Johnson Amendment, an IRS regulation in the news lately.
This 1954 law says 501(c)(3) organizations — which includes churches and many other nonprofits — may not endorse political candidates or participate in partisan political campaigns, under threat of losing their nonprofit status. Being labeled a “church” does not take away scrutiny on this issue; in fact, it likely increases scrutiny.
Now, this is another subject entirely. We all know churches that routinely ignore this. Baptist News Global posted a funny account of the most unusual Greg Locke.
Greg Locke, pastor of Global Vision Church in Nashville, Tenn. Locke has made all manner of outlandish declarations, including denying the reality of COVID-19, saying there are witches in his church and he knows who they are, to declaring that he will not allow any Democrats to be members of his church and that no Democrat can be a Christian.
This statement was in violation of the Johnson Amendment, but Locke, as usual, responded in his typical fashion and dissolved his 501c3.
Locke beat the IRS to the punch, however. In a May 22 sermon, he announced: “I dissolved our stinking 501(c)(3) in this church, because the government ain’t gonna tell me what I can and what I can’t say. So IRS, we don’t need your stupid tax exempt status. You can put it in a bag and burn it in your front yard for all we care. I renounce 501(c)(3) communism in this church! So we’ll say what we want to, Skippy Lou. The IRS, the FBI and everybody we’ve been turned in to can eat my dirty socks on live TV. I’m sick of it!”
Do you think God cares if we fudge?
And so it goes. On my long drive, I’ll read your thoughts on “What is a church?”.
Uh … in a word . . . NO!
And yes, God cares when we fudge for politics and tax free status.
Psalm 51, of David (composed after Nathan confronted his notorious crimes in “the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba”) says that God desires “truth in the inward parts.”
I’m inclined to think that this kind of (as it seems to me) chicanery does not qualify.
Does God care? He certainly cared, per Nathan, about the disrepute brought on His Name because of the misdeeds of Israel’s anointed king. But maybe the connection between God’s Name and present-day christian culture-war advocacy groups is sufficiently tenuous that it’s not a problem. In David’s day, people expected God’s appointed king to obey God’s laws; when he didn’t, that reflected poorly on the deity that had appointed him. Maybe in our day public expectations related to the conduct of christian leaders is sufficiently low that serious further reputational damage is not likely.
Sorry — didn’t answer the question, “what is a church?”
Here’s an open-ended suggestion (and perhaps overly broad; I’m leaning heavily on the epistle I John for this):
A “church” is a group of people who periodically assemble together for the purpose of encouraging one another to live the life of the Age to Come within the horizon of the present age.
—
By that definition, perhaps the FRC could squeeze in.
Do I think FRC is a church? Do they have a membership list complete with signed contracts by said members? If not, how does the FRC “pastor” know whose souls he is responsible to God for?
How many members have they disciplined in the past year?
You can’t be a church if you don’t have that membership list and routinely exercise church discipline.
Love,
Mark Dever
Unfortunately, when Christian groups who know full well they are not churches play these games it makes Christians look bad in general. We aren’t supposed to look like the world. We are supposed to look like the One we follow. I can’t help but wonder, did the decision to claim themselves as a church come about after much fasting, prayer, searching the scriptures, and seeking after God? Or was it a group of men in a board room with their legal and tax advisors applying the wisdom of men? I don’t know, but I doubt it was the former.
Is this a bad time to bring up the propriety of 501c3 churches accepting PPP free money from the government?
Todd Wilhelm,
How right you are! Forever and always!
Love,
Jonathan
Todd Wilhelm,
There is never a bad time to discuss church nonsense.
Loved this.
I think when groups like the Family Research Council claim to be a “church” for the perceived financial (or other) benefits, they need to ask themselves how they’d feel about their opponents using the same tactics. If they have no problem with their opponents doing the same thing, well, at least they’re not hypocrites. But if they don’t like the idea when the tables are turned, they probably shouldn’t be doing it, either.
“Do you think God cares if we fudge?”
Fudge: a chocolate candy treat that Grandma used to make for us over the Holidays. Yum!
Looked up “fudge” beyond the yummy candy:
Synonyms:
-falsify
-deceive
-fake
-counterfeit
-forge
-pervert
-misrepresent
Antonyms:
-tell the truth
-face
-above-board
-straightforward
-upfront
-clean
-confess
Where God guides, He provides. Perhaps if God is neither guiding nor providing, a non-profit fudges under the lie of “church” where transparency is also not in practice.
These posts are both informative and a warning to all well-intentioned supporters (volunteers, donors, fans). Thx, Dee.
Contrast: Simon Sinek highly recommends honesty & truth, in business, but one would suppose that honesty & truth would be important at “Christian” non-profits, too.
“Take the Risk of HONESTY – Honesty pays dividends of trust, which is good business.”
2.11 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vhTjamJmoI
Note: Simon Sinek has youtube videos where he is speaking at conferences connected with MacArthur, Hybels, etc. Little does Sinek know that though he is in no way an Evangelical, his standards of ethics far exceed any of these so-called Christian orgs that hire him as a speaker. They book him because Sinek is a best-selling author. But Sinek has succeeded with honesty and transparency, unlike these Evangelical orgs and individuals, apparently.
Ava Aaronson,
One thing leads to another.
After posting Simon Sinek’s statement & link re: honesty, up popped Pastor Carey Nieuwhof, former attorney and founder of Connexus Church, interviewing Sinek on his, Nieuwhof’s, podcast.
Turns out Nieuwhof shows up in TWW comments with links where he supports pastors Pete Wilson and Perry Noble because of their pastor burn-out. Of course, Nieuwhof has solutions: conferences, summits, books for sale.
As a matter of fact, interspersed with his blog/advice column are sales offers of all of the above. It appears Nieuwhof was a lawyer, then a pastor, now a consultant for church leadership with lots of stuff to sell, and solve our church leadership problems like pastor burn-out.
As he interviews Simon Sinek, Nieuwhof oooohs and aaaahs over Sinek’s path to success in business – because Sinek is actually successful in his own right. Very successful. It’s his business – not labelled as a church, nor does he call himself a pastor or collect donations. Sinek is a wage earner who files his income and pays taxes like us. Nothing to hide, no misrepresentation. Sinek recommends honesty and seems to follow his rules.
When will pastors realize that church is not a business enterprise and becoming a Christian is not self-help? Pastoring is not an industry of selling self-help via books, conferences, consultations, summits, etc.
Church is a community of Jesus followers. All followers are gifted FREE by the Holy Spirit, including the gift (not grift) of pastoring, for the benefit of the Body of Christ. Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4.
Becoming a Christian is NOT self-help and all the self-help books in the world do not make one a follower of Christ. There is one book – the Bible, the Word of God – that helps in following Jesus, our relationship with God.
Nowadays, the Bible is free online. There are printed Bibles offered free, and a person only needs one in their lifetime. Pretty simple deal. Not a growth industry.
Capitalism + Christianity is not following Jesus. Nothing about Jesus ministry involved collections or sales campaigns. If the non-profits really want to be churches, then do it like Jesus and His disciples did: free. (The collections in Acts went to the poor.) If a disciple was given support, it wasn’t cash or shekels, it was room and board until they moved on to the next town. No private planes galivanting willy-nilly around the world. In our digital age of Zooming, ditching the pastor plane fad is a no-brainer.
Oops – this was actually John Maxwell – so that makes sense. Looking for success is not the MacArthur gospel. However, Hybels’ Summits did invite Simon Sinek to talk, about success, which is a Hybels thing. Business success.
Don’t forget Focus on the Family! They’re a “church” now too!
Sheila Wray Gregoire,
We need a list.
When leadership is deceptive, they’ve sanctioned or opened the door to the business of lying in their org.
All I can say is church has always been a racket.
The Doctrine of Discovery for the RC church is a perfect example. Any lands populated by non-christians automatically belonged to the church.
In fact vast tracts of our province became church property. They made a tidy profit as the city expanded.
Praise be…
Ava Aaronson,
Amen and Amen and AMEN!
I think it’s high time that the Congress take a second look at what a ‘church’ is and what it is not.
Just in terms of fairness alone, it’s not fair that little working people get sodomized (so to speak) all year by the tax man, and the big guys in the religion-bizz skate by with gunny sacks of moolah.
The IRS list of attributes up-top would be a good place to start enforcement.
Hmmmmm. Seems that all of these organizations are evangelical in nature. All evangelical churches that I am aware of have baptisms.
The FRC was founded in 1983. In it’s nearly 40 years, how many people has their “pastor” baptized into the fold? ……..just wondering……… Samaritan’s Purse??? Are theses churches congregational, or elder led? Fellowship potlucks? Bible study groups? Choir, or band? Children’s ministries? Y’all know the list goes on……..
Is there even any hint that these organizations might be churches? I don’t think so.
They’re just “Jesus-centered” political action, fundraising, money-for-free tax scam organizations.
That seems a bit harsh. Some of them might be categorizable as “culture war mercenaries”. /sarc
“Jesus-centered” in name only.
I’m not sure this statement is evidence of a violation of the Johnson Amendment (though Locke has almost certainly done so at other times). Churches are allowed to discriminate on many grounds and some that are against voting at all might not allow members to belong to any political party. It is when it turns to positive action such are requiring or encouraging members to join a particular political party or to vote for (or against) a particular candidate that the violation takes place.
Anything to hide where the money is going.
I note “Carbon12: Cryptocurrency to fortify, and unite the church” has just been announced. Any guesses on how many ways this could go wrong?
The pic up-top (choir singing)?
They look like they got psych-ward pajamas on.
Muff Potter,
However, don’t think they were going for that vibe, by the expressions on their faces.
Answer: No.
And I suspect that some of the “congregation” at the FRC “church” are members of churches where they have signed covenants.
I hate this playing around with the tax law so that you can get the benefits of being tax exempt but don’t have to show what your finances are like like every other 501(c) secular or religious not a church non-profit. Form 990 is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there can be some eye-popping info on there. Which is why the Family Research Council made itself a “church.”
Actually, putting transactions on the blockchain makes them more visible, rather than less. Once you get hold of wallet names (which is easier than you think, there’s specialized software and people who specialize in doing just this), it’s possible to track currency flows. And then when you link up wallet names to real-life names, it’s possible to see where money came in and money went out.
I would note that this Carbon12 “coin”, like so many other ****coins, is backed by nothing. Even fiat currency, e.g., the US dollar, is backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States,” which is worth a lot more than a “currency” created on some person’s hard drive. *None* of these coins have anything backing them and the biggest / “most valuable” of them, Bitcoin, uses up massive amounts of energy to “mine” coins. I just checked, and Bitcoin is no longer using the energy equivalent of Finland every year (83 terawatt hours) to mint coins. It’s now up to using the energy equivalent of Argentina (131.26 terawatt hours). That’s an ENORMOUS amount of energy being used every day for a coin that has absolutely nothing else backing it up.
I could say a LOT more about this, but me ranting about cryptocurrency is not the purpose of this website. If you are interested in learning more, one of my friends from Scientology protesting days, David Gerard, has a couple of books about cryptocurrency and a website where he regularly tracks the various legal and financial shenanigans of crypto, coins, NFTs, Web3, etc. He’s no slouch; he testified before a UK parliament committee on crypto at the end of June. But if I could leave you with one thing, it would be this: don’t buy crypto or anything related to it. It’s a sucker’s bet.
Bringing up the NA Mission Board raises the question in like manner what actually constitutes “missions“. How many times has the term been used to co-opted for priorities that serve the purposes of securing steady revenue and employment over other considerations, especially for those who have been trained in the proper perspective (sic) and thus can also be maneuvered by powers that be for future use in forming voting blocks, “coalitions“, and so forth?
Here’s an article discussing one of their church plants made possible by donations today Annie Armstrong offering that goes to the North American Mission Board:
https://bcmd.org/2016/02/annie-armstrong-2016-waterfront-church-aims-to-be-a-fort-in-the-nations-capital/
“Planting a church in Washington hasn’t been cheap. Waterfront’s five-year budget is $1.3 million. An acre of land sells for $10 million. Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and Cooperative Program funds helped Waterfront launch.”
I heard about the existence of this church in an interesting way. Reportedly, the husband from a younger couple who had been very vocal about an established SBC church going ahead with a building project after it emerged it was millions over budget reportedly left the church after the overage was approved, leaving to go to this “church plant”. This of course brings to mind the issue of not only the poaching of existing congregants rather than organic growth but of who is actually being left in charge of the congregations who have been gifted all of this “church planting“ funds on the basis of “missions“.
From a ‘church planting podcast’ transcript:
https://www.churchplantingpodcast.org/new-city-network/zack-randles-hustle-in-church-planting-part-1
Clint Clifton (NAMB church planter) on Randles: “He’s refused to leave that community neighborhood and he’s dug his heels in there and the church launched a couple of years ago and then grew pretty quickly and they’ve been really… in our network, they’ve been the fastest growing church in DC, I think. He was just texting with me the other day and he had 700 or so in his worship services last week and 2 weekends ago; so, just proud of the guy.”
(Refused to leave arguably one of the most increasingly yuppified areas of the country? Might that be akin to saying “Randy refused to leave Georgetown, he dug in his heels there…”?)
Zack Randles: “Part of what helped us with that is the clientele, like you talked about here at the church. Our target zone is right in between some of the wealthiest people in the entire world, if you go half a mile up the road at Capitol Hill, and then we are also positioned right on the other side, about a half mile on the other side of some of the most impoverished people in all of North America in Anacostia. And so, we came into it in the beginning and said, “What is the bridge between politics and poverty? It’s the message of Jesus Christ.” And so, we’ve really gotten to watch that, part of what we did in the beginning is we pulled up the census.gov stats and we drew up specifically economically, racially, and age-wise, who made up our community. And I’ll never forget one of our first core team meetings, I drew that sense of information on a white board and said, “This is what I want our church plant to look like. This is our community and this is who we want to reach.”
Clint Clifton: “And when you surveyed the scene in just brass tax (sp) like what the Lord has done, you guys have 4 services, you’re in a building that you full control over that’s blocks from that stadium and some of the most expensive real estate in the country.”
(If full control is neat, isn’t full control of really expensive real estate neater? How many times can this be matched up with a pattern of “planting“ in similar cases? Couldn’t that also goes for matching up church planting funding and SBC cooperative fund donations that make it possible?)
Doing the zip code thing is evidently a practice of some church planter groups, as reportedly, it often appears to be a race to be the first in the gentrified area or an exurb getting new money. Zack says the following on the church site:
https://www.waterfrontchurchdc.com/our-story
“In 2006, I was a 24-year-old student minister planning my first mission trip. … That trip was my first time visiting Washington, and over the next several years we ended up coming for three more mission trips and at least six vacations. It became abundantly clear to me the Lord had big things in store for the DC area south of the interstate between the Anacostia and Potomac rivers.”
What may have become clear to them — especially if his church-planting pastor father (per the interview) was involved with those trips and vacations — might have been what was becoming clear to many locals like myself. Amidst all of the prep work discussed, they might’ve ascertained that due to post-September 11th military base realignments and consolidations, the Navy Yard was filling up with personnel, the Department of Transportation was relocating there, and – – oh yeah – – a new major league ballpark was being built right there.
And because there was not much of anything directly south of M St. on the South Capitol Street side but a rock quarry, warehouses and clubs set to be demolished, there were not a lot of competing churches right there (especially for the demographics that would be moving in en masse evidently for the first time since the postwar era). Also, most of the impoverished were on the other side of the river and some distance from the ongoing gentrification, which the census.gov map might have indicated. Thus, goals of appearing socially and ideologically relevant while keeping revenue streams maximized might have seemed to have made this an ideal spot for a “target zone”. Oh, and of course, for “missions“.
But if you have the Philosopher’s Stone, you can turn any base material into gold.
With all the shenanigans you’ve pointed out concerning crypto, alchemy is as alive and well as it was in medieval times.
Todd Wilhelm,
Grace would say it’s wrong, but there must be some mistake about their name being on the list of churches that applied for it. Oh, and they sent it back.
There’s no inconsistency here! Really!
If you want to plant a megachurch, you certainly don’t go planting a church in a place where people don’t have money! It’s for the Gospel™!
“Just like Bitcoin, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Like GodTube: “Just like YouTube, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Like Christian Chirp: “Just like Twitter, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Like Testamints: “Just like Altoids, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Like Praise Ponies: “Just like My Little Pony, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Only question is, since crypto is a long string of ones and zeros on some server farm, how do they engrave the Bible Verse Quote on it?
In the words of the prophet Alfred Yankovic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
JDV,
Missionary work, Jesus’ style, from Luke 10, WEB:
“I’m sending you out like lambs among wolves.”
1. Don’t carry a wallet, a traveling bag, or sandals, and
2. don’t stop to greet anyone on the way.
3. Whenever you go into a house, greet the family right away with the words, ‘May there be peace in this house.’ If a peaceful person lives there, your greeting will be accepted. But if that’s not the case, your greeting will be rejected.
4. Stay with the family that accepts you. Eat and drink whatever they offer you. After all, the worker deserves his pay. Do not move around from one house to another. Whenever you go into a city and the people welcome you, eat whatever they serve you.
5. Heal the sick that are there, and tell the people, ‘God’s kingdom is near you!’
6. But whenever you go into a city and people don’t welcome you, leave.
7. Announce in its streets, 11 ‘We are wiping your city’s dust from our feet in protest against you! But realize that God’s kingdom is near you!’
Quite the contrast.
One of our church prayer ladies tells of her grandfather who was a farmer M-F. However, on the weekends, he rode horseback through the farm towns as an iterant preacher. Probably more like what Jesus commanded.
Ava Aaronson,
Matthew 10 has more commands and warnings about missionary work. No gold or silver coins allowed, but they were to have their needs met along the way by supporters – their needs, but not anything about estates or private planes or building a dynasty, in the name of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&version=NIV
The Bible once more rains on the parade of the church dynasty builders.
Ava Aaronson,
The night he was betrayed, Jesus has a different directive about money in their wallets, in light of how Jesus takes care of his disciples, from Luke 22:
He said to them, “When I sent you out without purse, wallet, and sandals, did you lack anything?”
They said, “Nothing.”
Then he said to them, “But now, whoever has a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet. Whoever has none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. For I tell you that this which is written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘He was counted with transgressors.’ Isaiah 53:12 For that which concerns me has an end.”
They said, “Lord, behold, here are two swords.”
He said to them, “That is enough.”
He came out and went, as his custom was, to the Mount of Olives. His disciples also followed him. When he was at the place, he said to them, “Pray that you don’t enter into temptation.”
Ava Aaronson,
And this was not missionary work, per se. They were approaching Jesus’ execution.
??? I don’t see Jesus in any of their names. 😉
Afterburne,
Good point.
A parachurch organization can avoid the Form 990 requirements if it is considered an “integrated auxiliary” of a church. 9Marks uses this exception, and has recommended it to others. In order to qualify, support from the public must be less than 50% of the overall support. I asked Jonathan Leeman (former executive director of 9marks) if Capitol Hill Baptist provided more than 50% of 9marks support and he confirmed to me that it DID NOT.
Therefore it does not qualify as an integrated auxiliary and should be subject to public reporting.
One of my all-time faves. Weird Al is a comic genius.
Good article, but FYI Dieter F. Uchtdorf is a leader in the Mormon Church. The “Church” mentioned in his quote is in reference to what he believes to be the true church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
i.e. LOOPHOLE?
“I don’t pay a lawyer to tell me what I want to do is illegal. I pay a lawyer to tell me how to get away with what I want to do!”
— attr to either Henry Ford, J.P.Morgan, or J.D.Rockefeller
AKA “Bad Times coming. It’s about to go down.”
Wouldn’t work.
Several years ago, they tried to investigate televangelists and got blowback worthy of dismantling Social Security. For much the same reason. “TOUDH NOT GOD’S ANOINTED! AND I VOTE!” Congress backed off and shut down the investigation or they’d never be able to be elected to anything ever again.
Again, “I pay lawyers to tell me how to get away with what I want to do!”
There is a shoutout to Dee in this article: https://julieroys.com/convicted-sex-offender-training-ministry-southern-baptist-schools/
Our parachurch organization (supported by several area churches) is exempt from Form 990 as well, even though the majority of our funding comes from churches and private donations. (PS–we didn’t get this from 9Marks, the IRS made that call when we applied for 501c3 status.)
As the director who’s had the bookkeeping duties dumped in his lap, I have to admit I am thankful for this!
You’re right, it wouldn’t.
It just occurred to me that huge masses of the American people are held in total thrall by these mountebanks (televangelists) and that’s what these shysters bank on to stay on top.
Even so, I still hold out hope for the American voter, and that he and she will realize that they’re being taken advantage of by both the Congress, and televangelist crooks.
Mike,
Your organization most likely does not sell goods or services to the general public, which is the other exception. 9marks has conferences and indeed sells to the public.
Look at what happened the last time Congress tried to investigate Televangelist fraud.
You’d think they were trying to abolish Social Security.
Vague memory of a collection of Heinlein Future History short stories from my grade-school days:
In a side scene of one of them (early in the Future History, i.e. somewhere around Y2K), a minor female character gushes in Christianese over “God’s Anointed hath been revealed; his name is Nehemiah Scudder”. That’s all I remember, just a snapshot scene.
Later research as an adult showed that in the Future History timeline, Nehemiah Scudder was a Televangelist who became POTUS in the early 21st via the support of Christians (like the woman in the snapshot scene) and some well-financed Militias, founding the “Religious Dictatorship in America” that occupies the entire 21st on Heinlein’s timeline (until the overthrow by a secular underground in “Revolt in 2100”).
“There was blood at the polls, blood in the streets, and there never was another election.”