December 15, 2023 | by Marc Cebrian

All the paid ministers in The Restored Church of God outside of Headquarters have had a tough week. Phone calls directly from Wadsworth informed men still on salary or receiving a stipend that their compensation for faithful services rendered had been terminated. 

“Thank you for your service. But keep working for free.”

The financial woes in The Restored Church of God have achieved another milestone. Pastor General David C. Pack finally got his long-desired wish of not paying field ministers. If the Apostle Paul could be a world-traveling preacher and support himself by being a tentmaker, so can everyone else. Well, everyone not nestled inside the warm, ceiled houses of Headquarters.

  The full- and part-time men are expected to get worldly “real” jobs and mingle with the unwashed while they continue to tirelessly serve The Restored Church of God. They will have the same responsibilities but will not be paid for it. Just in case they forgot, that is called a sacrifice, gentlemen.

  I received independent confirmation of this development from reliable sources. Additional support has come in today. This is really happening, folks.

• Headquarters hirelings called the field men directly to avoid written correspondence getting into the wrong hands and creating a PR nightmare for them. There is something to be said for the personal touch of oil and honey to calm restless nerves. The wise-as-serpents discernment to gauge potential defectors is a side benefit.

• A follow-up email was sent explicitly instructing men to NOT tell their congregations.

• Pay reductions are happening at Headquarters, but no layoffs have yet been reported.

  I sent the following email last night at 6:15 PM to the hireling enablers at Headquarters, hoping to elicit a respectful and informative response.

Nobody in The Restored Church of God responded to this inquiry, but I know they got it.

  Oh boy, did they get it.

  The buzz at Headquarters today must have been something to behold. The phone banks were lit with follow-up, closed-door phone calls to investigate who leaked the information. Maybe if it were a single source, that might be easier to trace. Despite where they want to point the finger or play mind games to trick someone into a coerced stumble, they may just irritate enough "innocent" people along the way to create a new source for exrcg.org that was not there before.

If any RCG ministers want to contact me to contribute anonymously to this story, I will keep your information in the strictest of confidence and remove identifying details. Please write exrcgwebsite@gmail.com.

David C. Pack has been the one most often to comment about the cash-flow perils of the once “booming” 501(c)(3) organization that was established in 1999 to uphold the doctrines and traditions of The Worldwide Church of God.

These cost-saving measures reported in August were apparently not enough. You could smell the blood in the water back in June when I reminded Dave that purchasing his $500,000 Eyesore was not the wisest of decisions. Ken Orel and Tim Ranney now wish they could have stayed at Headquarters instead of applying to be Order Fulfillment Specialists at their local Amazon warehouse. Their cheerful willingness to be wished away into the cornfield did not help the organization turn things around.

  During a 2023 Ministerial Conference not-for-brethren lecture, David C. Pack warned the field ministers that cuts were coming “if time went on.” But nobody anticipated a total severing of all financial assistance. The blessings from Dave’s god must not be enough to hold back the crushing weight of the Headquarters Campus. So far, the horses do not have a “For Sale” sign around their necks.

  To illustrate the income trend of The Restored Church of God, anyone can use the publicly available information provided by our amazing friends to the north. The honorable country of Canada requires all non-profit organizations to report their income and expenses to have it available on their website. Using the Canadian data, you can extrapolate RCG’s church-wide trajectory.

  This graph comes to exrcg.org courtesy of the creative talents of Kevin Denee.

If you want to poke around RCG's financial data, visit the Canadian T3010 website. One thing we can all learn is that they really, really trust Larry Cockshutt.

These drastic changes seem rather faithless and premature since Jesus Christ is supposed to return within two minutes of the Winter Solstice on December 21 at 11:35 PM ET on Tevet 10. Unless David C. Pack does not smoke his own malarkey, and he already knows "nothin’ is gonna happen.”

  Using my non-powers as an un-ordained non-prophet/non-psychic, I put forth this educated guess: During “The Greatest Unending Story! (Part 486)” tomorrow, David C. Pack will disclose these cuts to the brethren. He may even “clarify” that the compensation will be reduced and not completely removed for some. If he is feeling particularly irritated, he may even throw in a vague reference to "lies shotgunned on the internet.” His level of seething will be determined by how red his ears get.
Update: Dave was tight-lipped and has not uttered a word of this ex cathedra.

  This story will continue to develop. If representatives of The Restored Church of God respond, that information will be made available.

  Like Jonah sitting atop the hill, let us all watch and see what happens.