And if they don’t pony up, the Lord will threaten to take him home by Christmas. Etc.

I read Elmer Gantry this summer. The religion racket is the same as it ever was.

Who said they were trying to spend their way out of debt? I thought they were trying to spend their way out of a recession. For someone who supposedly has an advanced degree (M.Div), pastor Warren sure can’t use teh logic well.

Well it’s right in line with the great Oral tradition in this country.

Roberts, I mean.

Tax these money-grubbing frauds, let them yatter on about politics and economics and any other ‘great thought’ that springs into their minds. That should clear up any queations about the validity of religion as a plausible, logical and timely ideology.

Simple bastard runs his hustle into the ground and wants the marks to pony up more, and then gets the green! He’s going to sneer at the governments’ game and bitch?

“Thou shalt not TwitterTwat sayeth The Lord”

Eclessitesticles 12.1.a

Yeah but he sayeth it in a Tweet, so, you know, hard to take Him seriously.

Never for the life of me could understand Ecclesiastes 11:1. Even if your bread comes back to you it’s going to be all wet and falling apart. Try making a sandwich out of that.

On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive…

So I guess that Rick Warren is admitting that his job is to extract money from
from the suckers parisioners.

Boo-hoo.

Just saw a great behind-the-scenes documentary about this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068924/

Guess Ricky Ticky Schlock better preach to your average business, which uses “deficit spending” constantly through lines of credit and business loans, with the eventual hope of making a profit. Ricky’s a genius!

Rick Warren…Warren…where have I heard that name before?

Oh, yeah.

The President is pretty good at eleven-dimension chess. Too bad he’s in a knife fight.

HAHA!

“Thou shall refudiate that, or I will reek havoc upon your soul.”
-Colby Palin

Clearly, Ricky used Obama. Obama fell right into Ricky’s trap to make Obama win in a landslide. That dumb and naive Barack!

Clearly, Ricky used Obama. Obama fell right into Ricky’s trap to make Obama win in a landslide. That dumb and naive Barack!

Except, Obama had already bagged the trophy when he gave the inaugural gig to Warren. So I guess we’re the dumb, naive ones.

Proverbs 27:12
A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, the naive proceed and pay the penalty.

My guess is that Rick’s angling toward the naive…

It’s a wonder that the Lord never suggested to Rev, Rick that he give some of his personal wealth to make up the shortfall.

No surprise at all. Rick’s God is an Awesome God who also happens to be a CPA with an expertise in off-shore tax shelters.

you can spend your way out of debt if, like governments, your revenues are linked to your spending and you choose the type of spending that brings in more than it pays out. But that’s much more complicated than Deadeye Rick’s “do as I say” spiel.

What do you want? These are people who think you can cut taxes and increase revenues.

Rick Warren=duh=says it all. Amen.

It’s the Church of Do As I Say Not As I Do.

Notice the new-and-improved translation from 2007: “Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow back to you.”

It’s like little Tommy Friedman rewrote the Bible while drinking heavily with the underpants gnomes…

I guess “we” are then. Warren was flying high and plastered everywhere in the MegaMedia leading up to the debate Obama and McInsane had at Brokeback Church. Since that time, Warren has put out multiple pleas for urgent funding needs, had his influence in the public discourse decrease, and even had a publication get shut down due to lack of interest:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/readers-digest-closes-rick-warren-magazine/

Meanwhile, Barack Hussein Obama becomes America’s first melanin-enhanced President winning in an landslide, even when many Liberals thought it wasn’t possible, has one of the most successful first two years in Presidential history, even with many people within in his own Party trying to stop him on every single issue, has become an absolute sensation internationally thereby improving America’s image in the world, and has maintained a historically high approval rating for a President at this point in a term, and has had even a little uptick recently while Dems in general have gone down.

“Knife fight” indeed.

But I wouldn’t want to rain on the parade of one of the favorite “true progressive” talking points…that Obama is a naive rube, so, toodle-ooo!

I would tell ol’ Ricky Warren to read from the Gospel of Mark, 19:25 – “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” But judging by his profligate and hypocritical ways, it’s clear that Ricky may own a Bible, but he don’t care much for book-larnin’.

Well Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple once so maybe he is sending Rick a message.

Ha! That was my first thought. I will never forget Oral up in his prayer tower claiming that Gawd would call him home if he didn’t raise $8 million. So the rubes sent him $9 million! Those of us on the heathen, pagan side of the family could not stop laughing. Growing up in Oklahoma, Oral provided me with a lot of laughs. What a horse’s patoot.

. . .we’ve stayed close to our budget all year. Then… this last weekend the bottom dropped out. On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive – leaving us $900,000 in the red for the year.

So their budget was close all year, offerings less than half on the last week. Suddenly they are nearly a million dollars short.
Two question and a statement:
Is this church really bringing in $1,800,000 a week just in tax free offerings? With coinage like this, how can there be a shortfall in anything?
Seems as though there was a conflict in the congregation between Christmas presents and Christmas giving (last week of 2009), with presents doubling up at the end.

Great minds think alike. But let’s do a little more playing with the numbers:

Greater than $1.8 million x 52 weeks per year is at least $93.6 million per year. So what does Pastor Rick do with roughly $100 million per year–run a small country?

“and has had even a little uptick recently while Dems in general have gone down”

That’s hilaryous. If you hadn’t insisted your’re not trying to rain on the parade, I woulda thought you’re pissing on my shoes while insisting its raining.
No offense…Yes, we can compromise

BASSETS BASSETS BASSETS.

I’d like to know how much they took in for their Christmas services, because I recall that that was just before the Sunday, and people might not have wanted to give twice that week. (Or three times, for the ones that do the Wednesday-night-church thing.)

Still, it looks like his budgeting process has some real flaws in it.

Sadly, Lesley, I don’t think we can expect Bassets until TBogg and the Mrs. get back from their lovelyL&TC-soccer tour.

Not surprised TBogg couldn’t resist some political posting, but unless he has the camera with the boyz pix, I guess there will be no bassetts. But probably downloaded (or is that uploaded?) all the basset pix to make room for new L&TC soccer playing pix.
We must review old posts for our basset fixes for awhile.
Snif.

Dayam. My allowed time to edit must’ve been about half a second!

That last word is s’posed to be “sniff.”

This is harder on my system than the time change!

Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the entrepreneurial party? If you can’t spend your way out of debt, how would a small-business loan ever work? For that matter, how would a college loan ever work? How would a home mortgage ever work? (Um, scratch that one now.)

Yes, it really is true, sometimes you can borrow money, even while in debt, in order to parlay that money into _more_ money, after which point you pay down your debt. This happens every day in America and no one seems terribly perturbed by it. And yet conservatives go screaming blue bonkers when the government attempts it. Peculiar.

With 10% of our church family out of work due to the recession

How’s that ‘Prosperity Gospel’, a.k.a ‘Vote Republican, be a right-wing corporate tool and get rich’, working out for your parishioners, Rick?
It worked out pretty well for you, which I guess was the real goal.