User talk:Lbmixpro/Forked

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[edit] INC locales

(From Talk:Iglesia ni Cristo#Anne Harper paper)

Out of curiousity, where do offerings go once the financial officers finish counting them? Around the time of my last membership in the church, my locale was seriously planning on building a new chapel, since its current location is in a pathetically bad place. They had blueprints and city permits finished. But the building never was built. Their current locale is overly packed -- to the point of having offices serve as "overflow rooms" where they run a video feed of the service for those who couldn't fit into the actual chapel. --LBMixPro^{(Speak on it!)} 08:29, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

The offerings are taken to and deposited in a bank. Those who take the offerings to be deposited always travel in groups of two or more - and in areas less safe, the groups would normally be comprised of several brethren. The Central Administration then decides where the need for the offerings is the greatest. As for as the location of the chapels, please bear in mind that the Church is mostly Filipino, and (no disrespect meant) most Filipinos here in the U.S. live in less affluent neighborhoods. That, and remember that the Pharisees tried to rebuke Jesus for going among the publicans rather than staying among the well-heeled citizens. If the Church is overflowing (which is not unusual here in the U.S., I assure you), the ministers and officers will normally be advised to hold extra Worship Services at different times. There's many different reasons why a new Chapel might not be built, even when it is blueprinted and approved by the municipality. Please remember that the Church is worldwide, but that the great majority of the members (each of whom is every bit as important as anyone anywhere else) live in what we would call poverty in the Philippines. The Church buys nothing on credit, and there are many, many locales that are overflowing, in need of a new Chapel, and the Administration has to decide which locale should receive the priority.--gcessor 15:41, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• "...the buildings are jarringly ill-suited to the poverty of their surroundings"
  • What suits their poverty then? It is a rarely stated fact that the majority of INC members are poor and are living below poverty levels. Even in such depressing situations, they take pride in the fact that they (yes, they) built a house of worship that is worthy of God. Ealva 20:28, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's funny. It may be like that in the Phillipines. But where I'm from, you can actually reverse every adjative(sp) in that fact, and accurately describe my locale and the people in it. --LBMixPro^{(Speak on it!)} 08:29, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

I've met quite a few members who are really well-off, but that's because they deserved it by working as hard as they could. But then again, there's a difference between perception and reality. Most are working blue-collar jobs, from war veterans who took their families with them, to Filipinas who married US citizens, to underemployed nurses and doctors on working visas. Reality wise, how many minority groups (e.g. Asians, African-Americans) are in the middle and upper management level? It would help to say (no disrespect) that you should experience living in the Philippines to understand the statements described by the link. Ealva 18:39, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)