Of all that has been reported (including some outstanding enterprise journalism) and opined about Without Walls International Church, we think Clark’s blog post is about as sensible as any we’ve seen. And, by the way, we are persuaded by his alien theory. The evidence is overwhelming.
Last week’s news that church founders Randy and Paula White are divorcing is far less interesting as a human-interest piece, or even a religion story, than it is as a business story. These two servants of God show a most enviable bottom line. See for yourself.
What the annual report describes as “support and revenue” increased from about $28-million in 2005 to almost $40-million in 2006. This includes, among other things, tithing, offerings and net product sales. Total expenses for the same period increased from $28-million to $35.2-million.
Not bad. But the picture looks even better, as a business that is, when you drill down. Salaries, housing allowances, employee benefits and payroll taxes accounted for slightly more than $7-million of 2006 total expenses, or roughly 20 percent of total, compared to about $6.36-million in 2005.
Advertising and print media expenditures accounted for about $2-million in 2006, an increase of $801,115 from 2005, or about 65 percent. Airtime, which is time purchased by the church to broadcast its services, accounted for $8.75-million in 2006. That’s a nice increase of $2.22-million, or 34 percent, from 2005.
So, you can see that half or more of the church’s total expenditures were for employee benefits or costs that really amount to reinvestment aimed at driving revenue growth.
But this is a church, right? They say it is. If so, we still harbor this quaint notion that churches exist to further God’s plan for mankind through good works, like feeding the hungry, helping sick people and the infirm, not just spiritually but materially. We see two lines on the Without Walls Church annual report that could fit this category. One is “missions, outreach and benevolence.” For this the church spent about $3.15-million in 2006, compared to about $2.82-million in 2005. That’s a parsimonious increase of $338,433, especially compared to the $691,875 bump in employee benefits (including payroll taxes) for the same period. And it represents less than 10 percent of the church’s 2006 expense total.
The other do-good category we see is “gifts.” We’ll say it is, anyway. And for that the church spent $294,161 in 2006 compared to $219,548 in 2005. That ain’t much in a total budget of $35-million.
And, again, because it’s a church, we note that, according to the report, the church started 2006 with $2.4-million in cash and ended the year with $8.2-million. Sweet.
But all of this leaves us with one question for the soon-to-be former Mr. and Mrs. White: Given all of your company’s … er, church’s cash and assets, what would Jesus do?