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March 28, 2024, 11:35:14 pm *
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Author Topic: LT cold calling and "gifting"  (Read 9565 times)
Anonymous
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« on: March 17, 2007, 08:35:26 am »

Nate, your upcoming LT weekend brings back some strange memorys. Have you attended the LT weekend based around support generation? My main memory was of the lecture on obtaining call lists from local real estate and insurance agents to use for cold calling. We all had to fill out our quota sheets of how many phone calls we would make per hour, per day, per week and then have to report my results to my accountablity partner. I also had to report my revenue weekly and explain why I had failed if I came up short on $$$. A lot of the other guys would often divert their grocery money from home to pay in pledges rather than have to report that they were short and then be asked to please abstain from that weeks study group so we could “reflect on why we failed”. That whole pile of support raising crap really got me thinking about the whole focus of the cult.

New life was always holding money over our heads. Man, they cut us down if we didn’t turn over enough cash. That blew.
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Anonymous
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« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2007, 08:35:37 am »

Anonymous -
In my church, it was called gifting. And we even had a way to set up recurring eft’s to get a monthly gift taken out of a checking account just like a phone bill or electric bill would be.

If a sponsor stopped a recurring eft, we had a script to call with and read to them in an effort to keep their gifts coming in.

We also were held to monetary floor amounts and were disciplined for not hitting our floor with cleaning duties, yardwork, and being uninvited from activities.

Once I had a great week and was rewarded by being able to take my gal pal out to a movie… ALONE

Goofy crap eh?
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Anonymous
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« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2007, 08:35:49 am »

Fund Raising Anonymous, Is New Life the GCM church in Ann Arbor?
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nateswinton
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« Reply #3 on: March 17, 2007, 08:36:07 am »

Anononymi (is that a word?),

I’ve never heard of anything like that. I’m raising my own personal support as a missionary, but that stuff is crazy. It’s been a very grace-filled process where I can work at my own pace to raise the funds for my family. I’m raising all my own salary, benefits, etc. I’m mostly raising with friends, family, and regional GC churches. I haven’t considered cold calling yet, but if I did, it’d be my own choice.

We just finished a building campaign, but the fundraising process was similar to what you’d see at any church. We talked about it and had special giving to it on Sundays for the last 2 years. The pastors made some strong calls, but nothing unreasonable or unbiblical. No one had to cold-call or anything like that. It was more like “How badly do you want this building, guys? Lets all sacrifice together!”

So to answer your question about money: no, nothing ever like that. That’s either crazy, or I’m missing part of the story. Why were you raising the money? Who all was called to do stuff like that?
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AgathaL'Orange
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« Reply #4 on: March 17, 2007, 08:36:20 am »

Nate have you read my post called Your Money and Your Life?
Read about our building campaign.
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Glad to be free.
Anonymous
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« Reply #5 on: March 17, 2007, 08:36:50 am »

Nate -

The gifts were always raised for the “building of the kingdom”. We were never really told where the money was going to exactly, it was more of a generality of “Orlando has rent and needs to keep their lights on just like we do…”. Once we hit the Orlando floor, overages would go into our individual accounts to be used towards our LT expenses. And if we didn’t have the funds in our own LT accounts to cover the cost of the trip, we sacrificed the money and it all went to corporate. One guy had about $6500 of his $7800 saved up but couldn’t get the last $1300 in time. We all felt bad for the dude, but gcm took his money and left him hanging in the wind. He got upset and pushed the issue a little bit. We never heard for sure what he said, but he stopped coming to small group and church fter that.

Our youth pastor gave us the line of him being divisive and we needed to stop wasting time on that project. I was stupid and immature and didn’t stand up for the guy. I saw him on campusjust a couple of times after that and wanted to say hi to him, but always was afraid of me being seen by another gcm’er talking to him.

I tried to hunt him down a few times since I left gcm to apologize for shunning him. Later we found out that a chunk of the $6500 was his tuition and he had to drop out of school the next semester. He was a real intelligent guy too. I guess his parents really freaked out and he’s working in a factory somewhere in Lansing now.

This group can really %$#& up a young kid’s life.
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nateswinton
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« Reply #6 on: March 17, 2007, 08:37:33 am »

Anon,

I’ve heard another wierd LT story, but much less severe than that. Similar though. That’s believable. All I’ve ever heard from LT is “You should totally go!” and “It was a very painful experience for me”. I’m one of the wierdos that never went to LT.
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sistanchrist
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« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2007, 08:51:10 am »

I have been hunting for that Leadership Training Class info. for some time in my piles, I am afraid that it found its way to the trash in my anger over what happened shortly after that night of LTC when the stuff hit the fan in my exit from GCM. I will keep looking though, with any luck I can get another copy of it. This was in a NW region church that had close and frequent contact with the Whittny clan. In light of some of what has been mentioned on this blog about the DNA following some of the directors it makes more sense for this to be found at my ex-church. If I find that material it will quickly be scanned and posted.
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namaste
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« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2007, 08:10:40 am »

When I did the LT thing (and my husband several years before me), we were responsible for paying our own way.  We could choose to raise support, but the checks were made out to us directly, and then we paid gcm.  

Supporters do lose the benefit of a tax break, but likewise, you don't have the issue of having given tons of "non-refundable" money to gcm for something that doesn't end up panning out.

I would be interested to hear, though.....

Several years ago, a group of us did an internation short-term mission overseas.  I don't know precisely what caused the problem, but apparently, there was some big issue with gcm not accounting properly for the funds people sent in to pay for the trip.  Apparently the staffers/leaders in charge of the trip were told that the problem was so egregious that gcm nearly lost its non-profit status over the whole thing.

Does anyone know anything about that?
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Om, shanti.
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