Showing the Decline of Philadelphia Church of God
After last years PCG UK financial review, and with the new report now out, I decided to dig a little deeper and have found the annual reports for the last 5 years off the Charity Commission for England and Wales website link here. The new report is for the financial year ending December 2021.
We will take a look at the new report but also an overview of the last 5 reported years. This gives a very good view of the actual trends and eliminates most one-off anomalies that can skew financial statements like these. Those sorts of anomalies are the ones cults like to point out, like a spike in income because of an estate or reporting growth in a year after having multiple down years, a favorite tactic of Andrew Locher. Having 5 or more years and averaging all these out eliminates those and gives a more accurate picture of an organization. This is why, unless made mandatory as in the UK, the PCG will only ever give the members a quick “year in review” to highlight only what the cult wants you to know.
Financial year 2021 can be summarized pretty quickly: Nothing “fruitful” or beneficial happened for the PCG!
1. Europe is still dependent on the USA for financial support to the tune of about £285,000.00 per year.
2. Edstone is mortgaged for £3.1 million (after claiming years ago that it was paid it off). I am guessing they did pay it off but took out a line of credit, then used it to pay off the jet, thus manufacturing another wonderful PCG milestone. Not ever mentioning they had to put Edstone in hock to achieve this “blessed” event!
3. Ministerial Visit requests were 46 total. That’s 46 requests for the entire continent of Europe and United Kingdom combined. (These are just requests. They don’t actually end up visiting this many, or should I say this few.)
4. I am happy to report a 136% increase in financial support given to those in need! (Sounds pretty good right?) This tactic is used by cults all the time! This is 100% accurate but the devil is in the details……years 2021 total was £6,073, 2020 total was £2,569. The percentage of increase is not the important number. The total percentage of expenditure is what’s important. This is a pathetic 0.06% of the total UK & European expenditures! Tactics like this tend to fly right over the members heads.
5. After 5 years, they have had such an active ministry (see pg 7 of report) that all they can report is the distribution of IPods in 2017 to the congregations. Five years of absolutely nothing else to report!
6. Their flagship magazine the Trumpet, has dropped from 2600 subscribers to 2400.
7. Undoubtedly due to last years exposé, they have also modified the 2020 ministerial travel expenses and moved the money into the salary line item. If this was a mistake, they made the same one in 2019 where they reported it as £525,287.
8. They report on how much propaganda they put out and how many minutes of view time they received from French and German YouTube. Only about 450k minutes for the year. This is vague to say the least, but is intended to be so. How they report this each year changes so it is difficult to determine a trend. I can say with confidence if it was positive they would report apples to apples from the previous year so the results could be seen. In 2018 they claim to have one program in French (Prophesied Prince of Russia) that got 1 million minutes of view time and a total of 2.5 million minutes of total foreign language view time. The number for this year, 450k, shows an 82% dramatic drop in minutes watched. It’s always a red flag when you see terms like “many visitors,” “many subscribers,” or “many downloads.” This is cover language when the numbers are embarrassingly low or show a decrease. Reporting the numbers would expose another slip on the downward slope that is the PCG.
Five year averages:
1. The first thing missing from all 5 of the reports is the membership numbers. These never seem to show up in PCG materials. Again, if these were on the rise they would be boasting about it.
2. In 2017 European income (before any assistance from the U.S. was given) was £648,450, 2021 income was £648,775. The 3 years between were all lower with it bottoming out in 2018 at £450,460. This shows zero growth over the last 5 years! Of course, they will boast that it was up from 2020 but the 5 year trend is flat, and when figuring inflation, (which Andy [Locher] only talks about when complaining about the cult’s cost going up, and how the sheep must sacrifice more and dig deeper, lowering their standard of living), it has decreased by more then 10%! Andy, when was the last time you, Steve [SF], Gerry [GF], Wayne [Turgeon] or any other PCG minister lowered their standard of living?
3. In 2017 the UK had 2900 Trumpet subscribers; 2021 had 2,400 subscribers, a 17% decrease!
4. In 2017 they saw 77 visit requests, the highest of the five years; 2021 had 46, a 40% decrease!
5. In 2017 they had 26 full time employees; the height was 2018 with 31 full time employees.They ended 2021 with 24. From the height, that is a 20% drop in workforce. Not surprisingly, there is only a 1% drop in total salary.
6. Total 5 year “benevolence” was £15,210 or .0313% of 5 years expenditures! Wow, so much love!
7. Total 5 year advertising budget was £11,771. Shockingly low for an organization whose founder–contrary to what they say Christ is NOT their founder, HWA is, and he was huge into advertising. For a group who is supposed to be getting the “gospel” to the world they sure don’t spend much money trying to reach people.
I could go on but it’s all the same. Decline after decline! A good synopsis of the last 5 years is failure! If you are familiar with HWA at all, you will remember reading or hearing over and over again if the “church” isn’t growing then there is a problem in the “church”! Well in the last 5 years, the PCG UK/Europe has been shrinking. It’s truly unfortunate the U.S. doesn’t require “non profit” organizations to report like the UK, so we could further examine the PCG USA. Undoubtedly, the same trends are occurring across the pond as well.
By R. M. (former member of PCG)
June 2, 2023
Related Letters:
Viewed Philadelphia Church of God Financial Accounts in the UK (December 5, 2010 letter)
Shameless Sermonette Exploits Members Financially (April 17, 2020 letter about Andrew Locher)
PCG Makes Decision Not to Post Anymore Sermons Online (July 13, 2022)
Tyrannical Rules (July 14, 2022)
Related Article:
Astounding PCG UK Financial Report (Where is the Money Actually Going?) (July 9, 2022)
Philadelphia Church of God Info (History, teachings, destructive methods)