Quote:
Originally Posted by DAII
Are these men spending their own money to buy these seats or do they have their churches pay the cost? Same happened with the famous shoe auction for 10,000 dollar office conversation pieces .
These are the same men who in their secular politics criticize a nation which spends money it does not have as they amen the blowhard on their transistor radio.
If you can't afford to have a conference or two speakers - here's an idea- don't have it/them.
Very easy to spend some else's money for such largess. The 10 percent of the restaurant or retail worker who is barely scraping by. |
I don't have a problem with the churches donating the money for the conference. Our church partnered with another confernence several years. It wasn't $5000 but it was $1500. I got some perks like seats, green room, group meals as the sponsoring pastor.
The deal is, does the church know they are sponsoring it? Our's did...we took up an offering. So if it's on the up and up, nothing underhanded has been done. I would bet every church that has a sponsoring pastor knows they are a BOTT sponsor! It's a prestigious deal in the UPC to be a part of that crowd--even for the church. I have had more than one saint say, "My pastor and our church are sponsors of BOTT..."
Many conferences outside of the UPC charge $200 or more per registerant in order to pull it off financially--with a minimum of 500-1000 people registered. Especially for a three night/two day deal. BOTT doesn't charge that...and for many years it was an unregistered free for all depending solely on sponsors and offerings. Without the sponsors, the cost would make it impossible to have putting all the burden on POA.