I haven't posted on here in ages, though I read the board quite often, but I thought the following was worth meantioning....
There was a show on SBS last night called "Insight". I didn't catch all of it, but it was about churches such as Hillsong (www.hillsong.com) that, in their teachings, encourage their members to acquire wealth and financial success. The report mentioned how that church had just completed a AU$25M convention hall, and how the head pastors all live luxuriously because of the church's success. One disturbing scene was footage of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard opening the convention hall, and the Head Pastor thanking him for taking time out of his busy week to visit them (blah blah blah). Its sickening to hear churches suck up to politicans like that. (Pictures --> http://www.hillsong.com/church/building/bin/view.pl?sitename=building&page=opening&showbuilding=true)
The most interesting part of the program was a comment from a researcher who is writing a book about churches that gain finanically from their tax-free status without giving anything back to the community in the way of charity. He said (paraphrasing from memory here) that there are churches that have been operating in Australia for quite some time, with members numbering in the 60 to 70 thousand, whose collected donations remain tax-free, and that the wealth of these churches will only continue to grow, yet they do nothing to put that money back into the comminuty by doing charitable work. To me it almost sounded like he was speaking of the WTS in Australia, as they have around that number of publishers. It was quite a good observation for him to make and I think it would be an effective way to hurt the WTS by getting that info out to relevant government departments here in oz.
Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to catch the name of that researcher, or the name of the book he is writing. Perhaps he'll make meantion of the WTS in it? The show is being repeated at 4pm today (Friday). Maybe someone in oz can watch/tape it and get that info, as I'll be stuck at work.
Owen (HalfWayThere)