Ronald Weinland on Governance in Y2K

Way back in time, just after Y2K was not the disaster it was prophesied to be, there was yet another episode of turmoil in Weinland, Inc.

During the WCG break up after Joe Sr's infamous sermon in Atlanta and repeated a week later at the Big Sandy campus, Ronnie resigned in March of 1995 and incorporated the following month as the United Church of God of Toledo, Inc. Back then, the "spirit of Indianapolis" was alive and ex-WCG members were promised that the new organization would be different when it came to governance, and would work with local church boards. Hence UCG-AIA (an international ASSOCIATION). But after a few years, the "spirit of Indianapolis" soon went by the wayside and I suspect there are few if any independent local boards associated with UCGdom.

Back to Ron's story. Weinland joined up with UCG in '95. Then he thundered about financial misappropriations in UCG in an email sent to other UCG elders at the end of 1996 and possibly in a letter as well sent during the first few days of 1997. After campaigning on the issue for several more months, he resigned from UCG in May of 1997, taking most of his Toledo congregation with him. The associated corporation was retitled as "The Church of God, Inc." The local congregation continued on, with church members voting as members of the corporation to hire Weinland as their pastor. But Weinland was expanding his horizon beyond Toledo and the surrounding region accessible in a day trip. One of the members started a small web site for the church. Sermon tapes were sent to those outside the Toledo area who requested them. In January of 1998, he published the first issue of "Newswatch" which was published intermittently over the next several years.

As a result of Ron's outreach program, he managed to attract as his own followers some of the WCG ex-members ("the scattering") from other areas. These followers included Johnny Harrell and others in Georgia, and also more from other areas such as Texas. Tithes continued to be collected by the corporation governed by a local lay board, and is reported to have accumulated to around $300,000 by early 2000. Ron began to feel an ownership of the members outside the Toledo area. He began hinting that the tithes from out-of-town members should be handled separately.

Matters came to a head between Weinland and members of the board at a meeting held on Saturday evening, January 22, 2000, right after Weinland finished a sermon series entitled "Spiritual Idolatry". Weinland wanted to spend some of that tithe money on a 4-color brochure, of printing quality just like the literature his spiritual idol Herbert Armstrong sent out, to attract yet more from "the scattering". The lay board was less convinced and Weinland left the meeting under somewhat less than calm demeanor. There was a continuation meeting the following Tuesday at which the conflict continued.

On January 29, 2000, Weinland delivered a nearly-3-hour sermon entitled "Am I Following Jesus Christ?" which was later distributed on not one but two cassette tapes. He started the sermon by explaining that it would be one of the most important sermon he'd given in years, and that he had to deliver a long message in a single session because of the timing and this would also be one of the hardest sermons he'd ever given. He canceled a trip to Lubbock, Texas to stay in Toledo to address the problem.

Ron claimed that he had almost resigned in response to an email he had received the night before, but was hanging in there (he was not going to Steamboat Springs to make his living building port-a-potties for his brother Steven after all). The crisis could split the congregation, but that was OK. He didn't care about the money and could start all over again, but was taking a principled stand for continuing to do what he was doing.

Ron said that he would send out the tapes from this sermon -- he would not be a hypocrite by hiding his group's problems after criticizing those of other groups.

During the sermon he played with the member's emotions. He talked about the elderly shut-ins "helped" by his tape program. A few minutes later, he sighs and said "You know there's some wrong spirit in here today, brethren. And it's not God's. There's some pride and haughtiness, I wish some individuals could have a camera looking at their face." I wish I had a videotape of Ron's face as he delivered this sermon, claiming that he loved them all, very deeply.

After a 10-minute break to allow time to switch cassette tapes, he again confronted his congregation by asking "am I saying something wrong, reading people's expressions?" He claimed that he was not chewing out the board, and has respect for them.

A year earlier he had sent a letter to board members Gary Klar and Terry Wrozek stating that he was not comfortable with out-of-area tithe funds being under local control. He stated they were sitting on a great deal of money, and wanted to have a glossy booklet to send out. He proposed a second corporation to handle out-of-town funds, because after all those funds exceeded those generated by the local group in the Toledo area.

Ron repented of reusing the bylaws which he copied from someone else, explaining that they were not Godly. He presented new draft bylaws to be voted on by the members a couple of weeks later, on February 12, as a replacement of the existing bylaws. Under the new Godly bylaws, members of the church would no longer be members of the corporation. That burden would be removed from them and only members of the corporation would be "leading elder" Ronald Weinland as the first chairman and a board of elders. Elders chosen by ---- Ronald Weinland. As an aside, the restrictions for the building fund would be changed to allow spending it to rent facilities. No word on the size of the building fund, but this proviso would allow it to be depleted as it would be spent for those ongoing expenses. This would free other funds for other purposes. I can't say if there is any relation, but 5 years later Weinland had his own building fund, purchasing a $381,000 home in northern Kentucky and putting enough money down that if he had a mortgage the holder did not require that he pay property taxes into escrow.

The sermon ended with his then favorite elder Terry Wrozek leading a song. After which Weinland himself gave the closing prayer, not risking someone else providing a different take on the sermon.

In another post, I will be discussing what happened the week following this sermon.

Note: I've allowed the discussion in the comments to the last few posts kind of ramble off-topic -- with a couple of Weinland's followers participating it's been rather informative. While I'll continue to allow some latitude in the comments to those other posts, Sheriff Mike is in town on this thread. Let's keep the comments for this post on topic, which is Weinland's governance methods in general.