—MOOctober 21, 1974NO.316C—DFO

—And Share the Dough!

Copyrighted October, 1974 by The Children of God

P.O. Box 31, London WC2E 7LX, England or GPO Box 3141‚ San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936

Dear Children of the London Executive Council and Staff and All the World! Praise the Lord! Greetings in Jesus Precious Name! Well, here we go again!—On my last try to write this Letter on "Know The Share!" Starting it has so far resulted in about five letters, the last two which are enclosed, God Willing: "Blob Story" and "Heavenly Homes"! Hope you all get to read them all soon: I think they'll all do you all good as they're all along the same line about bursting all blobs into smaller Colonies!

2. WE'VE JUST RECEIVED THE GOOD NEWS that you're starting to burst the one in London into several smaller departmental Colonies each more or less on its own and responsible for its own job as well as its own housing, administration and upkeep and personnel on each's fair share of your total income, plus whatever else each of you has the faith to raise for your own department in other ways, such as litnessing‚ procuring, mail response, advertising your individual work direct to the Colonies and receiving direct designated support for your particular department in response‚ etc. We think this is very fair and gives you a good chance to flex your own faith!

3. IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A PARTIAL START at it by separate housing only, leaving your offices together in that new building you found for such low rent, that's up to your faith!—And your administrative elder or Prime Minister who must account for your souls and take a great deal of the credit or blame for your success or failure!—That is up to you to decide!

4. PERSONALLY, I WOULD PREFER TO SEE YOU EVEN MORE DECENTRALISED where one bad bomb, either literal, political legal or illegal, could not blow up your whole operation or be easily confiscated, raided‚ padlocked or otherwise closed down or easily evicted!

5. I PERSONALLY HAVE BEEN THROUGH SOME OF THESE EXPERIENCES or associated with those who have, and so have you, so you know they're not easy to go through‚ and I would hate to see it have to hit you all at once, which it would if your offices and equipment, files, etc., are still all in the same building!

6. YOU ARE THUS STILL A CONVENTIONAL ARMY‚ EVEN IF HOUSED IN SEPARATE BARRACKS, and much more vulnerable than if you were each behind a different tree fighting individually guerilla style! You would be much harder to find and surprise separately if attacked‚ if each department that is able and has the faith were to find totally separate quarters for its entire operation than if still operating your major businesses, tasks and machinery all under the same roof in one place!

7. HOWEVER I AGREE THAT THIS MIGHT MAKE YOUR OFFICE SPACE A LITTLE MORE STABLE AND EASIER TO LOCATE AND MANAGE for the time being until some of your departments find the faith and prove themselves capable of handling the job separately, particularly those which are more unrelated to your other operations, such as Publications, the largest single unit and the most important.

8. EVEN IF PUBLICATIONS ALONE EXISTED still scattering the seed, it would be bound to be doing some good even without the aid of the others, although the others are essential also in helping to manage the harvesters in the fields, our Colonies and friends, by communications.

9. SO WHY NOT LET PUBLICATIONS GIVE IT A TRY by giving them your best and presently most "permanent" office and housing space as a single unit if possible or in a single location already zoned for business and such light industry as printing or possible for same, like perhaps Hampstead or Mayfair and let the General Offices occupy the other‚ whichever is larger, since your General Offices combined compromise about 2/3 of your London staff, and Publications only 1/3? This would be a good start toward eventual total decentralisation.

10. YOUR CHART FOR THE PROPOSED DECENTRALISATION of our total offices there was very helpful to us in getting the picture. But although you only have a total staff of 64 in offices and publications combined, for such large Colonies you still require a support staff of about 20, making a grand total of about 84.

11. WHEREAS IF YOUR HOUSING WERE BROKEN UP INTO SMALLER UNITS, for each department, the support staff of each could probably be reduced to only one or two cooks each, which could most likely be a wife or two of some member or members of that particular department-or even a husband or so–whose mate is not seriously involved in some fulltime office work, —And you didn't mention the Children's Colony: What about them?—Or Babes?

12. THE CHILDREN'S AND BABES COLONIES WERE NOT EVEN INCLUDED IN YOUR REPORT!—Where are they and how are they housed and how permanently and how many are in each? If we knew more about your buildings and their sizes, locations availability and status of permanency it might be easier to advise you on your housing. But since we have never really received any thorough description, pictures or these essential facts relating to any of these, we cannot possibly tell you how to do it from here.

13. YOU WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THE DETAILS FOR YOURSELVES. Foreign Ministry was not included, either and we have no idea how large this Mayfair Building or its Colony is much less how it and the Children's and Babe's Colonies are supported‚ none of whose buildings or personnel or budgets were included in your report, except that we see by your financial reports‚ they are apparently all supported or heavily contributed to from your total World Regional and local income of the general funds of the London Office.

14. NEITHER ARE THE BUDGETS OR EXPENSES of each of these various London Colonies treated separately in any of your financial reports, but rather all lumped together virtually as one Colony. So from here we cannot possibly tell how much space each is occupying or costing the whole.

15. ALL WE CAN SEE BY YOUR MOST HELPFUL PIE-GRAPHS is that your "Colony Cost" are about a fourth of your total monthly expenses; "Missions" "Foreign Ministry" and "Aid to Colonies" altogether about a fourth; "Publications" including printing, postage, photo, art & computer about a third; and the rest Office new equipment, etc. (Sorry, but I'm now typing this myself as Maria is busy for a moment.) Also Publications and Offices are all lumped into one category, so it's hard to tell how much of it is for the Offices and how much for Publications alone. They are two different operations to us.

16. BUT YOUR INCOME PIE-CHART IS VERY CLEAR. Over half of your total income come from London and your local English Region alone, plus bout one-percent from the Mail, two–percent from miscellaneous sources, and–most shocking of all!—less than half from all our total worldwide Colonies all put together! This is almost disgraceful and ridiculous, since our total Colony contribution should be about twice that much instead of letting England alone support most of our International Office, as well as the International London Office Colony being almost self-supporting for nearly all of its own local Colony expenses from its own local Colony litnessing income, etc.

17. CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT OUR TOTAL WORLDWIDE COLONIES INCOME FROM LITERATURE ALONE IS MORE THAN TEN TIMES THAT OF THE ENGLISH REGION‚ these worldwide Colonies should bear a much greater share of their fair share of the load of our International Administration Offices of Communications, Publications and Missionary aid!

18. IN FACT‚ IF EACH OF OUR WORLDWIDE COLONIES WOULD DONATE ONLY ONE-TENTH of their literature income alone to help us produce the literature they sell, handle their communications and administer our advice and counsel on their activities and endeavours, London would have almost exactly what it needs for its total monthly budget to support all of its International ministries put together, including our own personal support for Maria and myself, the hard-working authors and channels of these Letters and originators of our worldwide work, the founders of the Revolution itself!—If you will please pardon this personal reference to the truth!

19. AS IT NOW STANDS‚ LONDON AND ENGLAND ALONE HAVE TO CONTRIBUTE OVER HALF OF THE SUPPORT FOR OUR INTERNATIONAL OFFICES AND PUBLICATIONS as well as about half of our own personal support, while all the rest of the world put together is contributing less than half of both!

20. I'M SURE WHEN THE WORLD HEARS THIS NEWS THEY WILL BE ASHAMED of themselves and encouraged, as we have recently hinted and finally flatly suggested, that they give at least ten-percent of their total literature income to our London Offices and Publications Departments as their absolute minimum fair share of this great financial load of which London and England alone are now carrying over half the burden themselves!

21. IF LONDON HAD NOTHING TO DO BUT TAKE CARE OF ITSELF, LIKE MOST OF THE REST OF YOU, IT COULD EASILY SUPPORT ITSELF as a totally litnessing Colony from its own local litnessing like you other Colonies do. But Maria and I and London are spending most of our time ministering to your needs alone with very little time to litness‚ if any! So we certainly have a right to expect of you a much greater contribution to our support than most of you are now giving!—Amen?—Thanks!

22. A FEW OF YOU WORLDWIDE COLONIES ARE ALREADY GIVING FAR MORE THAN YOUR SHARE towards the support of your International Office and us, In fact, about one-third of these total worldwide Colony donations comes from the Northeast U.S. Region alone! No wonder God is blessing their litnessing both numerically and financially, and no wonder the Devil is so mad at them in that area!

23. THE N.E. U.S. REGION ALONE IS CARRYING ABOUT A SEVENTH OF OUR TOTAL INTERNATIONAL OFFICES AND PUBLICATIONS EXPENSES!—May God bless them!—And He does, I'm sure!—Amen? Take a tip from Rodent's Region!—They're making up for the lack of the likes of some of you!—Why don't you help more?—Please?

24. GOD BLESS YOU WHO DO MORE THAN YOUR SHARE to make up for others neglect! Some of our tiniest, most struggling pioneer Colonies are out most sacrificial givers and personal donors, and I'm sure God is blessing them for it, while others of you—many others of you—have sadly neglected to fairly bear your share of London's heavy load including the burden of our own personal support!

25. I'M SURE THAT NOW THAT YOU KNOW AND WE'VE "SHARED THE KNOW" AND YOU NOW "KNOW YOUR SHARE!" SOME OF YOU WILL TRY TO DO MUCH BETTER, WON'T YOU?—In fact, all of you we hope! Thanks to every one of you, our dear precious Children around the whole world for all your help in reaching a whole world of neighbours with His Wonder Working Words!

26. BUT WHILE YOU'RE HELPING THE NEIGHBOURS, PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO HELP SUPPORT YOUR POOR LITTLE HARD-WORKING FAMILY AT HOME, including your dear old Dad and his little Maria‚ will you?—Thanks! GBY! We love you all!—M&M!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family