After your schism takes wing “almost like an angel, really”, you will start piling up money. If you’ve taken the Schism Seminary courses in money management, you’ll know what to do with it. A few reminders are always helpful.
No matter how much you tell your simple flock, “The Lord loves folding money!” before and during each collection, you will still be getting a lot of coins. Successful schism-founders do not exchange them for folding money.
The basement of the new house you’ll have designed by one of the architects who specialize in Homes for Successful Schism-Founders will have a secure storage area. The architect will have its thick walls of poured concrete in which a door “like a bank vault” is set. It’ll be big enough for a small forklift to get in and out from the nearly invisible loading dock that’s built into the attached, lower-level pergola that’s also used as changing rooms for the swimming pools.
Every Monday, you take all the coins from your Sunday collection home with you. As first, there won’t be more than will fit in the old lunch box (“It was the one my father used to carry to the mill.” you learn to say, wistfully.) people should get used to see you carry in and out. “Look!”, you’ll have a few flunkies say, “There’s Pastor Bob, bringing his lunch to work, just like us.” (You’ll find perfect lunch boxes in the Schism Seminary Accessory Catalog where, lightly dented, with the paint lovingly rubbed off in all the right places, they are available at reasonable cost.)
Smile wisely and look focused on some ethereal thought while you trundle several pounds of coins home every week. As time goes on, you’ll see the wisdom in having frequent, spontaneous “Change Offerings”, in your services. They happen whenever you announce with a loud, tremulous cry, “I feel a call from above! Let’s show our love by putting all the change we have in our pockets in the plate!”
Your well-choreographed squad of plate-passers spring into action, and before you can say “The most important thing we can do is believe in Jesus and The Bible!”, there’s another four or five lunch boxes full of coins to take home.
This is where it gets interesting, Reverend Evangelical Pastor Bob! The metal in the coins goes up in value as the purchasing power goes down. Old copper pennies are worth more in scrap than in buying power! Same with nickels! So, you buy one of the Coin Counters from Schism Seminary’s Catalog. Sort the coins and put ’em in oil drums in the secure storage area behind behind the loading dock hidden in the back of the pergola.
Soon, you’ll have a dozen or so oil drums filled with what the successful Pastors Bob call “Retirement Coins”. Come depression, recession, hell, or high water, you’ll be financially safe!
The architect will tell you when you’re building your supermarket-sized home, “Pastor Bob, that storage area can’t be too big! You’re going to have several rich people dying every year, maybe every month. You’ll be right there when they pass on, often just the two of you! They will want you to have some of their most precious possessions. Rich old people have sterling, cut glass, valuable guns, jewelry, paintings, and surprising collections they’ll want you to have.”
You will know they want you to have it, even if they don’t say so directly, shake their heads emphatically “No!” or are in a coma. Be sure that in the back of your luxury Visitation SUV with the darkened windows, there’s an unobtrusive, portable loading ramp and a small dolly you can use to wheel heavy objects from their house into your vehicle in those precious moments between the time the loved one passes and you just have to call 911.
That secure storage area will be filled in no time! Your congregation, if they knew, would be pleased to know that your retirement is almost all taken care of!
