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(NOTE: I wrote this piece in an effort to pass on some valuable knowledge I accumulated during nearly nine years in the church insurance field. I figure there are some church administrators and board members who could use this and might stumble across it while searching the net for information.)

NOTE 2: A 3o minute internet radio broadcast of this information is now available at by clicking on the player in the right-hand sidebar. It includes additional stories and examples not included in the printed version. You can listen to the broadcast at the link, or download it to your computer or iPod so it can be shared with your church staff or other pastors or leaders who could benefit from this information.
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I’m your church insurance agent’s worst nightmare. Now, why would a guy who usually writes and talks about politics want to do a post about church insurance? Well, my friends, it’s difficult to admit this, but I am a recovering church insurance agent. Yes, I’m sure you admire the courage that it took for me to admit that, but for nearly 9 years I worked for one of the largest church insurers in the country.

During those years I handled everything from little bitty start up congregations with 20 people meeting in a school cafeteria, to a 7,000 member megachurch with tens of millions of dollars worth of buildings and property and every activity known to man. I had conservative Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches, stuffy Presbyterian churches, mysterious Asian religions, a couple of mosques, independents of all types, and a fair number of cults. If you were a 501(3)c church and you weren’t burning witches at the stake, weren’t witches yourself, or weren’t passing out snakes during your Sunday services, our company would probably insure you.

During my countless hours on the road I often thought that if churches knew what I knew about the various pricing tricks insurance companies use to mysteriously find savings when a competitor comes calling, my life as an agent would be a lot tougher and churches would be paying a lot less in premium. I decided that if I ever found myself in a position where I could counsel and advise churches on this subject, I’d give them that information their agent doesn’t want them to know and help them keep more of their money for ministry and help them spend less on necessary evils like insurance.

When I entered the business I was naïve enough to believe that two identical churches in the same town with similar activities and loss history would probably have two very similar premiums. Not so. In fact, there could be a dramatic difference between the premiums paid by both churches, and what I’m going to show you here is how to make sure you’re taking advantage of the pricing options the insurance companies have that they don’t want you to know about.

Let’s get one thing clear at the beginning: Church insurance is not a ministry. It can help support you as you perform your ministry, but the companies are not providing coverage as a charitable act. Insurance is a business and the company’s goal is to extract as many dollars from your ministry as possible while paying out as few as possible in claims.

Now, before I go any further, let me just say that I’m not trying to imply here that the church insurance business is more unsavory than any other insurance business. You’ll find these same things going on with any insurance company. However, churches tend to put more trust than they should in church insurance companies just because they work primarily with churches. That trust will cost you a lot of money.

If an agent walks into your office carrying a Bible, throw him out! It’s an act designed to disarm you, and just because he carries an 18 pound gold embossed King James Bible with the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, doesn’t mean he still isn’t out to get your money. He may be a good guy, and may even be a dedicated Christian, but as your agent, the two of you are in a business relationship and you have to remember that

The larger church clients of mine often had full time staff members who served as administrators. These people were sometimes pastors with administrative backgrounds, or lay administrators with business management backgrounds. I enjoyed working with professional administrators since they had a great deal of knowledge about the subject and understood the importance of proper coverage. They could also be challenging, thanks to their business savvy and concern for the bottom line.

Smaller churches often had volunteer lay leaders, perhaps the pastor himself, or even the church secretary handling the insurance program. There were several occasions when I had to make a pitch to the part-time secretary who was then supposed to pass all my information on to the church board. That was usually a waste of time, and I’ll give you a suggestion regarding the proper contact person later on.

With all that having been said, here are a few rules you should take to heart when working with your insurance program:

-Don’t fall in love with your agent. You certainly want to have a good relationship with your agent since he’ll be more likely to respond favorably when you need something, but as they say, love is blind. I’ve seen churches willingly pay thousands of dollars more than they had to, and sometimes for less coverage, because they were so blindly in love with their agent. When you start to value your agent more than you value the ministry dollars you have to work with, you set yourself up for needless costs.

Your agent works for you – make him earn his money. If he brings you a box of candy at Christmas, thank him, eat the candy, but don’t forget insurance is still a business and if he isn’t competitive, you’ll spit him out like one of those chocolates with the coconut in them.

-Control your claims. You can’t help it if the little old lady falls down and hurts herself in your parking lot, but you can make sure your grounds and buildings are as free of hazards as possible. Be observant for things that can generate claims, because claims are your worst enemy when it comes to keeping your insurance costs down. Insurers assess loss ratios based on the dollar amount of claims paid versus the dollar amount in premium collected. Some also take into consideration the number of claims submitted, even if they were for small dollar amounts because there’s still an adjusting and underwriting cost associated with small claims. For the average insurance company, an account is considered profitable at anything below a 65% loss ratio. If you’re under that, the company is making money and they’re more likely to be willing to negotiate better rates for you.

For property claims, use your deductible as a guideline. If a claim situation arises that’s going to cost less than three times your deductible, pay it yourself and don’t file a claim. It will save you money in the long run. And speaking of deductibles, choose the highest deductible you can afford to pay on your own. Underwriters are more likely to grant credits on policies with high deductibles (more about credits later).

-Get competitive quotes every year. If you don’t do anything when your insurance renewal time comes up, I can almost guarantee you that your costs will go up, even if you haven’t had any claims. Sometimes that will be due to rate changes that may occur in your area, but often it’s due to company policies that dictate that they want a certain premium increase on existing accounts during that year. There were dozens of occasions when I got renewal worksheets from the company that showed a 5% increase in premium just because that’s what the company wanted. The customer hadn’t had any claims, and there weren’t rate changes in that territory. Because the church didn’t show any signs of shopping for other insurers, the increases sailed right on through. Your agent is probably paid based on a percentage of the premium you pay, so if he thinks you won’t mind an increase, he certainly won’t mind sending one your way.

So, how do they increase your rates even though there hasn't been a rate change? Easy. There's a little tool called "Special Risk Rating Credits" that can be applied to many policies that have the effect of adjusting the rates up or down according to the whims of the agent and the underwriter. There's an "official" list of reasons and allowable adjustments, such as Care and Condition of the Premises, or Management Cooperation, and each has an allowable percentage credit or debit. If any such credits or debits are applied, the agent has to complete a form to justify those changes. In theory, the agent should take that form, go down the various rating factors, and apply the appropriate credit or debit to each item to come up with the final percentage.

In reality, the agent and underwriter agree on the percentage of credit or debit they want to assess to the policy, and then work the form to justify the amount. For instance, if the agent thinks he needs 25% credit to be competitive and the underwriter agrees, he fills out the form accordingly. If the agent doesn't want to "leave money on the table", or perhaps the church is a start-up with no building and falls below the minimum desired premium, he can likewise apply a debit to the policy using the same process. If the company wants a 5% increase in premium, they just knock 5% off the credits at renewal time. There's more fiction writing done on Special Risk Rating forms than in the entire Harry Potter series. That's why it's so important to get a quote every year and keep the agent and the company on its toes.

What’s the process? Here’s what you should do about two months before your property/liability package comes up for renewal:

Contact your existing agent and request hard copy loss runs. That will do three things for you: -It will give you loss information that you can use when negotiating rates with other carriers (assuming the loss run looks good);

-It will put your existing carrier on notice that you’re shopping, and will make them more likely to sharpen their pencils a bit when calculating your renewal;

-It will make your existing agent nervous, and a nervous agent is your best friend.

You probably have a desk full of cards and mailers from other church insurers. Call them all. Two months lead time is plenty for most insurers to gather information and prepare a quote. If you have a very large church with individual buildings that would be valued at $5 million or more, you may want to start this process 3 months early since there could be some reinsurance issues that will take more time to quote.

Don't pay your bill until you absolutely have to. Your insurance won't get canceled if you don't pay your renewal bill a month early. Even if your payment is a day or two late there are regulations which prevent the insurance company from cancelling your policy on the renewal date.

I'm not advising you to pay late, just don't pay too early. The companies bill you early for a variety of reasons, but none of those are because they benefit you the customer. here's what happens when you send your money before you have to:

-You give the insurance company free money to use which they can invest and make money on, none of which will benefit you. It's better for you to keep the money in your account until you have to pay it.

-Secondly, an early payment tells the agent that the deal is done and he'll keep the business. Therefore, he doesn't need to spend any extra time and effort to try and retain your business. His work is finished.

-Thirdly, you make it more difficult in the event another agent wants to submit a bid late in the process. Usually the first thing they'll ask you is if you've paid your bill, and if you have, they may still give you a bid but they probably won't put that much effort into it since the assumption will be that the buying decision has already been made. If you haven't paid yet the agent will have more incentive to give you his best deal (especially if you follow the advice below and released all the information to him).

Keep your money in your pocket as long as you can. There's nothing like an unpaid premium bill a few days before renewal to motivate your agent to get creative in order to keep your business.

Full disclosure. This item will probably tick off the insurance industry more than anything. When a competing agent comes to your church, pull out your insurance policy, premiums and all, and let him look at whatever he wants. If he wants copies of the coverages and pricing, give it to him.

Why? If an agent knows what he’s competing with, especially in terms of pricing, he’s more likely to come back with a quote that’s superior to what you currently have. Some administrators believe it’s unfair to reveal pricing and coverages to a competitor. I could buy the unfairness argument if information is being revealed to only one side, but full disclosure means everybody gets to see everything. The competitor coming in gets to see the existing policy, and the current agent gets to see the competitive quotes. When the dust finally stops flying, you’re going to end up with the best deal.


Have the decision makers there when the agents present their proposals. There’s nothing worse for the agent or the church than having the agent give his best presentation to somebody who’s not empowered to make the decision. If the decision makers are not present, somebody will have to translate that presentation for them and much will be lost in the translation. You want to make sure the right people are hearing directly from the agent and have the opportunity to ask questions.

Don’t be afraid to set up a dog-and-pony show some evening. You can get the board members together and give each agent a specified amount of time to make his pitch. That way everybody hears the same things and it will be easier to come to a group decision (for those churches that make these kinds of decisions by committee).

And now, a caveat to this whole thing. Many of the large mainstream denominations have group programs that are outstanding. The programs often have huge property and liability limits and are priced very competitively. The downside is usually service. One of my pet peeves as an agent was the occasions when the boss would insist that we solicit business from churches that had these group programs. My company couldn’t touch them and we knew it, but the guy with the rose-colored glasses would always insist that we could win these accounts away with our charm and good looks. After looking at these massive group programs I felt I was doing a disservice to the client by trying to convince them to abandon a clearly superior program just so they could see my smiling face from time to time.

Look folks, service is a wonderful thing and you want great service from your agent, but if he can’t match the multi-million dollar blanket coverages that you find on these big group programs, don’t switch. He may come back with something that saves you a few bucks and he’ll promise to return your phone calls and name his firstborn after you, but when you compare costs relative to coverage, you’ll be making a bad decision if you leave the group program.

A little knowledge, planning, and effort on your part can save your ministry a lot of money, and since I haven’t seen the church yet that has too much money, I’m sure you can find better uses for it than paying insurance premiums. Meanwhile, I’m going to head off to the Insurance Agent Witness Protection Program so I can remain safe from all the insurance companies and agents who are now out to get me.
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Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent

The church insurance business is a game, a contest between the church and the insurer. You'd like to think you're working together, but let's be serious. The insurer wants to collect as much premium as possible from you while paying the least amount in claims, and the church is trying to pay the least amount in premium while getting the big problems paid by the insurer. It's a competition.

In any fair game both sides know and understand all of the rules, but that's not true of the church insurance game. The insurers know the rules, but the churches only know what the insurer or their experience has told them about the rules. It's sort of like playing poker and only one guy knows that two pair beats two aces, so when you show your pairs of 2's and 3's, he tells you his pair of aces wins and if you don't know better, you give him all your chips.

This website is designed to help even the playing field a bit by giving churches more knowledge of the rules of the game so they can compete evenly with, or perhaps even gain an advantage over, the insurance companies. I won't be discussing specific coverage at this site - that's a discussion you should have with your agent.

The most important post on this site is "What Your Churches Insurance Agent Doesn't Want You to Know". I've detailed many of the rules of the game in that post and it's a must-read for any church preparing to negotiate their insurance deal. There is also an audio version of this information which you can listen to my clicking on the player in the right-hand sidebar. Your church insurance agent won't like it, but nobody likes to lose an advantageous negotiating position.

I'm also going to use this site for two other purposes. I'm going to tell you some stories from my church insurance days, some funny, some irritating, but all true. Some of the things happened to me, and some I heard from others. I won't give you the names of the companies I worked for, the name of the agency or the people I worked with, nor will I mention the names of the church clients and prospects I worked with. There's no sense in poking the bear more than I have to.

I'm also going to talk about people management, or more correctly, how not to manage people. During my years in the church insurance business I was witness to and victim of some of the poorest people management skills I've ever seen in a person who was not the homicidal dictator of some banana republic. Think Hugo Chavez with a Lexus. That's why I describe myself as a "recovering church insurance agent". Whether you work in insurance or any other field involving people, these stories will be instructive.

This post will stay at the top of the page. New posts will appear beneath it.

Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent

Having spent 9 years in the church insurance business, which included providing coverage for dozens of churches that met in schools, this could start a troubling trend across the country:

The Supreme Court has rejected an evangelical church’s plea to overturn New York City’s ban on renting public schools for religious worship services. That means the city now has a green light to begin evicting congregations who pay rent to use public school buildings for church services.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case leaves in place a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the city’s policy.

The court case involved the Bronx Household of Faith – a church that paid weekly rent to hold worship services at a public school since 2002. The church, along with five dozen other congregations, was allowed to continue worshipping at public schools pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

It’s a sad day for religious liberty,” said Jordan Lorence, the church’s attorney and senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “Churches and religious other groups should be allowed to meet in public buildings on the same terms as other community groups and they’re being denied that in New York City.”

Look at the twisted reasoning that went into this decision:

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that allowing churches to use schools resulted in an “unintended bias in favor of Christian religions” – since most Christian churches worship on Sunday.

“Jews and Muslims generally cannot use school facilities for their services because the facilities are often unavailable on the days that their religions principally prescribe for services,” Judge Pierre Leval declared. “At least one request(ed) to hold Jewish services (in a school building used for Christian services on Sundays) was denied because the building was unavailable on Saturdays. This contributes to a perception of public schools as Christian churches, but not synagogues or mosques.”

Judge Leval also took issue with the evangelical church’s membership. “Bronx Household acknowledges that it excludes persons not baptized, as well as persons who have been excommunicated or who advocate the Islamic religion, from full participation in its services.” Leval wrote.

But it all boiled down to a key point, the judges decided. “In the end, we think the board could have reasonably concluded that what the public would see, were the Board not to exclude religious worship services, is public schools, which serve on Sundays as state-sponsored Christian churches,” Leval wrote.

This is stupid on so many levels. Although I believe a city or school district should have the right to determine who uses their facilities and when, schools are being hammered all across the country with budget cuts. These churches provide much needed revenue to the districts, and they're generally very good tenants, careful not to mess up teacher's rooms or in any way do damage to the school facility. This is easy money for the districts, but the anti-religious zealots just can't stand the idea that something that values God can have any contact with a public facility.

During my insurance days I insured all kinds of denominations that met in public schools.  Never once did a school district apply any sort of standard as far as the type of church they allowed, nor did they provide any kind of support that could be misconstrued as "state sponsoring".  The judge's ruling is nonsense.

Churches that meet in schools in other parts of the country should take note and have contingency plans at the ready. The anti-religious activists will be emboldened by this decision and will seek to spread their bias nationwide.

Having been in the church insurance business I know there are a variety of people out there with grudges against churches that can actually provoke them to try and burn the building.  However, this one is unusual even for that crowd:

A Huntington Beach man pleaded guilty Tuesday to arson and other charges for setting three fires at an Irvine church and attempting to set a fourth.

Izad Chavoshan, 32, faces a sentence from Superior Court Judge Craig E. Robison on Aug. 19 ranging from probation to 20 years in prison.

Chavoshan pleaded guilty to three counts of arson, one count of attempted arson and a hate crime sentencing enhancement. He also has a prior strike conviction for criminal threats in 1998.

Prosecutors contended that Chavoshan drove to the Orange County Church of Christ in Irvine on three nights between Oct. 15, 2009, and Oct. 19, 2009, moved trash cans to the front of the church and set them on fire. Church employees reported the fires to Irvine police, who monitored the church Oct. 21, 2009.

Chavoshan returned to the church on that night and repeatedly threw a trash can at the glass portion of the front doors, according to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney's Office. He then removed a pack of matches from his pocket, lighted a piece of paper and attempted to push it between the closed church doors, prosecutors said.

He was arrested at the scene.

And here comes the reason for his arsonist rage:

Prosecutors said Chavoshan was disgruntled with the church's teachings against masturbation.

Well, he'll have plenty of opportunity to contemplate that issue in the state prison.

This picture was taken in a teacher's lounge inside a high school in Wausau, WI.  It identifies Wisconsin companies the unions accuse of supporting Gov. Scott Walker (h/t Gateway Pundit):
I used to work for one of those companies - Church Mutual, based in Merrill, WI.  I don't remember them being particularly political, but I never really saw their political activities in Wisconsin.

Given how few of the most activist union teachers actually attend church, I doubt it will be much of a threat to their business.

I missed this story when it originally ran on May 28, 2010, but it was pointed out to me by a former Church Mutual agent:

A.M. Best Co. has downgraded the financial strength rating to A (Excellent) from A (Superior) and issuer credit rating to “a ” from “aa-” of Church Mutual Insurance Company (Church Mutual) (Merrill, WI). The outlook for both ratings has been revised to stable from negative.

The rating actions reflect the sharp decline in Church Mutual’s reported underwriting performance in 2008, 2009 and through first-quarter 2010, driven primarily by competitive market conditions and significant catastrophe-related losses recorded in these years. As a result, Church Mutual’s underwriting results and operating performance measures have deteriorated to levels that are no longer reflective of a Superior-rated company.

Church Mutual recorded an underwriting loss of $24.2 million in 2009, following an underwriting loss of $26.9 million in 2008. In addition, the company reported an $11.1 million underwriting loss in first quarter 2010. Church Mutual’s catastrophe-related losses were driven by losses associated with the high frequency of weather-related events in 2008 and 2009 and the severity of Hurricane Ike in 2008.

The rating actions also consider A.M. Best’s concern that Church Mutual’s operating earnings will not return to historical levels, given the ongoing challenges the company faces to improve underwriting results over the near term due to the competitive environment in its specialty niche market and its continued exposure to weather-related losses. Additionally, given the magnitude of Church Mutual’s catastrophe-related losses in recent years, in addition to the high level of investment losses posted in 2008, A.M. Best remains concerned with management’s overall risk management.

From personal experience I can tell you that Church Mutual was almost paranoid about maintaining their A+ Superior rating, and agents were instructed to make that a regular selling point against the opposition (not that most customers really cared). At that time I think they'd had the rating for almost 50 years.  One year we had to practically shut down all new policy production by September because they were afraid their reserve situation and A.M. Best rating would be imperiled if we put too much business on the books.  Things must have really begun to go south if they were finally downgraded.

I guess they don't have to worry about that anymore.

I left the business in 2007.  Things started going bad in 2008 and 2009.  Just sayin'.

I think I've been out of the business long enough now to tell this story.

One morning I got a call from a church in my territory that was going to lose its Work Comp coverage with a competitor because of one large claim.  Looking at their loss history they'd been a very clean risk, but the other company was trying to shed clients because of reserve problems so they decided to cancel this Work Comp policy.

My company would not write a stand alone WC policy but insisted on getting the entire church's package.  "No problem", was the response from the church and I made an appointment to go see them the next day.

In my office I had a file cabinet full of old quotes done by agents who had worked the territory before me.  Before I went to a church that was new to me I always checked that file to see if an old quote was in there that might have building drawings or other useful information.  If the drawings were there it could save me a lot of time while at the church.  This particularly church had a number of buildings, so finding the drawings was a pleasant surprise.  Probably knocked 90 minutes of grunt work off my appointment.

As I looked through the file I found that this account had been submitted for coverage to my company about 10 years earlier but had been rejected.  There was no reason marked for the rejection - just the underwriter's name and date.  It was a different underwriter than was servicing the area now, and back at that time rejections or underwriter notes weren't entered online - they were only kept in old archive files at which nobody ever looked.  The current underwriter would have no information about this church readily available to him.

I thumbed through all the underwriting information that had been submitted and everything looked fine...until I found a copy of a 12-year old lawsuit that had been filed in Oakland in which a woman accused a church's pastor of sexual misconduct during a counseling session.  The name of the Oakland pastor was the same as the pastor of the church I was about to go see.

Nowhere in the file was there any documentation regarding the disposition of the case.  I couldn't tell if it had been tossed out, settled in one party's favor, or had been won by the plaintiff.  It's rare for these things to go to trial so I assumed some sort of settlement had occurred.

Now I had a choice.  If I mentioned the old lawsuit and company rejection to my underwriter one of the following would surely occur:

• He'd reject the client outright.
• He'd require me to go confront the pastor with this old lawsuit and try and get some type of proof of the disposition before he'd decided about the church's insurance.
• He'd agree to write a church policy but would exclude the pastor from the coverage.

I posted this story over at HolyCoast.com, but it reminded me of many of the things about church vans that can become an insurance nightmare.A terrible story out of Kentucky:

State police say the death toll has risen to 11 in a fiery crash between a tractor-trailer and a church van on northbound Interstate 65 in south-central Kentucky.

State police Trooper Charles Swiney says two children survived the crash.

A pastor for the family in the van says they were Mennonites from Kentucky on their way to a wedding in Iowa. Authorities say the truck driver was also killed.

Officials say the tractor-trailer crossed the median and struck the van head-on around 5:30 a.m. CDT near Munfordville.

When I was in the church insurance business several of the top losses in the history of the company had involved church vans. It doesn't appear to be the case in this accident, but it was often the driver's inexperience with that type of vehicle that led to the crash.

In one case I remember a youth pastor was driving a group of kids at night somewhere in the desert and decided to try and switch drivers without stopping. In the process they lost control of the van and rolled over. A girl from the church was killed and I think the company ended up paying over $250,000.

In another case a church preparing for a long trip took their van to a local tire shop. The shop said three of the four tires needed to be changed, but the other one was okay. Somewhere in New Mexico that other tire blew out causing the van to roll. One person was left with terrible permanent disabilities. The jury found the tire store faultless and held the church 100% responsible to the tune of $10 million. The church only had $5 million in insurance and ended up having to sell their property and almost everything they had to pay the judgment.

If your church has a van, especially a 15 passenger, you have to be very careful how those are operated. Too many times I've read stories where a group loaded all kinds of heavy stuff on the roof plus a full load of passengers and then had an incident where the vehicle got out of control. When you load the roof you raise the center of gravity and move it towards the rear of the vehicle, and that makes the front end a little goosey and makes a loss of control much more likely. For awhile there some church insurers wouldn't even insure 15 passenger vans.

As an agent my appointments were either set by me directly, usually for new business calls, and by my office for renewal meetings. We kept a common calendar so both of us could see what was scheduled and try to maximize our efficiency. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

During my early training I spent a Friday doing new business and renewal appointments with one of the senior people from the office. We had been out on appointments all morning and into the afternoon and were getting hungry. The area we were in didn't have much in the way of fast food, but we managed to find a Church's Chicken store. The senior guy decided to hit the drive-through.

Now I expected that he'd order a chicken sandwich or something relatively portable that we could eat easily in the car, but to my shock, he order a full-on bucket dinner, including two or three sides. We had enough food to feed a who car full of people. He also expected us to eat it in the car, which really complicated matters. There was just no easy way to do it, but he drove with one greasy hand on the wheel and a piece of chicken in the other.

It was hardly the best fried chicken I've ever had, and at one point he commented that the piece he'd just eaten "tasted funny". More about that later.

Our next appointment was a new business meeting with a start-up church. We were going to meet the pastor at his apartment. We still had a car load of chicken and fixin's and the senior guy decided to give the rest of it to the pastor for his family to finish. It seemed like a nice gesture at the time.

We headed home for the weekend, and on Monday the senior guy told me he'd been sick with food poisoning all weekend. That "funny tasting" chicken had been rotten. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem, but I couldn't help but wonder what we did to that nice pastor and his family.

Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent

In February of 1999 the company got a request to bid on a group of camps, including one on Catalina Island, 26 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. We didn't have a full-time agent assigned to that area, so they asked me to go and do the work for the camp bid. There are only a couple of churches on the island, so I made a couple of calls and lined up another appointment while I was over there.

To get to the island you have to take a ferry from Long Beach, and I was on a very early boat - 7:00 am. It takes about 90 minutes to make the channel crossing, and when I got to Avalon (the main city on the island), I was met by someone from the camp who had come to pick me up in the camp's little Boston Whaler boat. We set out at high speed for the run around the island to the camp in very cold weather. There wasn't any cover on the boat, so I had a very windy welcome to Catalina.

I spent most of the morning at the camp, measuring and photographing their tent-like buildings. At that time we used Polaroid cameras which were really a pain when you had lots of buildings. The cameras spit out the picture after each shot, and the cartridges only hold 10 photos. Consequently, I had to drag around my file case with extra film and my measuring tools. It was a pain in the rear for a group deal that we probably weren't going to get (and we didn't).

About 1pm I had the camp guy run me back around to Avalon where I was met by a board member from one of the local churches. In Avalon few people own cars - most of the locals travel around the city in golf carts, and that's what the guy drove when he showed up at the dock. I spent the afternoon measuring and inspecting his church building in downtown Avalon, and fortunately, that effort wasn't wasted. I was able to write several policies for the church and we had them for a client for a couple of years before another agent lost the renewal. No big deal, because under the commission schedule in effect at the time I only got paid for the initial sale so what happened after that didn't really matter.

I did have a couple of hours to kill after the appointment to look around Avalon before catching the boat home. It made for a very long day since the boat didn't leave until about 5:30, but as working days went, it was certainly more interesting than most of them. A once-a-year trip over there wouldn't have been too bad.

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This story isn't about an insurance situation, but a guy I encountered one day while on the road in my territory. I had an appointment near downtown San Diego and for lunch decided to run by the U.S.S. Midway, an aircraft carrier which is now a floating museum. I wanted to pick up a brochure for a future trip with my family to visit the big ship.

While walking from the ship back to my car a very agitated black guy came across busy Harbor Drive pulling a large rolling suitcase...against the light. Cars were having to brake to avoid hitting him. As he passed me he walked out onto the boat dock, picked up the large and obviously full suitcase, and threw it as hard as he could into the bay. He then muttered various obscenities, crossed Harbor again against the light (I thought for sure he was going to get hit) and headed back up Broadway. Somebody wasn't going to have their favorite traveling jammies that night.

My best guess, based on what I could made out from his muttering, is that somebody mistook him for a bellboy at one of the nearby hotels (the U.S. Grant is just up the street). Insulted, he took the suitcase from the person and once they were out of sight chucked it into the bay.

Very entertaining. Insurance work wasn't all boredom and idiot managers.

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Almost every year I would get a card or a call from a pastor whose church was located about as far away from my office as you could get and still be in my territory. In fact, it was just a few miles from Yuma, AZ. I had traveled to that community before to take photos of an existing client out there, and I was all set to go visit this guy's church until I spent a little time with him on the phone and discovered some interesting things about his operation.

Yes, he had a religious nonprofit church out there, but as it turned out the corporation that owned the church also owned a truck stop, a motel, some office buildings, and various other things around that tiny town. Given that the insurance company had no experience or desire to insure those kinds of risks I cancelled my trip out there and told the guy I couldn't help him. That didn't stop him from not only sending in marketing mailers from the company every year, but calling the main office and complaining that I wouldn't help him. The home office would call my boss demanding an explanation, my boss would talk to me, I would explain the situation...again, and the round-robin would head back to the the desert entrepreneur.

This probably happened five times in nine years. I was getting pretty sick of the guy, and pretty sick of the company's inability to take him off the mailing list. I'm sure my replacement is still getting calls from the guy and the company is still demanding why we won't insure him. Neither were very bright sometimes.

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I was having lunch with the pastor of a church and we were talking about his plans for a new church complex on some raw land they owned. We got into the environmental impact issues he was fighting and he told me a couple of stories.

One day some enviroweenie showed up at the property to inspect it to see if there might be some sort of special habitat there that couldn't be disturbed. According to the enviroweenie the property "looked like it could be habitat for an endangered butterfly". The pastor asked if any such butterflies had been found and was told no, but they could be there. The pastor then asked "what kind of birds eat those butterflies?" The enviroweenie demanded to know why the pastor needed that information, and he told them that he was going to "buy a couple boxes of them and turn them loose on the property". The enviroweenie was aghast.

He also told me of another church in San Marcos that had bought some raw land for a new church complex and were advised by their attorney that the moment the sale was complete to take a grader and scrape every living thing off the land. Every bush, every tree, every gopher hole. Don't get a permit or ask anyone for permission - just do it. The attorney told them that if they didn't clear the property immediately some enviroweenie would try and claim that the land was habitat for some critter or another and they'd end up in court for years trying to fix it. It was better to risk a small fine from the city for grading without a permit. And that's what they did.

Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

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I've spent 35 years dealing with pastors as a member of a traveling music ministry, and nine years in the church insurance business. Most of the men I've dealt with have been great guys, dedicated to their churches and their ministries, humble and full of God's love. However, every now and then I've run into some guys who clearly were unsuited for the job. God must not have been paying attention if in fact he called these guys into ministry.

Such was the case with a pastor I dealt with in a Baptist church south of San Diego. I'll call him Pastor Arrogant.

We had had this church as a client for awhile under a different pastor, but sadly that pastor died suddenly and the church had the misfortune to hire Pastor Arrogant to replace him. When the church's policy came up for renewal, I had my first meeting with Pastor Arrogant both to introduce myself and explain the church's policies.

When I was ushered into his office I noticed an immediate change from the previous pastor. Instead of pictures of family and church activities, the walls were covered with various diplomas, certificates, and pictures of Pastor Arrogant doing different things. I immediately thought "this guy is pretty proud of himself". As soon as the conversation started it became clear that my first reaction was correct. Pomposity oozed out of the guy. He was the smartest guy in town and he wanted to make sure you knew it.

A few minutes into our rather one-sided conversation his cellphone rang and his wife was calling. I don't mind those kinds of interruptions, but he seemed to take great offense. He spoke to his wife in the most rude, condescending and disrespectful manner I've ever witnessed. I immediately developed a visceral dislike for Pastor Arrogant.

When I left the church I had already decided that I wouldn't make any special effort to retain the account. If he got a competitive quote, instead of pulling strings to try and get him a better deal, I'd let him go. That's exactly what happened. He called to tell me he had another quote, and I told him I couldn't improve our offer. He left and became somebody else's problem.

Over the next three years or so I got a couple of notes from marketing saying he wanted another quote, but I ignored them. After a few years he called in and I was kind of stuck. I set an appointment and went to meet him. When we first met he was fairly new in that church. The buildings were older and in need of upgrades and the crowd was dwindling. I figured as smart as he was that three years later he'd have a going operation down there and it might be worth taking another look at.

Wrong. He hadn't lost any of his arrogance, but he had lost something....half his congregation. The buildings weren't in any better shape, but his ego was doing just fine. To make ends meet he had taken his educational building and basically turned it into an office park for itinerant ministries. There were five other churches meeting in there including a Japanese church, an Hispanic church, a Filipino Church, a home school organization, and a church that specializes in bikers and former dopers.

I made a show of walking around and pretending to inspect the building, but I had no intention of providing a new quote for the guy. I never got back to him and he never called to check on a quote. A win-win.

I fully expect to read someday that Pastor Arrogant has lost his job due to a sex scandal. He's a textbook example of the kind of guy who ends up in those messes. If that doesn't get him his church will finally just disappear, and given that they had him for a pastor, it's probably just as well.




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Loss runs are documents prepared by insurance companies to show the claims experience of a particular client. They're often required as part of the underwriting process to make sure the prospect you're quoting isn't a complete slug. The quotes are often well underway, and sometimes the policies have already been bound before the loss runs are finally received.

We had a competitor who was well known for dragging out the process of providing loss runs to his clients. The State has a 15 business day requirement, but they often played games with those things in an effort to screw up our deal.

When I was newly licensed and undergoing my first day of cold-calling with one of the veterans we got a call from a church and school that had discovered that their insurance had cancelled weeks earlier and wouldn't be reinstated. That should have been a warning that all was not well with the account, but we dropped what we were doing and drove 45 minutes to the church to meet with the administrator.

He was fairly new on the job and when we asked about the church's loss history he said he wasn't aware of any claims. He probably wasn't, but we asked him to request a loss run from his old company and we quickly put the quote together. Within a couple of days I picked up the down payment for my very first decent sized account. I was feeling pretty lucky.

A few days later the loss run came in the mail. Unlike what the administrator had told us, there was a claim...a big one: $220,000 for an old lady who had tripped over a sprinkler head and suffered extensive injuries. I thought for sure the whole deal was going to go up in smoke.

The underwriter was not happy, but agreed to keep the account provided but take all the credits off and pile on some extra charges. The church's premium jumped something like $2,500 a year, which turned out to be a blessing - not for them, but for me. More commission. They had to have insurance and we were willing to provide it at a healthy price. Not exactly a win-win, but not bad.

Advice to churches: Order a loss run before you start shopping for bids, and don't forget to get bids every year.

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Well, they're not really stupid. I just wanted to borrow the title from Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks.

Training (sort of)

I did not enter the church insurance field with any previous insurance or construction experience. I had been a banker, running the branch division for a small savings and loan that was gobbled up in bank consolidation frenzy of the mid-90's. With precious little training I was expected to inspect buildings, determine their overall condition, and rank them according to the complexity of their construction and cost of the materials used. Although I had had many hours of training in the nuances of various policies, there was very little actual hands-on work with buildings, construction methods, or other things that would be needed to provide an accurate cost estimate. It was pretty much on-the-job training and hope you get it right for the first year. It's a good thing nothing I insured that first year burned down.

They did send me to a two week training course at the home office after about a year on the job, and the last two days of that course were the most useful because we spent it with the loss control people who did a nice job of explaining things about building construction and quality that I hadn't gotten from the agency I worked for. I felt somewhat more prepared after that.

There was one clear lowpoint in the training I had at the home office. One afternoon we were going to have a presentation from the camp underwriter and his assistant. I had several camps in my territory so I was looking forward to hearing what the camp guy had to say, hoping I could pick up some valuable information. The camp guy and his toady showed up and for 90 minutes read us word-for-word everything that was in the camp chapter in our training manuals. No stories, special insights, or anything at all that would have made that 90 minutes interesting or worthwhile. I could have gotten just as much out of it if I had stayed at the Super 8 and read it myself. What a waste of time.

Cost Guessing

Over time agents develop various shortcuts in the process of cost estimating buildings that really save time, but they may cause some fluctuations in the calculations. You may think the process of determining replacement costs for your buildings is an exact science, but it's far from it. For instance, in the ideal world you'd measure a church building down to the inch and if there were little outcroppings or support structures that stuck out from the side, you'd measure around them and draw the diagrams accordingly. In real world all the agents I knew rounded everything up to the nearest foot and small outcroppings were ignored in favor of long straight lines. It might result in slightly more square footage and slightly higher liability costs and building value, but it made the process go much faster.

The software we had for drawing diagrams was okay for straight lines and 90 degree corners, but angles were a nightmare. I doubt if any buildings with angles other than 90 degrees were ever drawn right. In some cases the diagrams would have been unrecognizable if you were looking at the actual building, but that's what we had to use to calculate the square footage. I remember one church that had so many angles even after careful measurements I couldn't get the building to come out right in the diagram. I went out and bought a protracter to get the angles right, measured everything again and still couldn't get it right. The diagram was a mess. Lord help 'em if they had to build that place again based on my drawing.

Homes were another story. For the first several years we used a cost estimating method for dwellings that was pretty primitive. You added up the "units", each unit being a room or feature (like a porch), and then based on the zip code, came up with an estimated construction cost. It was way off from what it actually cost to build a home in Southern California and it's a wonder we didn't have more problems than we did with underinsured buildings.

The method was pretty haphazard at times as well. I was sent out with one of the long-time agents to a church in L.A. that had six homes they owned down the street from the church. I followed the agent as he walked down the street, glanced at the homes, and quickly scratched out what he thought each of them had in terms of bedrooms, living rooms, etc. He did all six homes in about 5 minutes without ever setting foot in or even walking around them. That was my training in cost estimating houses. (I also watched the same guy give an incredibly detailed presentation, recounting every story and example recommended by the boss, to the church secretary who couldn't have cared less. Her eyes kept crossing because she was so bored and completely uninterested. She acted like she had drawn the short straw because she got stuck listening to this guy. Advice to agents: Never present to anyone who can't make the decision.)

Some months before I left they came out with a new system that was probably much more accurate, but definitely much more of a pain in the butt because the new system required the agent to actually measure the house and include various details about the interior, such as the percentage of area carpeted, tiled or other types of flooring. Most of the agents had never even set foot in the houses they had insured in the past, and measuring houses can be especially difficult because you have to get in back yards and deal with dogs and landscaping and such.

One day an agent called me into his office to show me a little trick he'd figured out. Google Earth had recently come out and he discovered that by putting the address of the house in Google Earth he could pull up a satellite shot of the property. Using the scale on Google Earth he could come up with a rough diagram of the house and save himself a trip. I'm sure it wasn't completely accurate, but it was probably better than just walking down the street and guessing.

Photo Follies

Photos of houses could also be a pain. Oftentimes the homes were located well away from the church and I can remember a couple of churches that owned multiple homes in different cities. It took forever to run around and get the photos. The agent with the Google Earth trick told me that he had a solution for that, as well. He kept on his computer various pictures of homes he had taken at random over the years, and if he needed a photo of a home and didn't want to make the drive out there, he'd just use one of those. He figured the underwriters never spent much time really looking at photos of houses, and he was probably right. They apparently never noticed.

Speaking of photos, we were required to provide photos of church buildings showing all sides. In some areas, that could be a problem. What if one part of the building had graffiti on it, security bars on the windows, or a toxic waste dump next door? Underwriters didn't like that kind of stuff and could give you a lot of grief about it. An older agent told me when I first started that he had learned to be a little choosy with his photos, making sure that nothing objectionable might end up in them and ruin his deal. With the pressure to produce more and more sales, no agent was going to let a little graffiti knock his numbers down.

And then, there was the "drive by shooting". I'm sure that the underwriters wondered why some photos were a little blurred. It was probably because the agent stuck the camera out the window as he drove by without stopping. Hey, they wanted a picture so we gave them a picture (the secret was making sure to keep the rear view mirror out of the shot).

More stories later....


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I didn't run into too many lady preachers in my nine years of church insurance work. If I did they were usually pastoring some new age gay church, but I did have one memorable experience with a lady preacher at a black church in San Diego County.

I first met her and her husband when they called in needing insurance for their church. Their policy had lapsed with another company and their mortgage loan company was demanding a new policy. They had a clean loss history and I got underwriting approval to write the account. They paid us 25% down and we put them on a quarter payment plan.

I never had any problems with her except for one annoying thing. She decided the appropriate use of her church answering machine was to put a 3-4 minute sermon on there that you had to listen to in order to leave a message. It was incredibly annoying. Here's a little advice for churches: Nobody is going to get "saved" or dedicate themselves to your God based on your answering machine message. Keep it simple, and for Pete's sake, short.

Many months had gone by without claims or other contact when I got word from our accounting people that a "Notice of Cancellation" had been sent to the church because of non-payment. The account was way overdue and by the date they actually cancelled it the church owed over $1,000 in earned premium. We had a rule on our commission plan that any funds written off during the first year of a policy came out of the pocket of the agent, so I was looking at a $1,000 loss because of these idiots. The collection efforts carried over into the Christmas season and fortunately, the account wasn't written off right before the holidays.

Then, we had a little stroke of providence. While I was on my Christmas vacation I got a call from the lady preacher. She apologized for the problems and said she wanted to get her policy reinstated. I made a few calls and we agreed to rewrite her package provided that she pay us the full amount of earned premium owed on the previous policy, plus 25% down on the new one. She sent a check in right away and I thanked my lucky stars. Not only did it save me $1,000, but it gave me a new business at the start of the year and more commission on a future check.

A few days into the year I had to go to Texas for a quick personal trip, and on my last day there I got a phone message from the office that the lady preacher had called in and changed her mind. She no longer wanted the new policy from us (she had gone back to her previous company since they had a better offer) and she wanted her money back...not just the down payment, but all the money including the $1,000 we had applied to her debt. That got a good laugh.

I went straight to the office from the airport and huddled with the powers-that-be and we decided that we were fully in our rights to retain the amount owed on the debt, but would cancel the new policy without charge and refund the down payment.

That didn't sit well with Ms. Lady Preacher. She called up and got all over me, claiming we were stealing her money and she had a right to have it back. When that approach didn't work she tried a new tack - she promised that if we sent all her money back she'd pay off that amount that was due as soon as she could. I told her that wouldn't be necessary because she no longer owed us anything. She had paid it off. *CLICK!*

The next day I got an email from some guy who claimed to represent the church and he reiterated her demand for payment of all her funds. He obviously wasn't an attorney since no attorney would send a demand letter by email, and it certainly wasn't written that well. I politely told him to go pound sand.

That was end of my experience with that lady preacher, and that church went on our "do not write" list forever.

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One of the frustrating things about working in the church insurance business was dealing with liars and cheats. You wouldn't expect that from a group that is allegedly working for the good of the church, but every industry has its black sheep. Sadly, some of those dealings involved people I worked with or for, but most had to do with a particular competitor. I've already detailed some of his antics in the Mr. Big Bible the Dumpster Diver post.

For those who are not familiar with the insurance business, there are different ways to rate different risks. A building will fall into one of a number of categories depending on the age, construction type, condition, presence of sprinklers, etc. In the same way liability rates for a particular building are determined by usage and are rated using different factors. Church classrooms, offices, sanctuaries, etc. are considered "Church" and the rating basis used is square footage regardless of membership or attendance. Schools and preschool are rated according to the number of students, regardless of square footage. A large church building with only a few members can really get hit for liability because of the square footage while a large school building with only a few students can make out like a bandit. It's a far from perfect system.

Mixed use buildings are supposed to be rated according to the percentage of each risk present, and that method is ripe for abuse. I'll give you a real life example.

I was quoting a large synagogue in San Diego that had multiple fire-resistive masonry sprinkled buildings - the absolute best kind of buildings to insure because of the low risk of fire. They were very large which meant the liability charges were going to be pretty steep, but the construction allowed me to pile on the credits (an explanation of credits can be found in this post) and dramatically reduce the premium. The largest of the buildings was about 18,000 square feet - 17,000 of which were classrooms and offices, and the remaining 1,000 square feet a small preschool with 30 students. According to underwriting rules the liability would be calculated using 17,000 square feet at the "Church" rate and 30 students at the "Preschool" rate (there are other liability charges that apply, but those are the big ones).

When I met with the church to present the proposal they brought out their existing policy and I was shocked to see that despite the huge credits I was still thousands of dollars over their pricing. I started digging into their existing policy to look at see how the charges were calculated and quickly discovered the pricing shenanigans that Mr. Big Bible was using to keep this policy's pricing so low. On the building I described above, he had rated (for liability) the entire building as "Preschool", using only the small student count, totally ignoring the 17,000 square feet that was not used for the preschool. His liability charge was a tiny fraction of mine. Bottom line - he was cheating.

He was cheating not only his competitors, but his own company. By under reporting the liability for that building he lowered his premium and denied his company the funds they should have collected for the liability issues they faced at that property. Had that policy been audited by his company or the State, he would have been facing big problems.

Oh, except for one thing. Mr. Big Bible had been doing this kind of stuff for years with the company's blessing. We had seen numerous examples over the years where square footages or student counts were under reported. Some were absolutely laughable, but Mr. Big Bible was pretty much bulletproof because he had a good relationship with the company's bigwigs and produced so much business that they were willing to look the other way when he cheated. Keep in mind, this was one of the nation's largest church insurers that was condoning this unethical activity.

I had an early run-in with Mr. Big Bible during my first year or so in the business. We saw a quote he had done for one of our clients, and in this quote he had understated student counts at their large Christian school to lower the premium. My boss decided to call him on it and drafted a harsh letter to the church detailing what he was doing. The boss asked me to review the letter and make any revisions I might think are necessary.

The letter was poorly written, angry, and very likely actionable in the accusations it made. I took his poor start, rewrote it to tone it down a bit, and with his approval, sent it to the customer. The customer passed it on to Mr. Big Bible who promptly demanded an apology or else legal action would be taken. Of course, Mr. Leave Alone Slap (the boss) immediately jumped all over me, even though I probably saved him a sure lawsuit had that first draft of the letter been sent. I should have seen that coming, but I was still fairly new to the agency and hadn't had the opportunity to see what a poor manager he really was.

To our credit, we refused to play the pricing games that Mr. Big Bible played, but that decision cost us a lot of money over the years. Meanwhile, his company turned a blind eye to clearly unethical and possibly illegal behavior, and his clients stuck with him thinking him to be an honorable Christian businessman.

He was just another liar and cheat.

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Part of being in the church insurance business was dealing with every kind of church, including many which were pretty much cults. There are a lot of strange beliefs out there and we insured them all. As an evangelical Christian I always felt a little weird going into those places, and one thing that surprised me was the way the company handled group insurance programs for those churches.

In Southern California we did not have group discount programs, voluntary or mandatory, for most of the mainstream denominations. We didn't have a Southern Baptist program, a Nazarene program, a Methodist program, an Evangelical Lutheran program, a Presbyterian program, etc. However, we did have discount programs for Unitarian Universalists, Unity Churches, Religious Science, Christian Science, Apostolic Assembly, and a number of other offbeat denominations. If you ran a cult, we probably had a discount program for you that would save you money on your insurance, but if you had a mainstream church, good luck.

I remember going to a Unity Church one time and the administrator gave me his card. I wish I still had it because it pretty much demonstrated what's wrong with most of these churches. The church's motto was "One God, Many Paths", and the logo looked like they'd taken the symbols for all the major world religions and had thrown them in a blender. It had a Christian cross, a Jewish Star of David, a Muslim Crescent, and several other symbols of world religions. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to look him right in the eye and ask him how he explains John 14:6-

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (KJV)

I never did since insurance is a business and not a ministry, but it was tempting.

I only insured two Muslim groups during my years in the business, and one of them was a large mosque in San Diego that left our company the year before the 9/11 attacks. It was reported later that some of the 9/11 attackers had attended that mosque for awhile, and following the attacks I read about reports of vandalism at that mosque.

I remember having meetings at the mosque a couple of times, and I've never felt more out-of-place than I did in those mosques. The men glared at me like the infidel I was, and entering through their doors was like taking a time machine back hundreds of years and half a world away. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

I also handled several Buddhist temples. Nice people, but way out there in their beliefs. One of the churches had over $1.5 million in gold statues and icons in their sanctuary area. The building itself was old and pretty dumpy but when you walked into that sanctuary you thought you'd entered the vault at Fort Knox. That valuation was made several years ago when gold was around $350 an ounce. I'd hate to think what all that would be worth today.

My favorite (with tongue firmly in cheek) group program was for a Hispanic denomination based in Southern California that was granted a 7.5% discount for all their member churches. Most of the churches were in bad shape (the congregants were often low income), they rarely remembered to pay their premiums and many of them were canceled for non-payment time and again, and yet we gave them a discount that the nice Southern Baptist church down the street couldn't have. It never made sense to me. Without that group program many of their churches probably wouldn't have met the underwriting requirements due to the condition of their buildings or their history of non-payment problems.

The topper was when the District Superintendent in San Diego County decided to ignore his denominational headquarters and struck his own insurance deal with a competitor of ours. He then encouraged his churches to leave our company for the competitor as soon as their next premium was due. What a nice payback for the big group discount program. That was money well spent.

The Religious Science, Christian Science, and many of the Unitarian or Unity churches all had one thing in common (besides a nutty theology) - they're dying. The membership of most of those churches that I dealt with was made up of people with an average age of 75. Members in their 60's (if they had any) were part of the youth group. These churches are barely hanging on and since they seem to be unable to attract the young families needed to sustain a church, many of them will disappear in the next 10 years or so.

However, even meeting in a mainstream church could be a weird experience. I had a meeting one day at a very conservative Baptist church in San Diego. The pastor was wearing a black suit, white shirt, and had a very short haircut. After our meeting he asked me if I was a Christian. I told him I was and he asked what church I attended. When I told him I attended Saddleback Church he turned a little whiter (if that was possible) and started grabbing for gospel tracts. Saddleback clearly didn't meet with his requirements for Christianity and he was determined to get me "saved". I'm not sure how I made it out of there without being dunked in his baptistry.

Bottom line - if you want to get to heaven, embrace the faith of an evangelical Christian church. If you want a discount on your church insurance (at least from my old company), join a cult.

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