Even more importantly, both AU and The Plain Truth have a long tradition of serving the church. AU has provided, for example, most of the field ministers for the last 50 years. Now and for the foreseeable future, our media entity, PTM, will provide the collective mass media outreach that has always been an important part of our church mission. We are proud of the Plain Truth magazine and all our media products, and by using a small part of the income to support the media ministry, we transcend the limits of our own local areas to preach the gospel. In summary, the church is now spending a greater percentage than in recent church history on local church operations, and is doing so because of the importance of the local churches, members and ministry.
Current plans call for increasing that percentage even more.
Recent cuts in ministers' expenses, although regrettable, have been made after larger cuts in headquarters expenses were made. Nonetheless such cuts were necessary because of the income loss of millions of dollars in recent years. Even that which doesn't go directly to the local churches goes mostly to important church projects such as media or the university. In order to ensure strong local support, your continued and faithful contributions are necessary and appreciated. Other questions will be answered in the future in this section.