A Call for Reform | Chris Ayoub and Nathan Apffel

 

Episode Topics:

• Discover the hidden financial practices behind religious institutions.
• Learn why transparency in church finances is critical for true accountability.
• Get an insider’s look at the production of a groundbreaking documentary on church reform.
• Hear Nathan Appffel and Chris Ayoub break down the flaws in religious nonprofit structures.
• Understand why reform in religious institutions is necessary for them to truly serve their communities.

 

Rick Jordan  

Rick, what’s shakin? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today we’re going all in. All right? Today we’re gonna jump into some controversy, which is freaking fantastic because this stuff is near and dear to my heart. Growing up in a church, setting myself and always seeing, you know, the if I could say the poorness of pastors and just this weird view in perspective around money, I got news for you. Everybody’s meant to have resources. And we’re going to dive into a cool conversation with two dudes today that are right at the forefront of this type of controversial discussion. We’ve got Nathan Apfel, what’s shaking my man and Chris you welcome to all in

 

Nathan Apffel  

what’s up Rick

 

Rick Jordan  

guys, it’s a, I’m pumped for this because, I mean, Nathan, you’re an Emmy-winning filmmaker, which is freaking fantastic. You know, Chris, you’ve got military and business experience, which I have a lot of friends that have that amazing combination. First off for you two. How did you get together?

 

Nathan Apffel  

Well, we’ve been dating for years. Chris, you could tell the story you’re you’re good at this,

 

Chris Ayoub  

yeah. So prior, prior to this, I was the president of a large homeowner association management firm,

 

Rick Jordan  

and that’s so sexy, by the way. Oh,

 

Chris Ayoub  

industries, by the way, guys, I kind of feel left out that I’m not wearing a black T-shirt. Yeah,

 

Rick Jordan  

where’s the memo, man, we’re gonna talk about that. I’ll get my team on that and send it out ahead of time.

 

Nathan Apffel  

Exactly. Yeah,

 

Chris Ayoub  

I was when I was exiting from that industry, on the day-to-day side, I was figuring out, okay, hey, the next thing I want to do. I really want to make it. I want to make an impact, not just, not just in corporate America. I went up for humanity, and so I started exploring, looking in the mental health space. I’m a combat veteran. So very dear, dear to my heart, is the whole mental health side of things. I came across a gentleman who was in the same industry as me on the HOA side, and he was telling me about his two-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker friend, Nathan Abfell, who’s been on this journey. And at that point in time, Nathan had been on this journey for 10 years, and he wanted me to meet him as a potential business partner, akin was at a point where, you know, he had filmed 60% and was really looking for not just, not just a capital partner, but an actual, you know, brother, to be in the trenches with, honest, because this is a huge thing to take on, yeah, and that’s how we met, and, like, the future looks bright.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yep, that’s awesome. I love how I started into this too, because it’s intriguing because you guys are talking about the, you know, really, like, the business of religion, you know, and when I, when I was involved in the, in the church scene, being an ordained pastor, right? I actually helped found three churches. I was always the number two guy, and I always, always saw this business aspect of things, you know, from a productive perspective. But what you’re diving into is not the productive perspective at all, of the business of religion.

 

Chris Ayoub  

Yeah, we’re diving into the kind of legal architecture that undergirds the entire nonprofit sector, and then the religious exemptions in particular in America. Well, I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with a very high profile pastor, and he was like, we just he’s like, You have to ask just one question to every pastor and they’ll melt. And it’s why aren’t you being honest? We basically present the argument that in the US, there are three different sandboxes that you could play in from a business perspective, there’s a for-profit world, there’s the nonprofit world, and then within that sandbox or the nonprofit world, there’s the religious exemptions, religious nonprofit and when you look at all three of those sectors, you’d say, Okay, which one should be the most accountable, the most transparent, you know, have the most integrity, be the most humble, and you’d think it’d be the religious sector, but of those three, it’s the darkest, most shadowy in regards to any type of accountability or transparency. And it’s no one person’s fault. It’s, it’s really just that the legal architecture here in the US has allowed this, what was a mouse-size problem, to become an elephant-sized problem in the last 60 ish years. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah,  for sure, I definitely want to dive into that. I will never forget guys, and I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever told this story, but it makes sense for today, when I was, I was probably 1516, years old, because I said I grew up in a church, right? The denomination was the Assemblies of God, right? With the Pentecostal background and everything, and the business of this religion was something I learned about early where the, you know, everyone understands the concept of a tithe, right? And that’s something that is. Is, you know, there’s several passages in the Bible that are tried to be referenced to say, Hey, this is what you gotta do, right? And which, by the way, I’m much more evolved than that at this point, you know, because it’s not this hard and fast rule. But I remember that the pastors of the churches that are employed by the churches as the pastors in the Assemblies of God, their 10% is owed to the district, to the structure, to the organization. And I will never forget this. It was like a collection call that the youth pastor got from the district, and he told me about it, and the way that they went into this was like, you know, you didn’t send your tithe into the district this month. And he’s like, Oh, whatever, you know times are tough, or whatever. I think I just forgot, you know, it was something, some normal human reason, yeah, you know, some normal human reason. And I remember the questions like, Well, did you pay your light bill last month? Oh, did you pay your mortgage last month? Yeah, you know. So it was those types of questions, and I’m sure this is part of what you guys dive into, right? Is this kind of weirdness? 

 

Nathan Apffel  

Well, it’s it really, this is that is the linchpin to the Christian problem in the system the, you know, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, they have different forms of giving than the Christianity, yeah, but I was raised in the same milk like, hey, Nathan, here’s your birthday money. Go give 10% to your church. This is your tithe. And it always rubbed me wrong as a kid, because I’m like, this isn’t going to God, it’s going to this dude or this group of people. And then they get to decide what is. Like, look at I get it if it was going into a homeless person’s hand or an orphan’s hand or a widow’s hand that needed it. But I’m like, I don’t get why. I gotta give to this building. And this is what I would say, one of my personal biggest adventures in the production of the show was learning this concept of tithe, this mosaic concept in the Bible, and then it goes back to Melchizedek. But what it does is it goes back even further than that. And I’ll tell you right now, every single church or pastor that preaches tithing will not be ready for the show, because we are going to show that everybody’s theology and belief on this is wrong, yeah? And if you say 10% you’re misguided at best, or you’re abusing it at worst, to, you know, to in your yourself and get wealthy, yeah? And you’re not going to be happy with what I’m about to what we’re about to present in the show. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Right on, I’m intrigued. I mean, normally, this is for the end, but where’s your Docu series airing streaming platform, I’m assuming, right?

 

Nathan Apffel

Yeah. So we produce for Amazon. So Amazon’s kind of our second base hit, and I know they probably won’t want to hear that. Our goal is to really create a national dialog and then eventually a global dialog, yeah. And so with Chris’s experience, in regards to the business world, we’re looking at alternative models. We want 200 to two 50 million people to watch this in the first three months, to create a to create a global conversation about this, to where no church and religious organization or secular nonprofit can hide. You’re going to know the questions to ask. You’re going to know, you know where the but the buttons to push, because we really are going to demand reform to the sector. And so Chris, Chris is doing some amazing work on the kind of, let’s call them, creative collaborations, which could eventually turn into 10s of millions if not hundreds of millions of views.

 

Chris Ayoub  

That’s really cool. And if you know any distribution, you know platforms, Rick, we’re having those discussions right now. Yeah, because, like, another thing that was very interesting that shared, what that was shared with Nathan yesterday, with this, with this high profile pastor, it’s really, was really cool is, you know, somebody that’s been in that system for so long said that you all are going to be behind the next great reform for the church. And that’s, uh, that’s cool, having that discussion that was really, really, I mean, it needs it, right? So the nonprofit sector as a whole, it’s a $1.42 trillion market from donations. That’s 890 billion globally for Christianity, just Christianity, and then over five 40 billion for secular nonprofits. Now we were alluding to this earlier. What’s the big difference between those two? Well, secular nonprofits turn a 990 in 990 revenue, expenses, top, salaries and such, the biggest black hole is the religious exemption side. Yeah, yeah. M And a guy like, that’s, that’s how I’ve, I’ve made my career so far is like doing a lot of murders diligence, right? Yeah, they’re doing like crazy, oh, let’s. Get, let’s get this, you know, nonprofit, and scoop it under us, and we’re going to turn it into, you know, we’re going to turn it into a church. Let’s take this radio station, this TV station, like a hotel, an orchard. I mean, you name it like, yeah, it’s out of control. These conventions, associations auxiliaries, and churches like there’s a lot of sandbox play in there, yeah, for

 

Rick Jordan  

sure, you guys have some great side spiritual balls. I’ll tell you that to go after something like this. And I admire you for that. Yeah? Because I mean, just, just from our conversations, obviously, I think the three of us share some sort of, you know, story of a background in faith, you know, growing up in in everything. I’ve been curious about this my entire life, you know. And to your point. And to your point, Nathan, I’ve always had the thought too, you know, where you said it goes to some dude, you know. And that was the thing is, like, I believe still, and I I can make the assumption and stop me if I’m off base about you guys on this. But none of us are saying the churches are bad whatsoever. No, you know. And we’re not

 

Nathan Apffel

saying faith is bad. We actually encourage people to explore their faith, but we’re saying these institutions that we kind of take, I use the example of, hey, everything in my purview, in this in this box, is my reality. Outside of my reality. I don’t know what is real or fake. I don’t know what’s going on. So if I was raised in a mega church, I think this is the church. If you were raised in a Pentecostal church, you think that’s church. If Chris is raised in a Roman Catholic church, he thinks that’s a Christian church. But what we don’t realize is these are all just man-made institutions that have I was talking with this professor the other day who’s an expert in the early church, so from Christ dying and the apostles going out to really Constantine, that’s like his wheelhouse. And we were talking about this inter-infection of Christianity in Rome at the time when Constantine became a Christian, Christianity, which was this organic, almost fluid philosophy, started merging with government, and good things came of it, because Christianity influenced Rome, but then Rome also brought these institutional pillars into Christianity. And the institution was, hey, we build buildings, we organize, we build boxes and structures and you kind of removed the organic organism of Christianity, so to speak. There was a relapse of that, which is really cool, and that’s the founding of America, right? Yeah? Like, after the Reformation the Church of England kind of started falling apart. The Pilgrims found America, and they started, they said, Hey, this is awesome. We can build our own religions. We can do whatever. And there was kind of this rebirth of this organic organism. But then what do humans do? We build boxes and we build institutions, and we organize things, and we were pack rats and so now we’re just at the, in my opinion, we’re at this death cycle. So to speak of this institution again, where reform has to come and so, yeah, to your point, it’s like, it’s not we’re not discounting faith or even the church. It’s we’re saying, hey, these institutions have become so institutionalized with so little accountability, external accountability, that they’re just they’re eating themselves from the inside out, from fraud and embezzlement and

 

Rick Jordan  

yearment. Yeah, this is such a cool collision of areas of expertise and passion as well. Because, you know, Chris M and a guy, right? I just took my company public, you know, and our whole strategy as a roll-up, and you talk about transparency, that’s one of the reasons I did it, because everything is out there in the open, for sure, and just like you know, as it should be, you know, to your point. Nathan, everything with church should be there and righteous and good, and it’s supposed to be that way because there’s a lot of good that the church, in its organic nature, can do, for communities, for people, for humans, for hearts, you know, for families, for everybody that exists in the entire world when, like Chris, when it’s structured the right way, and it can be transparent,

 

Chris Ayoub  

yeah, I want to, I want to add Rick, you just, you just brought up, we’re absolutely, you know, not saying, you know, church is bad. It goes a few levels deeper. Is what church because what’s what, what like when you’re talking about, like, doing real good for the local community. Mean, these, the whole tax exemption exists for the concept of local social capital, right? Yeah, yeah. What is a church? Well, churches have now turned into, as I said earlier, radio stations, they’re they’re private jets, they’re people’s homes. So what? What is a church like? We have to even start to go back and go, let’s define what a church is. Really is

 

Nathan Apffel

that Chris is where the whole thing falls apart, yeah, because of the separation of church and state, the IRS can’t define what a church is. So pretty much anything could be a church, you know. And people have just gotten wise to that idea, and smart businessmen and women have gotten wise to that idea. And I’m not, I’m painting with a very broad brush here, because there are a lot of really good pastors out there, but a lot of shrewd businessmen and women who don’t have the bench like most honorable of intentions, see the nonprofit sector and then the religious exemptions in particular, as a great way to make a lot of money under the table. No, dude, so, and that’s what just I got to sit down with Philip Hackney, who’s the number three brain in the US on religious exemptions, and he’s like Nathan, the government wants nothing to do with religious exemptions, but you guys got to get your house in order because there’s so much you’re talking about, almost a trillion dollars a year giving, and there’s so much abuse and fraud and endorsement pressing on it, that the whole system is going to cave in. And he’s like, he’s like, we can’t touch it, so go get your house in order, you know? And so that’s what we’re here to do. We’re really here to to define what a church is, because, to Chris’s point, is a hedge fund a church, and on paper, right now, a hedge fund can be registered as a church. Wow,

 

Rick Jordan  

I had no idea about that. Yeah,

 

Nathan Apffel

a for-profit vehicle, who’s whose entire structure is to generate profits, can be registered as a church as long as there’s one line somewhere on their documents that says, hey, one day, we’ll give it all back one day. And it’s like,

 

Rick Jordan  

that’s crazy. So

 

Chris Ayoub  

much nepotism in churches. It’s generational, generational wealth just passed down churches, the board, it’s family, and then it goes to the sun, and then it goes to the Sun side, and it or the daughter. And just is, just keeps passing through. You know? I mean, that’s a huge part of it as well, too. That’s

 

Rick Jordan  

incredible.

 

Nathan Apffel

That’s interesting. Rick, I have a question for you, because I’ve got I’m not, I’m not a businessman. I’m creative and I’m so grateful for Chris and his wisdom in that regard because he brings such a level of structure and business ethic to things that I don’t have. But so I’m sitting here with two businessmen right now. What would be your pitch for the reason why a corporation or a company should be accountable and transparent?

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh, man. I mean, you’re asking probably I’m going to say this in a confident way, the right guy for something like that, because I’m looking at the two of you, and you’re saying that the business guy, right? I’m also a creative. I mean, I made a documentary four years ago about the pandemic with, a filmmaker from, from LA in the church realm, as the number two. I would always fill the business role, because I could, you know, put structure to it. But I was also the worship leader. You know, I was, I was the worship pastor, you know. I mean, I go back 30 years playing guitar and drums, and my dad was a band director, and all of that too. I love the creative aspect of this. So when I took a look at the church, you know, there was a statement all the time in all the churches I was in that the pastors would make where they would say, Hey, I don’t know what anybody gives, you know? And I was like, once I got in the inner workings, I’m like, that’s such bullshit. You of course, know what everybody gives because I’ve seen the reports, not that I’m on the inside as well, but then in the transparency, it’s like, there was always a meeting, you know, like an annual meeting, which you had to have, or whatever, or at least they said you had to have, where there were budgets, you know, they said, Hey, this amount of money is going to these areas. And probably the church that I grew up in was the most transparent about that, you know, the three churches that I was not the guy, you know, I was always the number two. I positioned myself as the number two. I didn’t even know where everything was going. You know, in that I’m like, How can we, how can we guarantee integrity around our programs that we’re offering, and even to more. So it’s like, I never wanted to, even though all of them wanted to pay me a salary, I never took a salary from any of those, you know, because I was still building businesses. I’m like, I’m covered, and I am donating way more than 10% of what I’m bringing in. Because I believe in this thing. I’ve got a passion for this. I want to see to succeed. I want to see it do a lot of good for a lot of people. You know, and that’s why I’m involved in this. That’s my why, as being a part of this, I have faith, and it combines with passion to be able to help people. So can we not be transparent in this? And, oh, by the way, I don’t want a salary because I don’t want to be beholden to anybody in accomplishing that mission and that vision of my own personal self. And I also believe that the dude, as you said, Chris, the dude, I don’t believe that the dude should be paid by the church, because it does allow that separation and allows no conflict of interest, which I think could also bring a lot more transparency, you know, and I don’t know, Rick. Personally, but I know that there was a point, you know, he wrote Purpose Driven Life, as I’m sure you guys dove into him, right? There was a point, at least, reportedly, he gave, like his entire past history of salaries, back to the church at one point when he had this similar kind of epiphany, you know, and he related it to Scripture and how Paul, you know, traveled from town to town. He was a tent maker, traveled from town to town, and did not take money from the churches that he spoke at. He worked and he labored to provide for his own needs. That way he could also maintain that ethical degree of separation and transparency.

 

Nathan Apffel

This is Yeah, so this is my question, and this is the name of the show, the religion business? Yeah, I think we need to look at these institutions, Saddleback, you know, Rick Warren. You need to look at Saddleback as a business and say, Hey, how do we run this business as streamlined as an end, as efficient and as accountable and as transparent as possible, but because of the regulations, which most of them were written in 1913 since 1913 here in the US, it’s created this opaque which, which used to be kind of hazy, but now is literally a black room, because Congress, through tax reforms, was lobbied to add additional language in to loosen up the regulations even more. And so as you talk about that background of, Hey, your denomination was pretty accountable. I would argue denominations had some accountability and structural oversight. But as nondenominationalism skyrocketing and denominationalism is crashing, yeah, it means we have it’s the wild west now if all three of us are nondenominational pastors in our town here, and we all have our own churches. I’m beholden to no one except who’s on my board. There’s no oversight. The government doesn’t sit above me, and there’s no denominational structure. So the abuse in the last 40 years has gotten exponentially worse because that denominational accountability is gone or has disappeared?

 

Rick Jordan  

Chris, could the answer maybe be, I mean, coming from a public company, could the answer maybe be the transparency required for a public company combined with the tax shelters for a church to actually produce something in a good way?

 

Chris Ayoub  

Yeah, it’s like, there’s a strong argument that poor capital companies are doing a lot more for the community than nonprofits. And I also believe that transparency and accountability, like education, for someone to know where their money’s going, how it’s being used, and being a part of that is extremely powerful. There is no education on that side. There’s not a this is where your money’s going. This is how it’s being used. Nathan just got back from Uganda and one of the nonprofits he was meeting with there you want to talk about doing excellent work. I mean, for $20,000 a month, they’re feeding hundreds of kids, providing shelter for hundreds of kids, training skills, good things, and you see how far $1 goes. Well, nonprofits like that have partnered up with churches in the United States. Those churches then take the marketing material, the suffering child. Hey, you know this offering is for these people, and they’ll take half of whatever comes for them. And so it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s just such a dark hole that, until you have accountability and transparency into it, oh, people, people’s expectations, right? You know, only 3% of donors ever follow up to ask whether their money goes like, we kind of all need to have, like this awakening in the sense of saying you would never invest in a company. These are investments we’re making in humanity. It’s investments we’re making in social capital. You wouldn’t invest money into a company blindly, without knowing you know private or public, like, what financial situation here?

 

Nathan Apffel

Rick, here’s a great transition to Chris’s point. The Christian Church has enough resources right now to flush it in annually to solve the top 20 global social issues. And it would affect this is what’s crazy. No one’s bottom line,

 

Rick Jordan  

that’s amazing. Joel Osteen could kind of

 

Nathan Apffel

Copeland. They could still take their salaries and fly on their private jets. The only thing we would have to solve is the theft portion of it. So because there’s no accountability, 53 billion, and this, this data is a couple of years old now, and I’m gonna drop a bomb on you, 53 billion is stolen internally by church staff every year. Wow. That is a voluntary data given, that’s voluntary data given from A to A think tank. So this think tank just pulls churches and says, Hey, you know what you brought on a Sunday compared to what you dropped into your bank account. What was the Delta and 53 billion? And I believe that data is 2022 so they texted me a couple of weeks ago and they said, hey, guess what? 2024 is shaping up to be. And. I said, How much? And they said, 86 billion. The reason is, is in this is it’s not rocket science as to why. As technology expands and develops, the laws and regulations can’t keep up with it, and so there are just more and more ways to take money from people and glean money from people, from reoccurring payments that people don’t know they’re signing up for to reoccurring donations. And so there’s the thing, if we just stop the theft, the church could solve the top 20 global social issues, and it would affect no one’s bottom line. If the church just steered a small portion of its resources on top of that, to solving global social issues, it could solve the top 30. You could still have the buildings and the big worship bands and the salaries and the donuts and the coffee bars and all that, and the Christian church could radically transform the world tomorrow. And my argument is if it just kind of mirrored its Savior a little bit more. Yeah. How

 

Rick Jordan  

does that stuff take place? I mean, Chris, I’m sure you can speak to this because, I mean, I’m thinking like old school days, right in the church, passing around the offering plate, cash getting dropped in. You know, what happens? Is it the back room where they’re counting it that they’re stuffing in their pockets? That’s

 

Chris Ayoub  

a big that’s a big, lot of it friends from the time it gets collected between that and the times that, the time that it would get recognized in the accounts. Wow, that does

 

Nathan Apffel

not include, that does not include, you know, embezzlement and endorsement. So a great story is a Joel Osteen church who, you know, big, great, big pastor down in Houston runs Lakewood. They had a plumbing issue in one of the bathrooms, and, this is a few years ago now, and so they brought a plumber in, and he tears off the drywall. And behind the drywall was 600,000 in cash. So someone, someone who was collecting the offering plates every Sunday would run into the back and stuff a couple 100 in their pockets, and, oh, gotta go to the bathroom, and then they drop it down the air vent, you know, in the wall, just for their retirement, you know, fund. So someone was stacking, had stacked 600,000 in cash from the operating, operating offering plates. That is insane.

 

Rick Jordan  

It’s almost like it you would want to be like, I was at Six Flags of all places on Monday, right, with my kids and then, and they don’t even accept cash anymore. There the concession stands and all that. It’s just cards. It’s almost like it would be safer in some ways. It’d be like, hey, sure, digital payments only, you know, digital donations only, rather than, yeah,

 

Nathan Apffel

this is one thing that Chris, Chris can talk to is we’re not just here to solve like, bang our drum that, Hey, there’s this major problem. We’re here to solve it with some tech solutions. But right now, technology has been leveraged strictly to milk people for more money. Yeah. So there are a couple of technologies in the church, and they guarantee on their websites. One of them says, hey, you know, we will 10x 10x the revenues we pull from people. And you look at their model, and all they’re doing is having old people sign up for reoccurring payments and who in their right or who in their humble mind, would go after the church for their money back.

 

Rick Jordan  

So these are consultancy businesses, financial like church, religious consultancy businesses that will

 

Nathan Apffel

just, yeah, there’s one that says, hey, we will get your collard greens to give you stock. So we have this app now where they can donate stock. And they say We will 34x you’re giving. And you say, How is this possible? It’s because people don’t know. They can’t do the math. Right offhand, oh man, you know what? I’m gonna donate a couple of shares of Apple today. They didn’t realize they just donated 800 bucks. You know, maybe they, maybe they thought they were gonna want it 100 or 200 but So and these, these guys, these apps, are Christian apps, but there’s no, when you look at their website, there’s no like, hey, we want to bring accountability into the system. Hey, we want to help better steward resources. It’s we will 10 to 34x, you’re giving. We will streamline things, and make you more efficient. And they call it generosity. You know, it’s

 

Rick Jordan  

crazy. It’s like you go to one car and they’re stuffing things inside the payment and show you the numbers to go back into

 

Nathan Apffel

1. It’s the exact that’s a great analogy, yeah.

 

Chris Ayoub  

So in the Yeah, I mentioned this earlier. Nathan’s been working on this for over a decade, done a ton of research, read tons of books, met with people all across the world, and you know, it’s investigated journalism, and through that process, he’s identified seven to eight loopholes that a lot of this fraud, waste abuse in your Manhattan. And when we went at this together and said, Hey, we’re going to partner up, we’re going to do this, there was two there was two big things. Number one is that we’re coming at this from a place of love. This isn’t anger, this isn’t what we want to tear the plate now. We want to come at this with a place of love, right? We have a higher expectation for the faith we were raised in. This is out of love. Humans will be human. We’re all imperfect, victims of a system, whatever you want to call it, but we’re, you know? We’re human. The second one is, we are only going to sit here, toss a grenade and run away. Okay, a lot of people can. Do that a lot of people, because

 

Rick Jordan  

series and documentaries are Yeah, for sure about

 

Chris Ayoub  

the Man in the Arena. We’re here. We’re here, you know, to be in that arena. We’re here to bring a solution to market. So we have a software platform that is very multi-purpose. It’s an accountability one. How’s it an accountability one well, for like, a lot of the information that secular nonprofits would provide on a 990 we’re going to be gathering that, that, that data, you know, revenue, expenses, officer, salaries, what? Let’s see a copy of your PNL. How are you spending your money on missions? What are your missions? Those types of, those types of things. What is your pastor’s salary? Do they receive a housing stipend? Because, yeah, a lot of cuteness there, which, I make $100,000 a year, but I receive a $15,000 a month housing stipend. So there’s a lot of that there. So think, Hey, we’re not saying that x percent of you know, because the number is about 44% goes to salaries. We’re not here to say that should be the benchmark. It should be less. It should be more. We’re here to say, tell the people who are donating how the money’s being used, so they can make an educated decision if they’re cool with that. It’s a free country. Let them donate where they want to, but let them be empowered and then have the ability to engage ask questions and follow up. I mentioned to you earlier, that only 3% of people who donate actually follow up to see where their money’s going and opportunities to volunteer. The beautiful part is, is that while all this data was being gathered, we were calculating a light rating, a light score that shows how transparent they are, and you’re able to read graphically, of course, where you’re going with churches on the secular nonprofit side is kind of think about it as a dating app. In a sense, you’re aligned with your interests. I’m interested in mental health. Well, I’m going to get aligned with mental health nonprofits, I’m going to be able to see how transparent they are, and then should I choose to I can make a donation, and it’ll facilitate the donation for them. So that’s that’s what we’re out here to accomplish. There’s all these global social issues that are not being solved, and there’s a strong argument that they don’t get solved because there’s so much money that’s involved in it. Money that’s involved in it, like, once a problem is solved, what did that entity need to dissolve? But it’s hard as a human to walk away from something when that’s your identity and that’s your income, yeah, because you were saying about being beholden to, as it relates to the pastor side of things. So that’s where that’s where we’re headed. Man,

 

Rick Jordan  

that’s really cool because I can, I can envision this, and I’m sure you already have right I see, I see a site stop me where I’m wrong, right? To where it’s almost like voluntary participation. And it could be, and it would actually be better for church organizations to volunteer their information first. I mean, we’re talking about the legal reform that has to be done, the tax reform that has to be done regardless, right? So it’s written in the law. But then even if that didn’t happen, because, I mean, that’s a big battle, as I’m sure you guys have discovered, that’s a big battle you’re in. But if churches, and you know, other nonprofits, would volunteer their information for this. They would actually probably 10x or 34x, their givings just from being transparent.

 

Nathan Apffel

Well, that’s what, yeah, that’s the conversation that I have, I had yesterday is the guy was like, Well, only, you know, only 2% is given to the church annually. And I’m like, Well, maybe if you want more from people, you should show them where their money’s gone. Yeah? Because if, hey, if, all of a sudden I’m like, Hey, Rick, you know our app, we’ve, we’ve dropped the global debts from malaria because there’s a cause we’re focusing on. If we drop the global debts

 

Rick Jordan  

that did it, yeah,

 

Nathan Apffel  

from 1.6 million a year to 1.1 so, like, dude, in the last three years, we’ve cut 30% of deaths, 300,000 or whatever that is, 4% 500,000 lives. Like, and you gave 100 bucks last year. Can you do 200 because we really want to eradicate this? Yeah, you’d be like Heck, yeah, dude, let’s do it. Because you want to know what we see, the impact. We see the global response. And like, Yeah, this is it. So Chris and I are all about this. We are here to bring democracy back into institutions. Because right now, churches and nonprofits are built like little authoritarian huts. You know, it’s a few people who control massive resources, sometimes with no accountability. So we want to flip the pyramid and say, hey, it’s the donor who has all the power and they expect performance and impact from their leaders, whether that be their religious leaders or their nonprofit their secular nonprofit leaders. That’s

 

Rick Jordan  

so cool. I mean, you guys are actually looking at this done the way that you’re doing it is actually meant to expand the reach of the church. 100% freaking incredible. Yep.

 

Chris Ayoub  

Yeah. Hey, Rick, I was gonna, I was gonna share this with you. I’ve, you know, I’m newer to this, this journey with Nathan like I said, he’s been on this for over it, and there were some pretty cool aha moments I’ve had throughout. I just would love to throw, throw some Brandon trivia at you, just to kind of see, see if it’s a light bulb moment for you as well, too. It’s

 

Rick Jordan  

like a lightning round at the end of the episode, let’s go, yeah.

 

Chris Ayoub  

All right, how many denominations are there within Christianity, across across the globe? Oh, geez,

 

Rick Jordan  

I would venture several 1000. Yeah, it’s

 

Chris Ayoub  

north of 40,000

 

Rick Jordan  

Holy moly. Yeah, I wasn’t thinking that. I was thinking like 8000 but yeah,

 

Chris Ayoub,  

how many churches are in the United States? Oh, if

 

Rick Jordan  

you’re getting into home churches and all that, I mean, you’re probably talking not at a registered, registered I got you, I would still say probably in the hundreds of 1000s. Yeah,

 

Chris Ayoub  

444, 100,000

 

Nathan Apffel

how many? How many Starbucks are in the US? Starbucks?

 

Rick Jordan  

Where are they now? Is it like the 40,000 stores, something like that? Yeah,

 

Chris Ayoub,  

it’s less. It’s less

 

Nathan Apffel

Starbucks is around every corner, right? Yep. And there are 400,000 churches. I think there are 16,000 Starbucks. Wow. There are 13 to 16,000 I think there are 13,000 McDonald’s, which are on every corner, and 16,000 Starbucks. There are 400,000 churches.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh my gosh. Well, this is a new church right here, right the all in church, exactly. I mean, bit of a crass joke, but it’s just as realistic as how you’re painting it is that could legitimately be

 

Chris Ayoub,  

you’re right. Well,

 

Nathan Apffel

so since the IRS can’t define what a church is on paper, you know, they can define a corporation, yeah, you know, they can define an expense allocation on a, on a, you know, a tax document, but they can’t legally define the word church because of separation church and state. So they have this thing called the IRS guidelines. You learn about this in the show, there are 14 guidelines, wow. And of those 14 guidelines, you only have to check a couple. And it’s really simple. It’s you have to have a creed. So whether, like, let’s say you’re the Nicene Creed, or the creed of all in Yeah, or the creed of Chris, and then you have to meet, and this is a big one that’s gonna

 

Rick Jordan  

or the creed. I mean, they’re making a comeback, yeah, exactly. So you

 

Nathan Apffel

have to have a creed, you have to formally meet in person. And this is what’s gonna blow a lot of young pastors’ minds, is they’re trying to move their churches online. The government does not see the church as an online church, wow. So if you move strictly online, you are no longer a church and will lose your exemptions. Incredible people are just so arrogant or naive, let’s say, to the tax guidelines, that they don’t even know what they’re doing. But then another one is you have to meet at a minimum once a month in person. So now you have pastors running churches where they only meet once a month. They’re literally trying to check the, you know, barely check these boxes to be able to retain their religious exemptions on paper.

 

Rick Jordan  

How many actually know this? You know, I’ve,

 

Nathan Apffel

I’ve talked to hundreds of pastors, and none of very few, like maybe 5% of them know,

 

Rick Jordan  

I bet you know. Because, I mean, it’s probably, I’m trying very careful, I mean, to not, like, rip on the church, you know what I mean, because, and I’m sure you guys are too, it sounds like you’ve done this in a very tactful way, and you have a good goal to expand the church, but in that it’s like, I bet you the reason to move online is really dollar signs,

 

Nathan Apffel

yeah. Well, well, so, so we will, I’ll say this. We are here to we you Rick, Chris, and I, and every single pastor from the Joel Osteen and John McArthur of the world all the way down to the little guys, are all byproducts of this current system in the IRS tax regulations and guidelines, so it’s not one person’s fault. So we’re trying to, we’re trying to say, hey, we’re not pointing the finger at anybody. We’re all byproducts of it. We’ve created this system that’s ripe for abuse and fraud. And so yeah, there’s really dirty players in it, and there’s really good players, but they say they play by the same playbook, right? Yeah. So it’s like, let’s, let’s educate people on the playbook. And so by the end of it, people are going to go, Whoa. This is a really disastrous setup because we’re primed to fail. Because if you’re if you’re a Christian, you know that humans are flawed, and humans will always human with humans will human, as we say. And so if there’s 100 bucks I could take it off the table. At some point, I’m going to take that 100 bucks off the table, unless there’s some some regulations keeping me from taking it right. And so we are not here to destroy this idea of the church or the institution. We’re here to say, hey, it’s time for reform. And yeah, man, it’s, I would say we’ve i. Uh, we’ve flushed out the idea as best as we could to this point. At this point,

 

Rick Jordan  

you know, maybe there’s a season two, right? You know, in the Docuseries. That would be cool. That’d be really cool. I mean, yeah, one,

 

Chris Ayoub  

one, last, one last thing,, which denomination, uh, has the most assets.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh, wow. I mean, I don’t know the answer, but my gut goes to Catholicism.

 

Chris Ayoub  

So it’s actually the LDS church, and the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that would make a lot of sense in assets, to buy every team in the NBA over twice, and still have 20 billion left over. Wow, 60 plus billion. Holy, they’re

 

Nathan Apffel

on track to hit a trillion dollars in assets in 20 years,

 

Chris Ayoub  

the second largest landowner in the United States.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s like the whole state of Utah. Well, they’re the

 

Nathan Apffel  

second. They’re the largest landowner in Florida, the private largest landowner. Largest landowner in Florida. We’re exploring a story that’s going to shock a lot of people about what the LDS church is doing in Florida. They’ve bought 10s of 1000s of acres, and they’re planning on building a city, their own little Mecca and no one knows about this, and it’s all under the umbrella of the church.

 

Rick Jordan  

Incredible. Yeah, guys, you’re you’re awesome. Everybody needs to see this. It’s on Amazon, right? We need to follow this. Instagram is that religion business? Twitter, at religion biz, V, I Z, right? And I don’t know. I mean, maybe Chris will throw up some workout tips on there too, dude, I see your shirt and I see your arms, man, exactly. I love it. I like how you try to cover it all up, right? You know, one reason I wear the black T-shirt is because you can actually see

 

Chris Ayoub,  

what’s going on? Yeah, no, right? That’s, that

 

Rick Jordan  

was a memo. That was the memo. Cool guys, I appreciate your hearts, because I think that’s where we need to end. This is exactly that being the case, your hearts are huge, and that’s the position that you’re taking this as you know, and you hit it on the head. I appreciate your approach so much because it’s not meant to destroy, it’s actually meant to strengthen and then grow from a point that it’s never had before. 

 

Chris Ayoub  

You’re amazing. I appreciate you guys, likewise, thank you. I’m a cybersecurity, yeah,

 

Rick Jordan  

thank you. Thank you.