When I buy a cellphone, I am quoted a price for the accompanying plan. The price is essentially a lie, or at best an attempt at obscuring the real costs of the plan. If you get a $20.00 per month plan, you pay that, plus an additional system access fee, plus a 911 access fee, plus taxes. On a $20 per month plan, these costs nearly double the cost of the plan.

Isn’t this deception? Isn’t it misleading and underhanded? Why should I pay a fee to access a system that I’ve already paid to access in the form of a cell phone plan? The name doesn’t even make sense! I’ve already paid to access your shitty network! That’s what the plan is for! And to add insult to injury the cellphone companies may simply raise their system access fee at any time. If their profits aren’t quite where they feel they should be, boom, up goes the system access fee.

Frankly, I’d like to launch a class action lawsuit under consumer protection laws, if only to make sure that the full costs of each phone plan are actually named in the plan’s cost, including 911 access fees and whatever other fee cell phone companies want to foist on consumers.

On Sunday Kristin and Andrew came to church with us in his ridiculously loud Volkswagen, and Joel Main spoke about giving.

Can I go off an a tangent here? Okay.[1] First off, I hate sermons about giving. They generally come off as thinly-veiled muggings, the preacher suddenly morphing into a salesman who is desperately trying to flog the money out of your pockets. That said, Laura and I have just migrated to Freshwater Church in Mississauga after a short stint at The Bridge Church in Burlington. I say short stint because we moved too far away to be a part of the church, but also because the church folded, citing amongst several reasons a lack of money. This came as a shock to me and Laura, as no-one had really actually said anything about money; maybe we missed those weeks, but there was a lack of transparency about it that bothered me afterwards.

This is why, even though I don’t particularly like them, I think sermons about money and frank discussions about money are good for a church. Actually, good for most organisations. Just be clear that the money isn’t going to the pastor’s slush fund. Be honest. Show what you’ve done with the cash. And be sure that you remind people that God doesn’t just want your cash and coin, but he wants those things you just can’t give him: your time, for instance. Or your talents. Or your ridiculously oversized SUV.

[1] Yes, I’m taking the piss out of Joel. Hope he doesn’t mind.