Assembly Care is operated and maintained by Jesse Gentile and Todd Aitken (Tampa, FL in fellowship at Carrollwood Bible Chapel) out of a small office. We also get volunteer help from Al Coulburn (NJ) to keep up the calendar section of our site. Believers from many assemblies across the US and around the world use the tools on the ACM website. Twice a year the ACM board meets to discuss its needs, direction, and progress. Board members represent a spectrum of assemblies and regions of the country.
ACM does not officially connect itself with one group of assemblies or another. ACM tends to receive calls from elders and workers from open assemblies and some gospel halls in the U.S. The men on the ACM board are aware of the variety that exists within the assembly movement. Rather than side or affiliate with a constricted group, our goal is to exhort/help individual believers from as many assemblies as possible to support the workers commended from those assemblies respectively.
While ACM was started to help commended workers find health-care, it became rapidly apparent that there was little to no support organization connecting assemblies with commended workers who labor inside North America. To that end ACM has developed several tools that will help keep assemblies digitally connected with commended workers. If the Lord blesses this effort we may in the future begin printing such resources.
ACM intends to follow the pattern of the apostle Paul in exhorting assembly believers about their responsibility to give to known needs among the body - particularly those of commended workers. Paul the apostle went to great lengths to inform various assemblies of the needs of other believers (i.e. the poor in Jerusalem who had ministered to the spiritual needs of the region), and to ensure a safe transportation of their fellowship gifts into the hands of those needy Christians.
ACM will not take any percentage (in the form of "administrative costs") out of gifts given to commended workers.
For ACM to be able to use (a) credit cards, and (b) to do so online - companies like VISA and our merchant bank account mandatorily take a combined total of just under 3% of any charges made via credit card. Any group, book store, or vendor wishing to use credit cards must pay these fees. ACM has no say in these charges. Despite this, we feel that since credit cards are so widely used today for every other financial transaction, believers would be willing to put up with a small percentage in order to be able to use a credit card in making fellowship with the Lord's work as convenient as many of the other financial transactions we are used to today.
No. Assembly Care does not sell insurance. ACM's original purpose for beginning was to help resolve this practical issue though. At this point (2010) we still give advice only by phone to those who call and request it. At this present date, when a worker or elder calls, ACM will share as many solutions as possible with them, and then leave the decision with that individual.
This is always on the burner but it is not a top priority. It seems wiser at this point in time to help commended workers afford one of the many individual health plans available than it would be to assume the "risk" of health-care expenses unnecessarily. Most group health care plans are very expensive, and only increase in cost each year. The chief benefit of group insurance is the ability to include those with pre-existing conditions on the insurance plan. Recreating such a big wheel makes little sense at this time and in this economy. Furthermore, group insurance has been created around companies. Assemblies by nature, unlike ecclesiastical denominations, are by their very theology and nature "non-organizational." There is a touch of irony in trying to create a "group" insurance for a non-group of people who have for many decades resisted grouping, and organizational systematization.
