So you want to be a deity.
1. Well the great Oz used some special effects and told the adventurers to ignore the man behind the screen. Therefore you idea of card tricks is a good one, but I would learn something that seems more powerful like making your daughter disappear in the disappearing lady cabinet; much safer than sawing her in half (which would require 2 daughters, because you put one daughter into each box and make them double themselves up so they appear to be at half their normal height).
2. Why follow in the footsteps of someone else and part water or walk on water or such silly miracles. Why don’t you try walking on pure air (with the assistance of water), or maybe parting the milk (using two glass sheets). Or better yet walk across hot lava with your space shuttle tile sandals.
3. When you start calling for money then you sound like ever single other religion in the world. Why don’t you NOT ask for money and be original. You can still take donations and use those donations to fund your own radio program where you implore the masses to not give you money for your church and to give you money so you can keep spreading the message of not donating money to your new religion.
4. Why stop at 11 disciples, start a pyramid scheme where you have one apostil who picks up two apostles, and each of them picks up two or more apostles and so on. You can also use this as a revenue generating system by forcing them to pay for your radio show to implore that people NOT send you money. That was Jesus’ failure his apostles were not trained to be a constant revenue generating system; only Peter and Paul who founded the church generated any money. What did Mark do besides have a major cathedral next to the Palace of Marco Polo built in his name? What did John do, he didn’t invent the toilet that was Mr. Crapper’s contribution to religion (religion and waste products are so similar, oops that’s some dangerous thinking there).
5. You are not the Buddha so you don’t need to sit under a tree, update your religion to the 21st century making your religion the most advanced in the world, and sit under a sun umbrella on a towel at the beach. It is a nice place to be in the summer, you can sit at any beach in the world even on lakes AND you only need to wear a bathing suit which cuts down on your clothing budget. Also if you want to baptize people their will be a big source of water easy at hand. You can also make it a tenant of your religion that only the beautiful women go topless and you can ban the Borat style man-kini.
6. I don’t know where Dudley is and that is a major problem because other people won’t know either. You need to establish your religion under a major structure, like the North Star and the Southern Cross. Why limit yourself to one church there are thousands of churches and St. Pauls, St. Marks, the Cathedral of Notre Dam are all major cathedrals devoted to their own brand of religion. This way you can declare any building as a temporary church, which can be a boom to your pocket book. What if you went to Grand Central Station in the US and declare that non-secular place into a temporary cathedral. You could set up collection boxes and even charge people by the train and bus load to pass through your hallowed halls. But, why stop there, you can go to Buckingham palace, The Empire State Building, The Sears Tower; you can use an non-secular building to become a temporary church and charge renters. You can take credit for their architecture and not have to worry about funding your own expensive building project.
I see you have a Holy Virgin, but why limit it to a female. A REAL miracle would be if a MAN gave birth; especially if it was the master of the church. With invitro fertilization and modern medicine you can have a baby implanted as a parasite, incubated in a mother and then implanted into you to make it a virgin birth. Just because the birth was virgin doesn’t mean the conception had to be, its all in the details and if you pay attention to the details and obscure them well enough you can escape the laws that are meant to curb religions. To get around silly details like not being able to declare the Empire State building as one of your churches, you simply rent an office building and perform a fast ceremony there. Your church is sand based so you can spread holy sand, sand that sat underneath your towel when you were on the beach, and therefore consecrate the building as your church before the owners know what hit them.
You will also need to get a web site for your virtual church. Take any large non secular building and post pictures of its ceiling as a background on your website so that viewers will be underneath your holy building’s structure. If you don’t have a building at the time then you can simply revert to the naked sky and the North Star or the Southern Cross. For those background pictures it is best that you take them on the beach. You can then charge people for those pictures to raise money to fund your web site to implore people to NOT donate money to your church.
You can even create a revenue stream by charging the owners of non-secular buildings a no occupancy fee. They pay you and you promise to not convert their building into one of your churches. This isn’t extortion, this is sound business practice. Extortion is when you tell people that they have to follow the laws and give money to the church or they will go to Hell.
You need a clear and easy to remember set of commandments, I recommend using the three golden rules:
- Do on to others as you would have others do on to you.
- Silence is golden, speech is silver and with the price of gold these days please shut up.
- He/She who has the gold makes the rules.
Those are 3 easy to remember rules and simple ones to follow. Look at the 10 commandments; you cover all ten in your first rule. You stand against murder, theft, adultery, and taking your name in vain all with one rule. You can add the Native American observation; “Before you judge someone walk a mile in their moccasins.”
Then of course you can have people become deacons and disciples of your church and grant them the ability to declare the non-secular buildings where they work into your churches, they can start with their own cubical; by putting a circle of sand around their chair and calling it holy ground (see the sand is part of the ground). You use of sand will keep your religion well grounded and you can bury any of your mistakes. Finally you won’t snow anyone with b_ll sh_t because your holy material is sand and sand can’t be formed into snow. You could also make sand timers into ready made holy objects worshiping the sand inside of it.
You could create another revenue generating stream by selling the sand you sat on top of to be put into your sand timers and used by your followers as a religious icon. You see the Catholic Church has a major problem they need to put an artifact under the pulpit for a new church. It can take 300 years to make a new saint (Pope John Paul is on the super fast track) and the number of holy relics in existence are few. Already they have enough splinters of the cross to construct a town hall and matching library and enough bones of Christ to form a 30’ tall skeleton with 8 arms and 20 fingers on each arm. Your churches could use simple sand and your preachers and deacons could bless it. Hey, that means glass and mirrors would also be religious artifacts in your religion. Think how many vain people you can attract when you tell them that preening themselves in a mirror is an act of religious faith. Breaking a mirror will give them 7 years of bad luck, see it all comes together, you can even add water to make quick sand for those people who want a short mass and to waste little time on their religion. Just add water (preferable nonholy water because that would create a divinity conflict).
Sorry I am not doing that well in the money part, but by the pattern I have laid out it would be a sin/crime for me to give you any money. However you could sell a deaconship, an apostle hood or even a priest hood; do you see the steps in your pyramid scheme? And what are pyramids built on; sand, sand, sand, it is all in the sand. You could even sponsor tours of Briton beach where you sat and let your acolytes gather religious artifacts in your footsteps and your shadow.