ABP and Ethics Daily have posted stories about an investigation revealing mishandling of money and bogus mission starts in Texas.
I have ignored this story until now. I didn't think there was anything to it. That assumption has proven to be mistaken.
A sizeable sum of money appears to have been mishandled. As Jim West says on the Mainstream Baptists weblog, "What's tragic here is that well meaning, hard working, devoted Baptists were defrauded of a lot of money. And worse, the Convention in Texas was either unwilling, or unable, to exercise any sort of oversight of those funds."
While pastoring a church in Houston with several missions of its own and serving for a number of years as a member of Union Baptist Association's Missions Committee, I worked closely with two of the BGCT executives mentioned in the reports.
E.B. Brooks and David Guel are both men of high integrity and competence. I have no personal knowledge of any of the other men mentioned in the reports.
In hindsight, I must admit that there may have been warning signs that were overlooked even in the Mission work in Union Baptist Association. Everyone was eager to encourage new church starts. We were often working with people with minimal formal education and training. We were relating to people cross-culturally and trying to build trust.
Many ethnic pastors are totally unfamiliar with accounting proceedures and, at times, seemed to suspect that requests for reports, receipts and other forms of documentation demonstrated a lack of trust in them. Many seemed to feel that a handshake agreement is all that should be needed.
On more than one occassion I heard an ethnic pastor make a comment about denominational executives holding anglo pastors and ethnic pastors to different standards. Some didn't believe for a moment that mission starts and projects by anglo churches or megachurches were being scrutinized in the same way or to the same degree that they were being questioned. At times, such allegations led to some relaxing of oversight.
Those days are certainly over. Unfortunately, two very fine men have had their reputations sullied to get there.
2 comments:
Steve,
A couple weeks ago a friend of yours sent me an e-mail asking me for your e-mail address.
I don't seem to have a current e-mail address for you.
Please send an e-mail to
bprescott (at) mainstreambaptists.org
Doing a little math, 258 churches at about $5,000 per church seems like a low-ball bid. Most low-ball bids depend on cutting corners and non-standard processes. Too bad nobody noticed earlier, probably because they did not want to be accused of being "of little faith," a problem somewhat endemic to contemporary evangelism's optimistic consciousness. I posted a longer comment on my site, http://mbway.blogspot.com.
Having spoken with an ABC-USA pastor in Ohio about a similar matter last year, I think we need to recognize this is not just a situation relating to "ethnic" pastors. Whites, who by the way are also "ethnic," are equally capable of painting a rosy picture about church starts when their progress reports affect the disbursal of money. I don't think you meant to imply otherwise, but sometimes the reader gets a different sense than the writer.
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