The Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal published a story today about one of our congregations that should make us all stand up and take notice.
According to the story (and who knows if they have it 100% right, but I digress...) the North Charlestown [Indiana] Church of God had nearly $163,000 stolen from it by a former church secretary-bookkeeper. Allegedly, she stole this over an eight year period, and was able to do so because have having the ability to sign checks without a second signature.
The church apparently tried to bring restitution before reporting the theft (a good move), but once she defaulted on her repayments the authorities were brought in.
There are many lessons to be learned here.
The obvious one is: Have policies in place to safeguard against individuals stealing money. For example, dual signatures on checks, despite their inconvenience, are essential. Annual outside audits are also necessary.
Quite frankly, we have been far too trusting, assuming that no one would ever do this. It is a sad reality of our fallen world, and that these and other even more horrific things occasionally happen in God's communities. Checks and balances are needed, and we must have these throughout, at the national level right down to the local congregations. I know this goes against our anti-organizational stance, and is even relevant in some of the debate going on right now concerning accountability in matters of credentialing.
Finding a balance between trust alongside Holy Spirit leadership and working within reasonable organizational structures is difficult. But, it is within these paradoxes that we find ourselves working out our faith and mission.
3 comments:
Lloyd. I too believe we need to have financial accountability. However, it needs to be accountability based on trust. Your two-signatures solution is based on fear and lack of trust. It will slow down ministry decisions and effectiveness. The health of the church will suffer.
I think we need to have one person running the books. However, they must be accountable to the ministry team. The records must me open for the team to inspect. They must be audited annually from outside of the church. They will be held to a very high standard.
We cannot react to situations. We must be proactive. People do what is inspected more than they do what is expected. Keep an eye on the administrator through weekly or monthly updates. But don't build a system out of fear and lack of trust.
David, I hear you, but I'm not sure implementing accountable policies is based on fear instead of trust. We have to recognize that the temptation for mishandling money is great for some people, and we must do all we can to lessen that possibility for them (just as we would for people who might sin in other ways). I still remain convinced that the two-signature approach is sound, and does not have to slow ministry decisions or effectiveness. Many (especially large) organizations do it all the time without problems (if set up correctly).
We have serveral people who right checks, one signature at this point. We also have volunteers that are looking over the books in house. Then we have outside auditors. But I know many churches that are going to two signatures.
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