The Meeting – Part I

This is VERY LONG.  I don’t know if anybody is really even going to read it, but that’s not the reason it’s here. 
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Well, last night was everything I had feared it would be and worse.  It began well enough with our Chairman of the Board taking the microphone and facing some of the rumors straight on.  Fortunately I am not in the rumor circle so I hadn’t even heard some of these.  He addressed the rumor that the night’s meeting was to be some sort of “kangaroo court,” against Pastor.  He reminded everybody that this was a House of God and that there would be no kangaroo court if we were all truly Christians.  Indeed, this was no court at all, it was purely an informational meeting.  He also explained that the head of the state office for our greater church organization would not be attending because the chairman had heard rumors that he was coming out to pull pastor’s credentials. (I use the word pastor as a proper noun here rather than a title, but I just can’t bring myself to capitalize it.)  The Chairman continued that this was never the case, the head of the state office was coming merely to give support to the church as needed.

The Chairman went on to say that he wished to recognize the Board for all their diligence and sacrificed time.  Over the past months there had been many tears shed by Board members as they assimilated the facts and came to realize that this man we’ve called our pastor for so many years… this person of God whom we trusted, had done something so unGodly. 

He lay it out pretty clearly.  Several years ago when we were going through some trying financial times, the Board (with pastor’s urging and approval) had decided that we, as a church, should tithe from our church income, just as individuals tithe from their individual income.  When the decision to tithe was made (and I happened to be on the board at that time as I was not yet an employee; further, I didn’t really agree with that decision – not to say that I was correct in that disagreement, who really knows, but I felt it was impractical and that we needed the money to support our church and keep up with our own bills)… anyway, when the decision was made, it was decided that the Board would always take direction from pastor about where we should tithe.  The Vice-Chair of Finance was adamant that, although we were the board and responsible for the monies, tithing was a spiritual decision so the direction should come from the spiritual leader of the house.

From that time on  we tithed to many outside ministries for a total of slightly over $200,000.00   Of  that money, the majority was being tithed to a ministry that the board was led to believe was affiliated with our larger church organization and focused on international ministry.  One of the things we were told was that our tithes had bought some people out of slavery overseas.

(To explain that here, we were told that people were being captured and held in slavery overseas, but we could buy individuals out of slavery by paying some sum of money, I can’t remember how much, but it was fairly large.  I thought that was a wonderful endeavor until I read on the web somewhere that it did two negative things.  First, it encouraged this practice of capturing people to enslave because it was essentially a hostage situation and as long as it could generate money, it would continue.  And, secondly, because the captors would turn around and re-capture the same people who were on the run in their freedom.  I didn’t speak up at first, but intended to at the next board meeting but, then, it seemed we weren’t buying slaves anymore so I just shelved it.  Anyway, we were also told that about $2000 of our money went to missions in Haiti.  That mission only received about $1000.  We were additionally told in a letter that the woman in charge of missions there was on the board of this international ministry.  She denies any knowledge of such a ministry.  We were told that about $2500 of the monies were being sent to missions in Tanzania, including a $500 special offering that was taken up for a sick child of one of the missionaries there.  None of that money ever got to Tanzania.)

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the Board Chairman just said that we were told that various monies were being distributed to Haiti and Tanzania that never were.  The balance of the money was never properly accounted for.

Prior to that, he explained that the Vice-Chair of Finance had gone to pastor and asked for a giving statement for that ministry because the bulk of our tithes had gone there. Pastor did not supply an actual statement, only a letter.  When 2004 rolled around, the Vice-Chair of Finance asked again for a statement.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun:

yes”>  We still did not get one.