The Culture Beat

Last fall Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, started poking his Iowan nose into the finances of six media-based ministries. Citing allegations of possible abuses – extravagant housing allowances, excessive compensation, personal use of assets such as private jets, lax board governance, unreported income – he wanted an accounting, literally, of how much money these ministries receive and how it gets used.

The targeted ministry leaders cried foul at first, saying the Senate was tearing down the wall separating church and state, but four of them have since started cooperating. Only Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar continue to resist. Life may get complicated for them.

Grassley said he simply wants to protect donors.

“Tax-exempt organizations rely on the generosity and good will of their contributors to help fill food pantries, clothe the needy and serve the underprivileged,” he stated. “Donors of modest means pinch pennies and make sacrifices so others less fortunate may benefit from their collective contributions. … Considering tax-exempt media-based ministries today are a billion-dollar industry with minimal transparency, it would be irresponsible not to examine this tax-exempt part of our economy.”

The Senate committee action might be necessary, but it’s unfortunate. Government intervention wouldn’t be necessary if donors were doing their job, which involves more than writing a check. They should also be asking questions.

“Ministries are responsive to donor enquiries,” according to Kenneth Behr, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a voluntary accreditation agency for Christian nonprofit organizations. “Donors should understand they have a long-term relationship (with ministries). Healthy dialogues are always good. Self-regulation is better than government oversight.”

His organization, like a Christian Better Business Bureau, offers suggestions for wise giving (“know your charity … understand what your gift will accomplish … focus on the mission”). The bottom line: Donors should be both generous and informed. The Internet, Behr points out, makes active, educated giving easier than ever.

Concerns about mixing money and ministry are as old as the church itself — not surprising, considering the Bible’s general skepticism about wealth. Jesus said it is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25), a verse not quoted much by the Rev. Dollar. Jesus sent his followers out to preach with necessities, not with some first-century equivalent of a Rolls Royce.

The apostle Paul wrote that “workers deserve their wages,” and that good teachers and leaders should be treated generously. But a few lines later, he warned that “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction, for the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Timothy 6: 9, 10).

Money itself is not evil, but perhaps dollar bills should be printed with warning labels: “Money can be hazardous to spiritual health.”

By the early second century, just a generation after Paul, church leaders were concerned enough about potential financial abuses that a Christian instruction manual, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (known in Greek as the Didache), addressed the issue.

“Let every apostle (messenger) who comes to you be received as the Lord,” the Didache instructed. “But he shall not remain more than one day; or two days, if there’s a need. But if he remains three days, he is a false prophet. And when the apostle goes away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodges. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet. … Not every one who speaks in the Spirit is a prophet; but only if he holds the ways of the Lord.”

It’s impossible to say for sure what early Christians would think of a TV preacher who cries for cash and promises riches in return, but it’s obvious that their tests were more practical than mystical: If some teacher outstayed his welcome or scrounged for wealth, then he wasn’t to be trusted.

With 1,900-year-old wisdom like that, maybe Sen. Grassley wouldn’t need to protect donors from dodgy televangelists or, for that matter, from themselves.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 26 April 2008. This was the second of two columns on financial accountability; the first appeared on April 5.
Image from www.biblepicturegallery.com.