A Canadian Pastor Explains Why His Church Dropped Support for Gospel for Asia

Bruce Morrison is a pastor in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada. For 20 years, Morrison’s church supported Gospel for Asia but stopped doing so in April of this year. Now, in a 13 page letter, Morrison details the reasons for ending support and provides insight into his efforts to get answers from GFA.

Morrison’s findings are very similar to my own. While we have spoken some over the past several weeks, Morrison began looking into GFA’s finances about a month before I did. His church dropped support about the time I began writing about GFA and came as the result of his research and efforts to get answers from GFA.

Read Morrison’s letter with the knowledge in mind that his church supported GFA for 20 years. It is hard to believe that a church with that track record would be unable to get basic answers from a mission organization. However, given my experience with GFA, I certainly believe it. The lack of information and answers should be a red flag to current and prospective donors.

Silence is complicity
Morrison writes with concern for other churches. After asserting that “stories of abuse at the hands of spiritual leaders are far more common than they should be,” Morrison writes:

It is with both a sense of reluctance, but also of moral responsibility, that I write this letter to the larger body of Christ. Reluctance – from the unpleasantness of speaking about the need for correction in a Christian ministry, and responsibility – since silence in instances such as I will describe herein is complicity.

If GFA has answers to the issues which Morrison raises, it it beyond my understanding why they have not offered them. Specifically, Morrison wants an explanation of why foreign contributions to India for 2013 in the amount of $43.48 million do not show up in Indian records. He wants to know why over $150 million was sitting in Indian banks at the end of FY 2013. He wants to know if GFA got written permission from donors to bank around $50 million in a corpus fund.  There are many other questions as well. I have been raising these same questions independently since April.

I encourage readers to read Morrison’s letter to the “larger body of Christ.”