World magazine’s Warren Smith has an article out today which provides some additional information regarding the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability’s termination of Gospel for Asia’s ECFA membership.
According to Smith’s reporting, the lack of disclosure surrounding the $40+ million headquarters was key. As I first reported here, GFA failed to disclose the $19.8 million transfer of cash from Believers’ Church to help complete GFA’s new Wills Point, TX headquarters. This cash was not reported as a related party transaction but as an anonymous donation. GFA’s leaders told staff that the organization would not borrow money for the construction but in fact did borrow money from a U.S. bank in 2014 and then took money which Believers’ Church borrowed from an undisclosed source in India.
GFA’s CFO David Carroll said ECFA changes had been made and hopes to regain membership. I will have more to say about this in coming posts.
According to World, Ministry Watch’s Rusty Leonard has advised donors to halt all donations to GFA due to the extent of the problems.
Look for another article on this news from Christianity Today. Spokespeople for the magazine disclosed via multiple channels that an article is coming.
Tag: Warren Smith
A Year Ago World Magazine Broke the Mark Driscoll New York Times Best-Seller List Story; Will Hillsong Host His Comeback?
Seems like yesterday that ResultSource and Mars Hill Church’s book selling scheme came into the public consciousness. However, it was a year ago today that Warren Smith’s article was posted. The next day, I posted the contract signed by Mars Hill Church executive pastor Sutton Turner and ResultSource CEO Kevin Small that spelled out the arrangements which if followed would lead to a spot on the New York Times best-seller list.
While it took several months for Mars Hill Church to unravel, that March 5, 2014 revelation seemed to alert even friends that something might be seriously wrong at the megachurch. The disclosure ignited an ongoing conversation about the ethics of buying a spot on best-seller lists. Later, it became known that Les and Leslie Parrott, and David Jeremiah also used similar schemes to elevate their books to the best seller lists. However, they have not experienced the same level of criticism and attention as has Driscoll.
In the aftermath of the Mars Hill debacle, at least one publisher (Crossway) took a vocal stand against deception in book marketing, but it is not clear that the revelations about buying a NYT’s best seller has led to significant changes. Christian media (with two exceptions) have not been aggressive in reporting on Christian authors who have manipulated the best seller lists. The largest Christian publishers (HarperCollins Christian and Tyndale House) and have refused to answer questions on the subject.
Since he resigned in October 2014, Driscoll has kept a relatively low profile. He may return to the limelight in June and July as a speaker for the Hillsong conferences in Sydney and Europe. Hillsong still has Driscoll listed as “the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and one of the most popular preachers in the world today.” I recently wrote and tweeted Hillsong to ask about the description and speaking engagement. No answer as yet.