I can never again be around money that doesn’t belong to me because someone might embezzle it right under my nose — and I can’t take that chance.
If that happened some people would surely say, didn’t this happened once before when that guy was in charge?
Indeed it did.
The embezzler was the church secretary and I was the church treasurer when it started. Another man was treasurer and I was chairman of the Finance Committee when it ended, when the preacher got suspicious and blew the whistle.
If I had had any idea the woman was stealing money, I could have caught her myself. I was an investigative reporter. And I had complete access to the books, to every financial record at the church.
But I didn’t suspect.
I had questioned various errors she made in the church financial records and had tried, unsuccessfully, to get her fired for incompetence. That’s almost funny when you think about it: She wasn’t the one who was incompetent —she was just a crook — I was the one who was incompetent.
As chairman of the finance committee I had to swallow a bitter pill, I had to tell the congregation what had happened on my watch. We hired an auditor to figure out, best we could, how much money had been taken and I reported that to the congregation, too.
Later on we had a church meeting to decide whether to prosecute. My wife and I voted “Yes” along with a few other people. Most people voted “No,” that wouldn’t the Christian thing to do.
I was relieved.
I thought she should have been prosecuted but, for selfish reasons, I was glad she wasn’t. I wasn’t looking forward to testifying about the safeguards I and my committee had not instituted or the warning flags I had not recognized.
Coming Friday: The New Covenant