Pecuniary Nightmares

A retired minister wrote to me recently: "Very often nightmares happen in the area of a congregation's finances, so easy to get away with (initially) and so difficult to track down if there are a couple of like-minded bad apples in the barrel. I had some pretty strong personal (and private) rules. Rule no. 1: Never trust anybody when it comes to Church finances. Rule no. 2: Refer to rule no. 1! I learnt how to read a balance sheet, though not very well and would sometimes take our monthly finance report to a very good friend but a complete outsider to our congregation, to see if he could sniff out any apparent inconsistencies. I was 'lucky' and never had any problems -- that we found!"