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Chuck Lynch, coordinator of the institute's ministry to pastors, also resigned on December 31. Efforts to reach him since then have been unsuccessful. In a brief interview before his resignation Lynch said only that he found some "things that are wrong" with the organization, and that Gothard's delay in allowing an outside audit created a "real credibility gap" among the employees. Last summer the board officially voted to have the audit performed, but Gothard did not respond immediately to the decision, questioning whether the expense was justified.

A third key person who resigned was Melvin Upchurch, who has been director of black ministries for the institute for the last five and a half years. Upchurch said his reasons for leaving were related to the current problems but he declined to give details. He did say that despite all the articles that have been written, "either people don't want see the truth or don't ask the right kinds of questions."

Edwin Brown, a physician on the medical faculty at Indiana University, is the former board member who was briefly reelected in November, but whose election was ruled invalid by board chairman Gustav Hemwall because Hemwall was not present for the voting. Brown and Gothard have known each other for a long time, and Brown lent his name to Gothard's first efforts to organize a seminar in 1964. Brown had been on the board 10 years when he left the country in 1977 to help the Saudi Arabian government establish a medical school. He resigned at Gothard's request.

Brown was disappointed when he was not asked to rejoin the board upon his return to the U.S. He said he learned just recently that among the reasons was the fact that Gothard objected to his beard, although Brown said he has had it since 1970. "I was astounded," he said, when he heard this.

The real reason, Brown believes, is the fact that he started questioning the institute's finances during several board meetings in 1977, just before he left the board. Specifically, the institute's lawyer had proposed then that the board consider how to reimburse Steve Gothard, Bill's brother, for about 350 acres Steve owned—which the institute was using—at the institute's 3,000-acre northwoods retreat in Watersmeet, Michigan.

Brown said he wondered how Steve Gothard could have had enough money to purchase the property in the first place since he was working for the institute. Brown asked about it, and said he was surprised to learn that Steve was earning close to $30,000 a year, which he said seemed like a lot for a young man in Christian work. Brown stated that the board was told at its next meeting that Steve would not be paid for the property, but that he was going to donate it to the institute. (Steve Gothard apparently was able to save most of his salary by having many of his living expenses paid by the institute.)

In reflecting on all this, Brown said that the board, as an entity, had learned nothing about the institute's finances in the 10 years he was a member of it. He said the board was not told what anyone on the staff (which numbered about 70 before the recent flood of resignations) was being paid other than Bill, whose $600 a month has been widely noted. Brown said that as a board, "All we did was rubber-stamp the recommendations of the president." A seminar brochure states that "All funds are carefully controlled by a board of directors … "

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March (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47