Truth or Consequences?

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.

1 Corinthians 4:1–2

In the end, we must all give an accounting of our lives before God, of the resources and opportunities we used, abused, or simply let go to waste. But Scripture has also called Christians to be accountable in this life to one another in the body of Christ.

Through the leading of the Holy Spirit, different structures and offices have been built up in the various churches and denominations in order to provide guidance and exercise discipline: boards of deacons or elders, pastors, bishops, councils. These structures in organizations with any history at all help to keep us honest.

But young parachurch ministries, particularly those with all the opportunity for excess and privacy that television affords, need special help. A few items from the news would suffice to make that help urgent: sexual escapades, lavish lifestyles, cover-up, dishonest reporting, financial mismanagement, and unconscionable fund-raising techniques. Perhaps the bad news of the past year may be God’s providential way of calling ministries to greater accountability.

The Need For Accountability

Accountability has become the key word wherever the bad news about teleministries is being discussed. The lavish entrepreneurial lifestyle endemic to some of these ministries must go. The mass television market must now pay the price of radical asceticism in order to show repentance for the previous sins of excess.

Consider the ministry of Mother Teresa. Her ascetic ways may not be a practical model for television ministries, but some serious corrective is needed—something that involves an almost 180-degree turn. Note the quiet credibility that attends Mother Teresa’s mission. She refuses to ask for money; she simply goes about doing good. And when money does come, she praises God and uses it with extreme care.

Fortunately, a deeper ethic of accountability is beginning to take shape, as represented by the recent Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission (EFICOM) criteria of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), and the long-standing work of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). But even though such moderate changes may be resisted by many ministries, they are necessary for several reasons:

First, free-wheeling ministries have shot themselves in the foot. The crisis has not been foisted upon them by the IRS or undue media surveillance. The crisis finally emerged out of long-standing problems of weak or uncertain accountability, particularly in television ministries. When it finally came, it came with a vengeance.

Second, the crisis of credibility has invited activists who promote excessive government regulation. They are urging external surveillance of religious organizations, a move that could in time jeopardize both freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Third, unaccountable ministries affect our church members. Local church leaders can no longer assume that their people are not watching the television ministers: A USA Today poll revealed that 55 percent of all Americans watch some religious television. The CBN network alone has 35.8 million subscribers on 7,582 cable systems. There are 77 million cable subscribers today and numerous choices of religious broadcasting on various cable systems.

Fourth, the church is embarrassed and the offense of the gospel is obscured by the offenses of the ministry. Jim Bakker’s $ 1.6 million annual salary was unconscionable. The Rolls Royce, six luxury homes, and air-conditioned doghouse were simply an offense. The offense was not the gospel. The offense was the misbehavior of a few ministers. The result of such behavior was reflected in a Louis Harris poll: 41 percent of the people who watch television ministries think that TV evangelists do more harm than good.

But all our motivations that spring from embarrassment and offense pale next to the deeper motivations springing from the love and the law of God. A rigorous statement of the biblical teaching of accountability is needed.

The Biblical Basis For Accountability

The apostle Paul’s teaching on accountability may be divided into three parts: (1) In Jesus Christ, God has held himself accountable for our sins; (2) We in turn respond by acknowledging our accountability to God; (3) From this follow the human levels of interpersonal and institutional accountability through clear-cut responsibility in human structures and organizations, with full disclosure to supporting constituencies.

The center of Paul’s teaching of accountability is stated early in Romans: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable [hupodikos, ‘being brought under judgment’] to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known.… This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:19–22, NIV; emphasis added). God has become accountable for us in Jesus Christ. We acknowledge our accountability as an act of gratitude in response to God’s gracious act of accountability for us.

Cultivating Generosity

In 2 Corinthians, Paul stated clearly the basic pattern of faith’s accountability. Speaking of the liberality of the churches in Macedonia as they contributed to the needs of other Christians, he writes: “They gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us, in keeping with God’s will” (8:5). Implied here is a threefold structure of accountability: God gives to us, and in response we are to give ourselves first to the Lord and then accountably to companions in ministry.

In this chapter, Paul encourages the generosity of the Corinthian church to follow the magnificent pattern of the Macedonians. They had, on their own initiative, already pleaded with Paul for “the privilege of sharing” in this “service to the saints” (vv. 3–4).

Paul commended his fellow worker Titus to Corinth and urged him to bring their act of gratitude to completion by seeking to nurture the same Macedonian-style generosity among them. Having “excelled in faith and knowledge,” the Corinthians, Paul knew, could also excel in the grace of giving, the pattern of which is made known in Jesus Christ, who, “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (v. 9).

Paul was convinced that if one part of the church had God-given resources and another part of the church was facing poverty and suffering, these inequities could be corrected and mitigated by responding to the abundance of God’s grace in Christ. He trusted that grace would work its own way toward greater fairness, and that the outcome would be more equitable.

Responsible Management

In his appeal, Paul was intent upon making it clear that their giving to the saints of Jerusalem was not for his private benefit, and not for some hidden purpose. The purpose was fully disclosed, and the procedures for administration clarified.

Paul commended Titus as one who had already established a relationship of trust with the Corinthians, had previously managed the collection of funds, and had been chosen by the churches to carry out this work of offering. It is in this context that Paul says, “We want to avoid any criticism in the way that we administer this liberal gift, for we are taking pains to do what is right not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of men” (vv. 20–21). This is the key text of Christian financial accountability. It involved a painstaking task of administration that sought every possible means to avoid allegations of unfairness. It sought to be accountable not only to God but also in the eyes of human companions and sharers in the mission.

John Chrysostom in commenting upon this passage says that Paul took every step possible to make sure that all involved would be cleared of suspicion, that persons were chosen by due process on good credentials, and that there were several persons involved in the transmission of funds, to avoid the charge of a concentration of power in the hands of only one person who could more possibly deceive. Chrysostom noted that Paul “does everything and resorts to every expedient so as not to leave a shadow even to those who might be desirous in any way of suspecting something wrong.” For “the large amount of money is enough to afford suspicion to the evil minded, had we not offered that security” (Corinthian Homilies, NPNF 2 XII, 364–5).

There is in some ministries a tendency to regard risk as a virtue in itself, and to assume that God is blessing a ministry only if it is risk taking. Calvin, however, pointed out that Paul “prudently shunned dangers, and used great care not to furnish any wicked person with a handle against him. And, certainly, nothing is more apt to give rise to unfavorable surmises than the management of public money” (Commentaries, 20, 2 Cor., 301–2).

When ministries seek resources for their mission from among the faithful, a special covenant of sacred, mutual trust is entered into before God between donors and ministers. Thus these ministries are implicitly promising that their use of these resources will follow high standards of integrity.

The mutual responsibility of donor to ministry and ministry to donor, discussed in 2 Corinthians 8, remains a crucial question today. Donors have a right and a responsibility to ask for accurate information about how their money is being used. Recipients of donor monies have a responsibility to report accurately all relevant matters, including salaries and how they are administered.

Telling The Whole Truth

Contrasting with the example of Paul and Titus is the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1–10—a stunning tale of cover-up and financial self-interest. It reveals the disastrous consequences of heeding the alluring voice of money rather than the promises of the gospel. The narrative follows immediately after Pentecost as testimony of divine judgment on deception and fraud discovered within the earliest Christian community.

The primary offense of Ananias and Sapphira was nondisclosure. They had sold a piece of land, taken a portion of the price and laid it at the apostles’ feet. All well and good; but they deceptively withheld part of the proceeds. Their offense was that they falsely claimed to have given the entire proceeds of the sale to the community’s fund (see Acts 4:32–37). Their offense was not a lie outwardly told, but one silently enacted, which Peter penetrated. In response, Peter pointed out that they had not lied merely to human beings, but to God. Ananias fell down and died, and his wife, who repeated her husband’s falsehood, died also.

This was a highly disturbing event: “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events” (v. 11). Yet the Spirit worked within this anxiety to enable the believing community to grow toward greater responsiveness and accountability.

Stewards Of Grace

In his sermon on “The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption,” John Wesley distinguished between natural, legal, and evangelical existence: Natural man is self-satisfied in his natural moral competencies; legal man grows increasingly uptight about his moral deficits, and thereby more prepared to hear the gospel of forgiveness; evangelical man enters into a life of faith that lives out the gospel of justification by grace through faith.

Under pressure of crisis fund raising, there is a tendency among television ministries to sell out and reinforce the prejudices and illusions of natural man, using the gospel to reinforce the health-wealth syndrome, to promise natural man increased prosperity if he will support the ministry. The result is that these ministries do not really help persons enter into moral seriousness about their own human condition and do not really proclaim the gospel of forgiveness and responsiveness to grace.

Under the bright lights of a television studio, the gospel of forgiveness too often becomes antinomian pabulum. Grace is auctioned cheap. The television setting has the capacity to administer cheap grace at a faster rate than anything else. Because of its direct access to the homes and hearts of viewers, only television can say, “You’re forgiven,” millions of times in a millisecond—and without any hint of nurture or follow-up or accountability relationship or community of worship.

Hence, the theological problem inherent in television ministry is that it often fails to proclaim the offense of the gospel, while at the same time it reinforces illusions native to our natural, fallen, human existence, not moving moral awareness deeper into confession and repentance. The principle of accountability demands more than financial responsibility of TV preachers. It demands that they exercise a moral stewardship of their viewers as well.

Ministers were early regarded under the metaphor of stewardship, as stewards of God over the church (Titus 1:5; see also 1 Cor. 4:1–2). A steward is a manager (superintendent, administrator) of another’s household, property, or goods. In Jesus’ parables, steward is used of an employee who supervises a household or lands in the employer’s absence, called to be a resourceful manager of his master’s possessions (Luke 12:42–44). Bishops and elders were called stewards because they were expected to have the same qualities of integrity in management of the Christian community and its resources that a good manager of a household or treasurer of an organization would have. Today we call it accountability.

Paul regarded himself as a steward of Christ, “as one entrusted with the secret things of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). He instructed a younger associate in ministry to make sure that he was one “who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). Describing his own sense of stewardship, Paul wrote: “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). In ministry, having been given a trust, one must demonstrate faithfulness not by words alone but by sustained actions. Just having a good conscience inwardly is not in itself sufficient, for Paul wrote: “My conscience is clear but that does make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4:4). All this is placed in an end-time context in which finally God “will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and he will expose the motives of men’s hearts” (vs. 5).

Thus, those who solicit funds to support a ministry are ultimately accountable to the one in whose name solicitation is made: Jesus Christ. Yet one cannot evade accountability to persons on the basis of the claim that one is being accountable primarily to God in Christ. For Paul’s teaching is that he is also accountable to human companions, to the Christian community that indirectly is being represented in the solicitation, as well as to those the project seeks to serve, and to donors who are making an investment of valued resources in a particular ministry—all of whom are themselves accountable before God for responding liberally to his gifts.

Is Television Just Too Big?

The best scale of accountability in discipling ministries is the small local congregation, not masses of people at a distance. Richard Baxter wisely wrote in The Reformed Pastor: “Though a minister is an officer in the Church universal, yet is he in a special manner the overseer of that particular church which is committed to his charge.” He argued that “flocks must ordinarily be no greater than we are capable of overseeing.”

Baxter envisioned a locally grounded, focused ministry in which “the diocese had been no greater than the elders or bishops could oversee and rule, so that they might have taken heed to all the flock,” and in which “pastors had been multiplied as churches increased, and the number of overseers been proportioned to the number of souls, that they might not have let the work be undone, while they assumed the empty titles, and undertook impossibilities!”

It is clearly easier to keep local churches accountable than to strictly monitor ministries of national and even international scope. The local church functions with a local structure of accountability (a constituted church order, a board, a palpable congregation) that has to be faced again and again. But in parachurch ministries, there is much less clarity about where accountability lies and what it means. It is regrettable that parachurch ministries have not learned more from traditional forms of church governance about accountability.

Ultimately, every televangelist needs a Nathan, or if not a Nathan, at least a court jester. Some who work near those who have highly influencial roles in governance need to have the gifts of wit and admonition. They must be able to give critical counsel to a leader who is constantly getting mostly positive responses. Charismatic qualities that often attach to highly public roles of ministry work against straightforward, honest feedback, accelerating the tendency of persons to give positive responses.

As University of Alabama historian David Edwin Harrell notes in his new biography of Pat Robertson, “A certain degree of authoritarianism goes with the territory when a leader gets his directions from God, but debate was also blunted by the sheer force of Robertson’s personality. Tim Robertson acknowledged that the biggest problem his father faced was getting good advice.… One of the weaknesses of a Christian organization, observed Tim Robertson, was that people were not willing to ‘fight it out.’ Meekness was a Christian virtue, as was personal kindness, but they were traits that could dampen the needed give-and-take in high-level meetings. Honest confrontation was sometimes sacrificed out of Christian courtesy, usually to the detriment of the ministry.”

A leader then is constantly tempted to imagine that everything is wonderful. The leader needs not sycophants, but someone to challenge critically.

Jesus capped his parable of the shrewd manager (Luke 16:1–13) with this penetrating question: “So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” (Luke 16:11). Just such accountability is being called for today. The church can no longer afford the luxury of the pretense of nonaccountability. The psalmist chided those who imagine that God “won’t call me to account” (Ps. 10:13). Ministries that have ignored the warning: “Be sure your sins will find you out” (Num. 32:23), are finding that it is being vindicated sooner rather than later.

The Players:

Jerry Falwell Is Not Just Another Baptist Minister

In some ways, Jerry Falwell hasn’t changed much since he first took to the air with a local television station in 1956. Then, as now, he declared, “Lynchburg is my parish.”

Yet even though Falwell stepped down as chairman of the beleaguered PTL television network to devote more time to pastoral work at his Thomas Road Baptist Church, his parish spreads far beyond the hills of Lynchburg. When he speaks in front of the camera, more than 610,000 households in 169 markets across the country tune in to listen. And, of course, they do more than listen. When he passes the electronic offering plate via “The Old-Time Gospel Hour,” it collects more money from people in Los Angeles than from any other market in the nation. Reported income from the weekly hour-long telecast was $91 million last year.

That Jerry Falwell is not just another Baptist preacher is further driven home by the armed security guards escorting visitors inside the unmarked building that is home to his electronic empire. When he is finally cornered in his office somewhere deep within the mysterious edifice, there is more than a trace of regret in his voice as he reflects on his rise from local preacher to national celebrity. Consider a simple pastoral function such as the hospital call. “I’ve tried sneaking up a back stairwell after hours and going directly to the room of one of my members, but then somebody hears your voice and when you walk out the door you find a crowd.”

Such trials, Falwell acknowledges, are largely his own doing. “I had the idea I could visit every place in the world in five years,” he said, referring to the popularity that came with television. “I should have stayed home and put more emphasis on the local church.”

What else would he have done differently? “I would have attended seminary.” Falwell considers himself largely self-educated, having earned a degree from Baptist Bible College that is “about a notch below a B.A.… If I had spent four or five more years in school and started my ministry later, I would have accomplished more by now than I have.”

Instead of staying home and emphasizing his church, Falwell expanded the television ministry, admitting such ministries need projects beyond the usual preaching of the gospel. “If preaching the gospel and getting people saved is television’s only reason for being, it’s not enough.” To Falwell, TV is a means to a host of ends: “Television is a recruiting arm for Liberty University and a motivational tool for pastors. It is a means of telling pregnant girls there is an alternative better than abortion. Television has allowed me an opportunity to speak out on the moral and social issues of our nation.”

It has also placed him in the company of others whose sermons bounce off satellites, and he speaks out just as strongly about them as he does about moral issues. “I think the media are derelict in not exposing the Bob Tiltons, the Ernest Angleys, or the Kenneth Copelands. Instead, they go after people like me, Billy Graham, or Jim Kennedy.”

Yet Falwell welcomes the attention. “I can’t say I have enjoyed the scrutiny I’ve received in the press, but it has helped us. Actually, with two exceptions—Ken Woodward of Newsweek and one of our local reporters—the secular media have been extremely fair.”

Falwell acknowledges the need for accountability watchdogs like the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), though he currently is not a member of it. His organization found responding to every little charge was “counterproductive.” But he plans to conform to the National Religious Broadcasters’ new ethical standards. “Remember, PTL belonged to ECFA and that didn’t stop them. If a person is determined to self-destruct, there’s little you can do to stop him. He will do what he wants to do until the authorities catch him.”

The Players:

Jim Kennedy’S Humble Empire

Jim Kennedy is not a televangelist and he almost has the papers to prove it. “In the Presbyterian church we have a special ordination for evangelists, and that is something I don’t have,” says Kennedy. True, he is the head of an evangelistic organization, Evangelism Explosion (EE), and each week at least 484,000 television sets are tuned in to his broadcast. But the former dance-school instructor would prefer not to be lumped in with some of his colleagues who have exploited television for personal profit.

“Had I known in 1978 what I know now, I might not have gotten into television. Even then, though, I was hearing rumors about some television ministers being in it for the money. So I decided from the beginning that I would accept no salary, no honoraria from radio or television.”

He has apparently held to that decision. In ten years of beaming sermons from his Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, he has not received any income from the $12 million annual budget of the television program (though he receives royalties from his books, which are offered on the air). To further fight the image of a prime-time preacher fleecing his flock, Kennedy lives in the church’s parsonage (built for $74,000), drives a Mercury his congregation gave him three years ago, and limits his on-air appeals for contributions to about 20 seconds per broadcast.

Kennedy’s empire has a humble—almost dowdy—feel to it. It is built around a church that has a tower typical of megaministries. But the interior walls are unpainted concrete block, and the young men scurrying with television cameras remind you of the kids who always volunteered to run the movie projector in science class. His personal office is tucked into a cul de sac alongside the sanctuary, and after preaching he joins his wife in the foyer to greet worshipers.

If the intended effect of such careful attention to plain appearances was to assure followers he would never misuse their donations, it has also discouraged national media attention: “After the Jim Bakker story broke, a reporter from the Washington Post called and asked if she could come down and look at our financial records. I said ‘sure’ and that’s the last I heard from her.”

So who makes certain things are on the up and up with Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM)? Like Robert Schuller, Kennedy places a lot of the burden of accountability on his denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America. Unlike Schuller’s television ministry, the board of CRM is commissioned by the session, a group of 60 elders of the church, which in turn is accountable to the general assembly of the denomination.

On paper, it sounds fine, yet potential problems exist. As chairman of the board of CRM, Kennedy personally selects board members. And though he has never appointed a family member or relative to his board, one could accurately describe board members as Kennedy fans. “I could ask them for a six-figure salary for my services to CRM and they would give it to me,” Kennedy admits.

Other than occasional chiding from the local newspaper for not giving more money to Fort Lauderdale’s poor, Kennedy has received little financial scrutiny. Until recently, CRM did not belong to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability because they “thought that was for organizations that didn’t belong to a denomination.” He has kept a long-standing policy of letting any donor see his ministry’s financial statements, yet he recognizes there is little stopping him from building a personal fortune through television.

“Anybody who wants to be dishonest can embezzle money. No system of accountability, as much as they are needed, can totally keep a person from wrongdoing. What it boils down to is personal honesty and integrity.”

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