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Counterfeit Christianity - Christian Research Institute
CRI Accused of 'Naïve' Bookkeeping Report by whistleblowers to Evangelical
Council for Financial Accountability prompts CRI employees to reimburse
funds.
By Marshall Allen

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originated.

Counterfeit Christianity - Christian Research Institute
The ministry generated more than $500,000 a month in donations in
2001.
One item she was particularly concerned about was CRI's paying $66,000 in
July 2002 for a blue Lexus sc, purchased for Hanegraaff's use.
CRI paid Kathy Hanegraaff, Hank's wife, $3,141 for miscellaneous personal
expenses.
The ministry paid nearly $8,000 in flooring for Hanegraaff's home office.
CRI paid two months of dues, totaling $3,100, at the country club in the
gated community of Coto de Caza
The ministry paid maintenance bills for Hanegraaff's children's computers

the amounts of $400, $300 (twice), and $200.
CRI paid Hank Hanegraaff
$251,886 in 2001 (the most recent year for which statistics are

Kathy
Hanegraaff received a salary of $87,600 as CRI's director of planning.

** This distressing email was Carbon Copied to me, I don't know where
it originated.

Counterfeit Christianity - Christian Research Institute
CRI Accused of 'Naïve' Bookkeeping Report by whistleblowers to
Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability prompts CRI employees
to reimburse funds.
By Marshall Allen

Jen Hubbard said she knew right away that Christian Research Institute
(CRI) had spending problems. Committed to working at nonprofit
ministries, the 27-year-old was thrilled to be at CRI, where Hendrik
(Hank) Hanegraaff hosted the popular Bible Answer Man radio broadcast.
But the way Hanegraaff spent money did not seem right, Hubbard told
Christianity Today. Hubbard's subsequent actions sparked an
investigation by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability
(ECFA), and in March, the watchdog agency found CRI had "breached
compliance" with key member standards. After further investigation and
counsel, CRI employees agreed to pay back significant sums of misused
ministry funds and create better accountability systems in the
organization. Poor internal controls
CRI hired Hubbard as a donor communications specialist in May 2002.
She became alarmed when she saw ministry spending practices and heard
employee concerns about the outlays. Meanwhile, she was sending
monthly financial appeals to donors, urging them to give generously
lest CRI suffer ministry cutbacks. The ministry generated more than
$500,000 a month in donations in 2001.
"It's kind of hard to make those pleas when you see the extravagance
from the inside," said Hubbard, who held similar positions with
Insight for Living and Joni and Friends.
One item she was particularly concerned about was CRI's paying $66,000
in July 2002 for a blue Lexus sc, purchased for Hanegraaff's use. That
same year former employees said a lull in giving resulted in layoffs
at the $9.3 million ministry.
When her supervisor refused to take her complaint seriously, Hubbard
started looking for proof. In December, while doing after-hours
overtime work at the Rancho Santa Margarita-based ministry, she
quickly grabbed two dozen internal CRI documents-including invoices
and receipts-to show her superiors the problems. She had access to
some of the material in the normal course of her duties. The rest was
in an unlocked file cabinet near her desk. When officials found out
what she had done, CRI fired her. The same day, January 20, she sent
copies to the ECFA. Hubbard wasn't the only one concerned. Others
included Joshua Scott, 28, a Bible Answer Man call screener, and
Thaddeus Williams, 24, a researcher, phone counselor, and writer.
Williams became spokesman of a group of concerned employees. On
January 20 and 21, he spoke with CRI executives Paul Young and John
Stoffel to seek reform and reconciliation. The three concluded that
Hanegraaff would sell the sports car, and that Williams would lead an
internal accountability board of CRI employees, Williams said. But in
early February, CRI fired Williams. The stated reason was excessive
tardiness.
In March the ECFA announced it was conducting a "compliance review"
and said CRI had "breached compliance" with three of the watchdog
agency's seven standards of member conduct: board governance,
financial controls and policies, and use of ministry resources. ECFA
noted CRI did not have "adequate systems in place to ensure that
expenditures are properly documented in a manner consistent with sound
internal control or to substantiate the ministry purpose of
disbursements made." The ECFA further found that CRI had not addressed
"potential conflicts of interest transactions involving related
parties" and that "there were not sufficient Board policies or
oversight to identify these deficiencies." At one point in the
investigation ECFA President Paul Nelson told CT, "They don't have
sufficient internal controls in place, so you really don't know what
you don't know." But ECFA also said it had found no evidence that "the
deficiencies were willful on the part of the ministry" or that "the
ministry's effectiveness or outreach had been compromised." Nelson
characterized CRI's actions as "naïve."
The ECFA said in mid-June that CRI had become compliant with ECFA
standards, but that the compliance review remained open. It said CRI
had provided "significant reimbursement for certain disbursements that
could not be clearly substantiated as having a ministry-related
purpose." Problem spending
Neither CRI nor the ECFA would provide details on repayments to CRI.
Hubbard, Williams, and Scott, however, produced receipts from last
year that may illustrate some of the problems:
CRI paid Kathy Hanegraaff, Hank's wife, $3,141 for miscellaneous
personal expenses.
The ministry paid nearly $8,000 in flooring for Hanegraaff's home
office. CRI paid two months of dues, totaling $3,100, at the country
club in the gated community of Coto de Caza, where the Hanegraaffs and
their nine children live. CRI paid for Hank Hanegraaff's vitamins and
for flowers he sent to his mother.
The ministry paid maintenance bills for Hanegraaff's children's
computers in the amounts of $400, $300 (twice), and $200.
Paul Young, CRI's executive vice president and a board member,
declined to comment on the misuse of tax-exempt money.
Employees were also concerned about Hanegraaff's salary. According to
publicly available financial disclosure forms, CRI paid Hank
Hanegraaff $251,886 in 2001 (the most recent year for which statistics
are available). This represents an increase of $52,886 (26.5%) over
the previous year. Kathy Hanegraaff received a salary of $87,600 as
CRI's director of planning. Young, who keeps the ministry's books and
earned $130,475 in 2001, told CT he could not remember the amount of
Hanegraaff's raise. Board issues
The ECFA announced in June that CRI had implemented stronger internal
controls to track spending. Formerly, the five-member CRI board wasn't
adequately monitoring spending, Nelson said. The current board
includes Hank Hanegraaff (the board's president), Young, longtime
board member Everett Jacobson, Lewis Neely, and Chuck Merritt.
The ECFA said, "CRI is actively seeking to increase the size of its
Board, as well as the diversity of professional disciplines
represented on the Board."
Nelson declined to provide specifics concerning transactions involving
potential conflicts of interest with related parties. But he
acknowledged ECFA looked into the actions of Chuck Merritt, who has
been an unpaid member of the board since 1999.
Merritt was senior vice president at Dallas-based KMA Communications,
responsible for overall business development. Financial disclosure
documents show that in the past three years, CRI paid KMA $868,811 for
development and fundraising services, including $386,943 in 2001. In
June, ECFA decided the Merritt connection was not a conflict of
interest, because in "recent months" Merritt had changed his status
with KMA, becoming a consultant, Nelson said.
But Michael Barrick, spokesman for Wall Watchers, a ministry
monitoring agency, said the board link between CRI and KMA at least
gives the "appearance of impropriety."
"They're spending 19 percent of their income on fundraising, where the
industry average is 7 percent," Barrick said. "That does raise a
question in my mind regarding that KMA connection."
Merritt declined to comment.
Still wounded
Hubbard, who is still unemployed, told CT she knew she might lose her
job by contacting the ECFA, but she still feels wounded by how she was
treated. "We're really happy to hear they're willing to make the
changes," Hubbard said from her home in San Clemente. "That was our
goal. But it does put a stinger in your heart to know that this
reconciliation isn't complete." ECFA didn't promise Hubbard any
protection for blowing the whistle, but Nelson says the investigation
would not have happened without her, and CRI is a better organization
now than it was before the investigation. Said Young of CRI, "This is
a not-for-profit organization under good watch-care, and we've done
what was required to do." CRI welcomed the ECFA investigation "with
open arms. ... If there's deficiencies, we want to improve them,
because we want to be squeaky clean." Billy Graham helped start the
Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a self-policing
organization, .the St. Petersburg Times reported on Oct 11, 1998 .In
1992 his ministry, Samaritan's Purse, had a run-in with the
Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the self-policing
organization his father helped start. The ECFA suspended Samaritan's
Purse while it looked into Franklin's (Graham) compensation and use of
the company plane. Although it's the public right as well as each
donor's right to know and ask questions about the total remuneration
of Southern Baptist Billy Graham, including special privileges and
expenses in his North Carolina home paid by BGEA, including support
staff, members of ECFA including Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, Samaritan's Purse, and Campus Crusade For Christ have
developed the art of stonewalling when it comes to special
remuneration and expenses of it's chairmen.
Billy Graham's own son Ned Graham turned out to be no different than
Jim Bakker. Even though a President of an Evangelical Ministry must be
blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good
behavior, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent,
and not greedy for money, Ned Graham the son of Billy Graham, Southern
Baptist minister, president East Gates International, a group that
distributes Bibles in China told Christianity Today in an interview
that he had abused alcohol and spent an "inappropriate amount of time"
with two women on his staff.
Grace Community Church, Southern Baptist Convention, in Auburn,
Washington-which counted Ned Graham, his wife, and their two sons as
members established in 1999 the fact that Ned Graham was an adulterer,
alcoholic, wife abuser, and drug user and revoked Graham's ministerial
credentials. It directed Graham to stop using the title reverend.
Yet in a style reminiscent of Jimmy Swaggart, who refused to be
defrocked by the Assembly of God denomination, Ned Graham left that
congregation for another church.
Most of the staff and board members of East Gates International
resigned amid controversies. East Gates, in Sumner, Wash., withdrew
its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability
after Ned replaced the board members with his sister Ruth Graham
McIntyre, brother-in-law Stephan Tchividjian, and business leader
Peter Lowe. The Associated Baptist Press - www.abpnews.com on April 3,
2001 reported that "About half of Baptist organizations contacted by
the independent newspaper Baptists Today would not disclose salary
information for their top executive. Three Southern Baptist Convention
entities said policies allowed them to release only salary ranges.
Presidents Albert Mohler of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and
Kenneth Hemphill of Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas,
declined to provide any information on compensation. New Orleans
Seminary did not return numerous phone calls regarding the salary of
President Charles Kelley. However, the IRS requires all colleges and
universities to report the salaries of the top five paid staff
members, Brumley explained."

Sources
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/008/6.19.html
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1999/dec6/9te026.html
http://www.christiannews.0catch.com/graham.htm
http://www.herbertwarmstrong.com/god_is_good.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/vestgraham.html
http://www.cephasministry.com/baptists_money_changers.html
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/032302/ath_0323020020.shtml
http://religiousbroadcasting.lib.virginia.edu/powerpolitics/home.html
http://www.christiannews.0catch.com/bakker.htm
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/8te/8te062.html