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Author Topic: The ECFA and Great Commission Churches  (Read 33288 times)
Digital Lynch Mob
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« Reply #40 on: April 13, 2018, 09:48:56 am »

I don't know the answers to your questions. I am not on the board.
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Godtrumpsall
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« Reply #41 on: April 13, 2018, 01:42:27 pm »

Yes, I just heard back and will post the exact answer when I am on my computer and not my phone. ECFA does not require that organizations post their board members online and says they verify that boards meet their requirements.

Were they able to give you a direct answer on this?
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Linda
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« Reply #42 on: April 13, 2018, 02:50:46 pm »

Quote
SECTION 2.7 Authority. The Board of Trustees shall manage and conduct the legal and financial business of the Church. The board shall set all policies that involve legal implications and shall oversee any legal issues.

What is this from? ECFA? GCC? ECC?
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Rebel in a Good Way
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« Reply #43 on: April 13, 2018, 02:52:34 pm »

This is the exact text from an e-mail from Nicole Wallenfelsz, Ministry Relations Associate

"ECFA does not require the full board be listed on the member’s website.  We require our ministries to provide a list of their full board along with other information and indicate any blood or material business relationships that exist on the board which allows us to evaluate if there are in compliance with ECFA standard 2. We also conduct site visits periodically to members to confirm they are in compliance with our standards."
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Huldah
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« Reply #44 on: April 13, 2018, 04:36:31 pm »

Rebel, thank you for making the effort to get an answer from them.

"We require our ministries to provide a list of their full board along with other information and indicate any blood or material business relationships that exist on the board... "

It sounds as if it's mostly on the honor system for members to ensure that they meet the standard.

"We also conduct site visits periodically to members to confirm they are in compliance with our standards."

Does that mean unannounced visits where they drop by to check the paperwork? Since GCC board members live in different parts of the country, they wouldn't just be sitting around the Columbus office if an ECFA rep happened to drop by. I'm not sure that a site visit would uncover any irregularities in the composition of the board.

I was secretly afraid that the ECFA would give an answer that was too vague to be useful. It looks like that's exactly what they did.
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Huldah
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« Reply #45 on: May 07, 2019, 06:15:46 pm »

The original question of this thread was whether or not the GCC Board (the national board, not the local church boards) met the ECFA requirements. Before long, another question began to form: Just how stringently does the ECFA enforce its own rules? Writer Julie Roys, who's a stickler for getting her ducks in a row before she publishes an article, has written two blog posts that shed a little light on the answer.

The first article,  http://julieroys.com/former-elders-say-ecfa-ignored-warning-six-years-ago-harvests-lack-financial-controls/, concerns Harvest Bible Chapel of Chicago. (Harvest is not affiliated with GCC in any way.) The ECFA recently terminated Harvest's membership for serious violations of ECFA guidelines. The termination came last month, yet several Harvest elders say they tried to report various financial improprieties as far back as 2013. The elders claim that the ECFA failed to take their concerns seriously until a series of highly publicized scandals forced the resignation of Harvest's pastor.

The same article says that the ECFA similarly failed to terminate another ministry, Gospel for Asia, until Gospel for Asia's financial improprieties became too public to ignore.

The second article, http://julieroys.com/president-evangelical-financial-accountability-group-fined-falsely-claiming-cpa/ is about Dan Busby, the current president of the ECFA. Busby was recently fined by the Virginia Board of Accountancy for falsely representing himself as a CPA long after he had allowed his CPA license to lapse.

In my opinion, the ECFA may have lost so much credibility that membership is no longer of any benefit to churches. Should churchgoers' hard-earned money be going to prop up an organization that isn't doing its job? One thing that's clear, is that neither GCC nor any other organization can point to ECFA membership as proof of financial integrity.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2019, 07:00:46 pm by Huldah » Logged
Huldah
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« Reply #46 on: September 13, 2019, 05:24:18 pm »


I'd like to refer back to this earlier post for a moment:

 
I highly doubt that their stringent annual accreditation process would over look a very blatant breaking of the rules of governance. 
Here's the "stringent" accreditation process, straight from the ECFA website, http://www.ecfa.org/Content/Membership-Requirements.

You fill out a form.
You attach the required financial documents.
You pay the fee.
If you bring in enough revenue, you submit to a financial audit.


According to a new article in World Magazine, "fill out a form and pay a fee" turns out to be spot on. The author summarizes it very nearly as I did: "If an ECFA member turns in the necessary paperwork and pays its yearly dues, it retains its accreditation." The article can be found at https://world.wng.org/2019/09/an_easy_a.

In other words, not a very stringent accreditation process, after all. One former member of the ECFA is quoted as saying, "We were just paying for a membership that really didn’t mean anything."

The author says that the lack of oversight is a result of the ECFA's means of generating revenue. They don't rely on donations; 75% of their revenue comes from membership fees.


ECFA has proceeded slowly with ministries getting into trouble. One reason could be organizational structure. ECFA pays its bills by charging membership fees to the organizations it’s supposed to monitor. In 2018 ECFA brought in more than $5 million in total revenue. Nearly three-fourths of that—$3.7 million—came from fees charged to its members...

If ECFA terminates members, it cuts off revenue. (Emphasis added.)

Once again, we see that ECFA membership is not a guarantee of any organization's trustworthiness.
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Linda
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« Reply #47 on: September 13, 2019, 07:04:26 pm »

Thanks for posting, Huldah.

Terry called my attention to that article today and I was reminded of the meaninglessness of these organizations.

Here’s a link to another discussion we had on the ECFA.

http://forum.gcmwarning.com/general-discussion/ecfa-membership/
« Last Edit: September 13, 2019, 07:48:49 pm by Linda » Logged

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AgathaL'Orange
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« Reply #48 on: September 17, 2019, 08:59:05 pm »

How disappointing.  I spent years thinking the ECFA meant something. 
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