Full Transcript for Pastor Scott Gray Investigation Allegedly Reveals False Documents, Secret Accounts & Luxury Items

conversation and so there's a lot to dig through in this discussion. 04:28.399 --> 04:34.168 [SPEAKER_01]: Travis, I think it's a good thing to point out here since you're always 04:34.148 --> 04:53.845 [SPEAKER_01]: churches are as much as way to admit it businesses ultimately and when you see just from what I've read so far when you know that there's that much of a lack of transparency on finances what is that make you think about or feel the the first alarming thing is how much unbridled control they give to people who are 04:53.825 --> 05:14.314 [SPEAKER_02]: who are by definition, incompetent, financially, like these are, these are people who largely went to on accredited colleges, like the one that I went to, and had zero classes, like not even a basic accounting class or something like that, which blows my mind, like we're training pastors to go out into the ministry. 05:14.294 --> 05:22.491 [SPEAKER_02]: one of their chief responsibilities is going to be raising money for the church and deploying capital for the church. 05:23.012 --> 05:30.668 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like I went through four years of Bible College and they're teaching you Greek, but they never teach you how to manage your funds at your church. 05:30.829 --> 05:32.051 [SPEAKER_02]: How to use QuickBooks. 05:32.071 --> 05:33.314 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right, exactly. 05:33.374 --> 05:34.817 [SPEAKER_02]: Not even not even 05:34.797 --> 05:36.541 [SPEAKER_02]: a thought about that there. 05:36.601 --> 05:45.239 [SPEAKER_02]: They're focusing so much on eschatology and not at all, which is something that you're never going to deal with in the day-to-day of running a church. 05:45.399 --> 05:48.486 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, some day, well, in the future, theoretically. 05:48.972 --> 05:52.615 [SPEAKER_02]: but then they leave out something that is insanely crucial. 05:52.695 --> 05:58.600 [SPEAKER_02]: And especially like at the places that have the colleges, they tend to be the larger ministries inside of that world. 05:59.081 --> 06:08.449 [SPEAKER_02]: And you think that there would be like, hey, our CFO of our church is gonna come in and teach a class about how like even just raising capital. 06:08.469 --> 06:13.754 [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's one huge responsibility that prohibits a lot of churches from growing and accomplishing their mission anyways. 06:13.774 --> 06:16.676 [SPEAKER_02]: Like why are we not talking about raising funds? 06:16.696 --> 06:18.658 [SPEAKER_02]: And then once you get those funds, 06:18.824 --> 06:33.350 [SPEAKER_02]: Here's some things that you're going to want to pay attention to so you don't end up in a, you know, you know, a legit case like this because because they just have zero financial training, but they're just, like, here's the case, the kingdom, like you got this on a credit degree, on a credit degree and Bible. 06:33.490 --> 06:43.228 [SPEAKER_02]: Now you can now manage multi million, a multi million dollar organization and do it effectively, like the, the lack of training is, is wild to me right off the bat. 06:43.208 --> 06:43.930 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 06:43.950 --> 06:48.840 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, like I mentioned, March 22nd, 2026, which is where the recording is about to listen to come from. 06:49.441 --> 06:57.178 [SPEAKER_01]: In light of that, in light of just all the rumors that have spread around this, the allegations of financial mismanagement, potentially fraud that have circulated. 06:57.699 --> 07:01.487 [SPEAKER_01]: Pastor Scott Gray issued a statement on April 14th. 07:01.467 --> 07:11.301 [SPEAKER_01]: two days ago as of the time of this recording he said I've spent much time in prayer about whether to say anything publicly or the past several months my focus has been on my family, my walk with the Lord and seeking wise counsel. 07:11.661 --> 07:15.567 [SPEAKER_01]: During that time I've chosen to remain quiet, but I feel it's now appropriate to share it from my heart. 07:16.408 --> 07:19.753 [SPEAKER_01]: Serving is pastor Lerity Baptist Church was one of the greatest honors of my life. 07:20.113 --> 07:25.180 [SPEAKER_01]: From the very beginning my family and I were loved, supported, and given the opportunity to serve in ways I will always cherish. 07:25.701 --> 07:30.748 [SPEAKER_01]: So many of my most meaningful life moments happened during those years and for that I'll forever be grateful. 07:30.728 --> 07:34.395 [SPEAKER_01]: The events that led to my resignation were deeply painful and in many ways overwhelming. 07:34.796 --> 07:42.211 [SPEAKER_01]: In a very short period of time, our church family experience lost, confusion, and significant challenges, especially surrounding areas that I trusted others to manage. 07:42.732 --> 07:44.575 [SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting difference there. 07:44.896 --> 07:47.321 [SPEAKER_01]: The weight of all that has taken place is something I felt deeply. 07:47.361 --> 07:50.948 [SPEAKER_01]: It's impacted my family in ways that are difficult to clearly express. 07:50.928 --> 07:53.073 [SPEAKER_01]: and here's how he responds to some of these allegations. 07:53.614 --> 08:00.068 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I want to make it clear that as the pastor, I take responsibility for areas where stronger oversight and better system should have been in place. 08:00.590 --> 08:03.195 [SPEAKER_01]: Leadership carries that responsibility, and I accept that. 08:03.656 --> 08:07.325 [SPEAKER_01]: There are things that would handle differently and lessons I have learned that will stay with me for the rest of my life. 08:07.906 --> 08:10.692 [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, I want to be equally clear about this. 08:11.397 --> 08:16.163 [SPEAKER_01]: I did not steal from Liberty Baptist Church, nor did I use church finances for personal gain. 08:16.604 --> 08:20.709 [SPEAKER_01]: While I understand that concerns were raised in questions where asked is important for me to state that plainly. 08:21.250 --> 08:27.859 [SPEAKER_01]: While I may not

agree with every conclusion that's been made, I believe it's best not to engage in public disputes or attempt to argue details in this setting. 08:28.279 --> 08:34.047 [SPEAKER_01]: My desire is not to create for the division but to a law space for healing, for myself, for my family and for the church. 08:34.027 --> 08:39.095 [SPEAKER_01]: Over the past several months, my wife and I have relocated step-to-way for ministry, and I focused on being ministry too. 08:39.516 --> 08:42.801 [SPEAKER_01]: We sought counsel, spent time in prayer, and began the process of healing. 08:43.142 --> 08:45.485 [SPEAKER_01]: This has been a season of humility, reflection, and growth. 08:45.946 --> 08:49.452 [SPEAKER_01]: Moving forward, I believe it's right for me to continue stepping away from ministry for a season. 08:49.873 --> 08:54.760 [SPEAKER_01]: My priority right now is my family, our spiritual health, and allowing the Lord to continue his work in our lives. 08:55.141 --> 08:58.887 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm committed to learning, growing, and pursuing restoration in the days ahead. 08:58.867 --> 09:03.412 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to express my sincere love for the people of Liberty, Baptist Church, that love is never changed. 09:03.552 --> 09:08.157 [SPEAKER_01]: My prayer is that God would continue to bless the church, guide its leadership, and use it in a powerful way for His glory. 09:08.597 --> 09:09.659 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for allowing me to serve you. 09:09.719 --> 09:12.822 [SPEAKER_01]: This is something I'll always be grateful for in Christ Scott. 09:13.182 --> 09:22.492 [SPEAKER_01]: Alright guys, so I had finished editing this entire episode, but I have to record this insert because I got an email that says, thank you for all your work and dedication to exposing the horrific abuse in the IP world. 09:22.833 --> 09:27.658 [SPEAKER_01]: I know you're currently working on and are most likely finished with your Scott Grey episode, unfortunately. 09:27.638 --> 09:29.000 [SPEAKER_01]: I was very much finished with it. 09:29.200 --> 09:37.851 [SPEAKER_01]: But they wanted to share a screenshot from a IFB church, not that hosted for Sunday Service and a Valentine's party back in February, this very public information. 09:38.251 --> 09:40.914 [SPEAKER_01]: Since you're incredibly thorough, I wouldn't be surprised if you've already seen it. 09:41.435 --> 09:46.161 [SPEAKER_01]: Fortunately, I was not very thorough and didn't see it until now, so I'm recording this insert. 09:46.521 --> 09:49.545 [SPEAKER_01]: I said I wanted to share because it directly contradicts his statement. 09:49.525 --> 09:52.068 [SPEAKER_01]: about stepping away from ministry. 09:52.148 --> 10:00.920 [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't remember if Scott Gray said, over the past several months, my wife and I have relocated, stepped away from ministry and a focused rather on being ministered too. 10:01.661 --> 10:04.945 [SPEAKER_01]: The pictures of him standing behind the pulpit teams to contradict that. 10:05.425 --> 10:06.287 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, thank you so much. 10:06.427 --> 10:09.351 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to read it, put this little insert in and share this. 10:10.051 --> 10:19.043 [SPEAKER_01]: And then she said, oh, by the way, he also spoke at Mount Pigsod Baptist Church in Alabama 10:21.352 --> 10:24.357 [SPEAKER_02]: Frater coming after it's a bad day, amen. 10:24.698 --> 10:30.968 [SPEAKER_01]: If we're going to take a statement where he says, I took the past several months, step away from ministry and focused on being minister too. 10:31.008 --> 10:32.451 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just a lie. 10:32.932 --> 10:34.835 [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, what's your blatant lie? 10:35.536 --> 10:42.748 [SPEAKER_02]: Which, to me, it just shows like how comfortable and willing he is to just lie about stuff that doesn't even matter. 10:42.829 --> 10:44.271 [SPEAKER_02]: Like this is the most, 10:44.251 --> 10:47.776 [SPEAKER_02]: This is the most inconsequential part of his entire statement. 10:48.036 --> 10:49.518 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it didn't even need to be said. 10:49.779 --> 10:50.199 [SPEAKER_02]: No. 10:50.380 --> 10:54.566 [SPEAKER_02]: And so why include it when you literally know that it's not the truth? 10:54.986 --> 10:58.611 [SPEAKER_02]: Just brings into question the entirety of the full statement. 10:58.651 --> 11:01.075 [SPEAKER_02]: Because the other things are actually legally inconsequential. 11:01.455 --> 11:04.099 [SPEAKER_02]: So like, if you're willing to lie about the thing that... 11:04.079 --> 11:05.281 [SPEAKER_02]: is not at all. 11:05.321 --> 11:09.348 [SPEAKER_02]: Of course you're willing to lie about the thing that could potentially bring a prison sentence. 11:09.769 --> 11:14.938 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's just a comfort to me is alarming. 11:15.299 --> 11:22.712 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mean, I think this is a great thing to have in the being the episode to say, you know, for all the great offenders out there. 11:22.692 --> 11:23.694 [SPEAKER_01]: We're starting episode. 11:23.714 --> 11:31.107 [SPEAKER_01]: I think this episode has some thorough explanation as to why Scott Gray's response and statements on this don't really add up. 11:31.688 --> 11:43.570 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, I think Charles just said, if he's willing to lie about this stupid thing, if he's willing to say I stepped outside of ministry for the last several months, and there's literal video of him preaching at a church just a month ago. 11:43.550 --> 11:45.473 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's take everything he says with a grain of salt. 11:45.633 --> 11:47.676 [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, we'll go ahead and get back into the main episode. 11:47.696 --> 11:50.620 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much to the anonymous source that tip me off on this. 11:50.921 --> 11:51.822 [SPEAKER_01]: I really do appreciate it. 11:51.902 --> 11:55.347 [SPEAKER_01]: And seriously, I know you guys assume that I see everything, but I don't. 11:55.988 --> 11:58.892

[SPEAKER_01]: So always feel free to email me if you have tips on stories like this. 11:58.992 --> 12:01.436 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll do my best to incorporate them in my reporting. 12:01.496 --> 12:03.699 [SPEAKER_01]: But for now, let's get back into this episode. 12:03.939 --> 12:05.001 [SPEAKER_01]: That's his response. 12:04.981 --> 12:07.125 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to contrast that with what we said. 12:07.145 --> 12:07.766 [SPEAKER_01]: It was response. 12:08.247 --> 12:08.387 [SPEAKER_01]: It was. 12:08.407 --> 12:08.948 [SPEAKER_01]: Potentially. 12:09.028 --> 12:09.148 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 12:09.168 --> 12:10.310 [SPEAKER_01]: Slashes lawyers response. 12:11.071 --> 12:15.058 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to contrast that with the meeting that was held on March 22nd, 2026. 12:15.539 --> 12:17.462 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to play a couple of clips. 12:17.903 --> 12:19.927 [SPEAKER_01]: These are from David Gibbs III. 12:20.167 --> 12:22.130 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is, if you're familiar with David Gibbs Jr. 12:22.231 --> 12:25.977 [SPEAKER_01]: This is his son who works at a separate law agency. 12:25.957 --> 12:28.080 [SPEAKER_01]: and he is the church's counsel. 12:28.641 --> 12:37.675 [SPEAKER_01]: So he is representing the church in this helping oversee the investigation into it and here is some recordings from that meeting. 12:38.296 --> 12:44.766 [SPEAKER_01]: He opened with sharing some of the good news and kind of tease him about news that they would get into during this conversation. 12:44.826 --> 12:46.969 [SPEAKER_01]: So here's the first clip. 12:47.270 --> 12:50.634 [SPEAKER_00]: At least begin by telling you the good news. 12:51.235 --> 12:58.203 [SPEAKER_00]: September 1st of 2025, so we're going back to right when you're prior to your past resigned. 12:58.683 --> 13:13.260 [SPEAKER_00]: The church had in roughly six other than $42,000 in the bank, plus the ERTC funds, which is the employee retention tax credit of money that came from the government, but wasn't truly church income. 13:13.240 --> 13:18.962 [SPEAKER_00]: The good news on a start with is on March 1st, which is this year, 2026. 13:19.284 --> 13:23.942 [SPEAKER_00]: You have 1.314 million dollars. 13:24.614 --> 13:32.262 [SPEAKER_02]: That tells the story and yeah, you follow the money, you know, that that's a beautiful thing about math and numbers man They don't they don't lie. 13:32.542 --> 13:39.570 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's no other way to interpret that right sure ETC funds Now for those of you that are not great with math. 13:39.590 --> 13:48.900 [SPEAKER_00]: That's me that is a six hundred and seventy four thousand three hundred and twenty dollar cash Improvement over seven months 13:48.880 --> 13:56.971 [SPEAKER_00]: $96,031 per month, you have increased since your prior senior pastoral left. 13:57.752 --> 14:03.420 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of the mystery at the church is being done at this point with a pad, a less employee. 14:03.440 --> 14:06.965 [SPEAKER_00]: So obviously, when your payroll is down a little bit, your cash gives up. 14:07.025 --> 14:13.133 [SPEAKER_00]: But if I could start with good news, how many are delighted to cash this up right now? 14:14.125 --> 14:22.678 [SPEAKER_00]: And while we have issues to address from the past, how many are delighted we hit the break and we've got things more under control. 14:23.379 --> 14:31.492 [SPEAKER_00]: We have our cash numbers and things are going to we're not trying to get quick loans or things to act in crisis. 14:32.333 --> 14:36.760 [SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to walk you back to what we have the label, a historical admission. 14:36.921 --> 14:38.443 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is going to your past to resign. 14:38.463 --> 14:41.027 [SPEAKER_00]: That's September 10th of 2025. 14:41.007 --> 14:43.834 [SPEAKER_00]: He made three comments, all right come up one. 14:44.516 --> 14:48.727 [SPEAKER_00]: He admitted that the church finances were in disarray. 14:49.649 --> 14:50.972 [SPEAKER_00]: May I stop right there? 14:51.413 --> 14:53.920 [SPEAKER_00]: That might be the understatement of the evening. 14:55.063 --> 14:57.970 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, your church finances were a disaster. 14:58.439 --> 15:04.766 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's indicated by the amount of money that is suddenly appearing back in the short bank accounts. 15:04.826 --> 15:11.975 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, hearing that, it's telling that he, I think it was like an hour in 15-minute service, that's the good news. 15:12.335 --> 15:15.999 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there you go, about one minute, that's the good stuff. 15:16.580 --> 15:21.286 [SPEAKER_01]: What he lays out is next is the process that they followed for doing this investigation. 15:21.326 --> 15:27.653 [SPEAKER_01]: So they actually retain somebody who works in this field and they gave some interesting commentary on this as well. 15:27.633 --> 15:35.341 [SPEAKER_00]: The financial house was on fire and an absolute disaster in every regard. 15:35.562 --> 15:37.344 [SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to use the charts to hear. 15:37.784 --> 15:45.553 [SPEAKER_00]: It was back the process that we then instituted under your board's leadership and working with your pastor or leadership team. 15:46.294 --> 15:51.179 [SPEAKER_00]: An outside CPA firm was retained to help recreate. 15:51.679 --> 15:52.560 [SPEAKER_00]: You got to hear me. 15:53.121 --> 15:54.923 [SPEAKER_00]: There were like no 15:54.903 --> 15:58.991 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean things were just a shambles we've that were secret bank accounts. 15:59.472 --> 16:01.055 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean this is a harm job. 16:01.075 --> 16:02.939 [SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to get a little sensitive. 16:02.979 --> 16:05.644 [SPEAKER_00]: This was not somebody to turn into receives. 16:05.705 --> 16:07.829 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a absolute mess. 16:08.510 --> 16:12.979 [SPEAKER_00]: The CPA Farm came into help recreate and analyze what records did exist. 16:12.959 --> 16:18.712

[SPEAKER_00]: The CPA firms recommend aid with expertise in nonprofit sector and they work often with churches. 16:19.373 --> 16:24.705 [SPEAKER_00]: They call this one of the worst if not the worst case they had ever seen. 16:25.206 --> 16:27.431 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is not something you want to hear from your CPA. 16:27.691 --> 16:28.533 [SPEAKER_01]: The worst case. 16:28.553 --> 16:31.339 [SPEAKER_01]: And someone commented because I shared 16:31.319 --> 16:36.873 [SPEAKER_01]: I shared that quote on one of my posts and they said, really, that's the worst I've ever seen. 16:36.893 --> 16:41.805 [SPEAKER_01]: It was only, you know, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars, but you know, that's not that much. 16:41.865 --> 16:44.812 [SPEAKER_01]: They must have seen millions of dollars in the worst case they've ever seen. 16:44.852 --> 16:45.855 [SPEAKER_01]: But I want it. 16:45.875 --> 16:48.501 [SPEAKER_01]: It's important to know and I'll share this in the next clip. 16:48.481 --> 16:51.948 [SPEAKER_01]: they examined about a 19-month time period. 16:52.029 --> 16:52.269 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 16:52.409 --> 16:58.502 [SPEAKER_01]: So the amount of funds they found missing in that frame extrapolate over a couple decades of ministry, pretty rough. 16:58.522 --> 17:03.894 [SPEAKER_02]: Also worse does not just apply to the amount of cash that we're talking about here. 17:04.014 --> 17:06.198 [SPEAKER_02]: It's also like he's like what he's saying. 17:06.219 --> 17:07.401 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just negligence. 17:07.381 --> 17:08.102 [SPEAKER_02]: No. 17:08.122 --> 17:23.901 [SPEAKER_02]: To kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier, of course, you cannot, you can't just blame the college that you went to forever yet at some point you have to be like, okay, maybe I should just go take an independent accounting class and learn how to do this completely because it matters or what you do to deal. 17:24.401 --> 17:33.372 [SPEAKER_02]: Like when you are, when you are in a position where you are taking money from other people for the purpose of accomplishing a mission. 17:33.352 --> 17:45.986 [SPEAKER_02]: your fiduciary responsibility to those people is to me even greater than it is when you're running a business or something like that because you're collecting funds from people who were believing in the mission. 17:46.807 --> 18:00.401 [SPEAKER_02]: So the worst case ever does not necessarily mean that it's the most amount of money they've seen siphoned out of a church and it probably isn't, but it might have been the worst in terms of just the dislike what David Gibbs said there. 18:00.421 --> 18:01.823 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just the disaster. 18:01.803 --> 18:14.406 [SPEAKER_02]: that came from this could have just been the fact that there was, there was just no records and there was terrible accounting measures and there was no effort to provide any sort of transparency into the church's finance. 18:15.047 --> 18:20.557 [SPEAKER_02]: Our finance is a large, so I want to point out that worst does not necessarily mean that it was the largest amount of money that they've seen. 18:20.858 --> 18:21.098 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 18:22.020 --> 18:25.566 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, here's kind of the timeline of what they actually looked at reviewed. 18:25.698 --> 18:28.803 [SPEAKER_00]: If I'd run one and know, how far back did you go? 18:28.843 --> 18:34.694 [SPEAKER_00]: The review had to be limited into about December of 23 through September of 25. 18:35.215 --> 18:42.467 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's roughly the 1819 month time period because the massive amount of work involved. 18:42.487 --> 18:45.833 [SPEAKER_00]: The more we've done, the less we were going to discover and just stay 18:45.813 --> 18:47.475 [SPEAKER_00]: more and more complicated. 18:48.617 --> 18:52.762 [SPEAKER_00]: The review is limited to spending and finding it. 18:52.782 --> 18:58.190 [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to hear we didn't try to go into every possible issue or statement. 18:59.111 --> 19:01.654 [SPEAKER_00]: There were a couple issues that came up repeatedly. 19:01.674 --> 19:03.357 [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to at least know them. 19:03.877 --> 19:08.023 [SPEAKER_00]: They were outside the scope of this investigation. 19:08.003 --> 19:18.993 [SPEAKER_00]: So people asked me it a bit Scott Gray-Nove about Tim Forge's child abuse in Texas when he hired and the answer found him off. 19:19.013 --> 19:22.357 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he didn't, but that was not part of the investigation. 19:22.817 --> 19:23.598 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously with Mr. 19:23.638 --> 19:29.724 [SPEAKER_00]: Forge ending his life and Reverend Gray resigning, there wasn't really any way to dig into that. 19:30.564 --> 19:36.610 [SPEAKER_00]: Some other concerns in Robbara was how the suicide was communicated to the student body. 19:36.590 --> 19:44.223 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, people were feeling like how did the kids find out and the parents didn't know, and it was handle awkwardly just to you. 19:44.564 --> 19:53.940 [SPEAKER_01]: So the way that this happened, just for some people know, someone inside the ministry shared this with me, but basically what they told me was, 19:54.545 --> 19:59.471 [SPEAKER_01]: When it happened, he didn't reach out to parents first. 19:59.491 --> 20:05.597 [SPEAKER_01]: He called them assembly with the students at school and told them with no counseling available. 20:05.698 --> 20:08.200 [SPEAKER_01]: No one just like, here's what happened, kids are crying. 20:08.240 --> 20:21.195 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it went to the parent's strange behavior to go, yeah, talk about something that heavy to kids without going like, hey, we're gonna tell your parents and then we're gonna say, it's a crazy discussion when the kid gets in the car on the way home from school that day, you know? 20:21.435 --> 20:23.978 [SPEAKER_01]: You won't believe what happens up, yeah, right? 20:23.958 --> 20:31.627 [SPEAKER_00]: That also wasn't really investigated so I'm

kind of letting you know there were issues and some of you may have other issues if you say Hey, I was wondering about this. 20:32.228 --> 20:41.238 [SPEAKER_00]: This investigation was of a complete performance review on the prior administration We were pretty much limited to spending and finances. 20:41.258 --> 20:51.670 [SPEAKER_00]: That was kind of the focus that we worked on so those issues were left more or less unresolved And I'm also a fan when somebody resigns and they make that decision 20:51.650 --> 20:56.136 [SPEAKER_00]: They made a decision and you are at that point and done evaluating their performance. 20:56.557 --> 21:00.282 [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of the overview of what the actual investigation was. 21:00.302 --> 21:03.367 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any thoughts before I go into the first funding? 21:03.387 --> 21:12.239 [SPEAKER_01]: So again, if you've heard great statements, if you listen to the full audio recording that I shared in a previous coverage of this, which if you haven't, I'll link to in the show notes. 21:13.821 --> 21:21.252 [SPEAKER_01]: Scott Gray really downplays a lot of what happened and a lot of it, I think if you take it with the most 21:21.232 --> 21:28.264 [SPEAKER_01]: generous reading is it is like, oh, they didn't term receipts or the budget was a little weird or they should have asked permission. 21:28.825 --> 21:37.901 [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that get shared very early on is something that sounds very much like just straight up fraud, but I'll let Gibbs talk about it. 21:38.582 --> 21:44.893 [SPEAKER_00]: The goal loans were taken out without legal authorization or a word of approval. 21:45.295 --> 21:47.561 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, rubber grade minute to that. 21:48.082 --> 21:52.975 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that was kind of not a big shocker that we would discover that. 21:53.757 --> 22:02.038 [SPEAKER_00]: But what was disheartening as we went into this is it appears that false cabinets were created. 22:02.457 --> 22:07.388 [SPEAKER_00]: It's got very signed these false medits, and that both he and 4G delivered these false medits to secure these loans. 22:07.609 --> 22:18.593 [SPEAKER_00]: So this was it just, you know, we're not over-during, but I mean, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we 22:18.573 --> 22:28.850 [SPEAKER_00]: basically forged documents to run these loans on the church's tap without any or authority knowledge or permission. 22:29.070 --> 22:33.037 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's difficult to claim ignorance when you are forging documents. 22:33.678 --> 22:43.534 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like I said, there is a lot of ignorance just generically and especially in the I-F-B-Words general because of what I referred to earlier. 22:43.514 --> 22:47.240 [SPEAKER_01]: But in a business, it is complicated. 22:47.521 --> 22:53.191 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a certain threshold of things that everyone knows, something's going to slip through the cracks. 22:53.812 --> 22:55.976 [SPEAKER_01]: But this isn't something slipping through the cracks. 22:55.996 --> 23:05.472 [SPEAKER_02]: This is intentional, clearly intentional, to forge board documents to go get a loan is obviously something that somebody had to do. 23:05.452 --> 23:06.674 [SPEAKER_02]: make a decision to do. 23:07.334 --> 23:10.679 [SPEAKER_02]: Not just something that's like, oh yeah, we could totally find. 23:10.939 --> 23:13.722 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we can sign for other people and pretend like everybody knows about it. 23:14.824 --> 23:25.457 [SPEAKER_01]: And I can't believe I've been coming this story for a couple of months now and I just realized the irony that his name is for G. Shouldn't put that guy in charge of the finances. 23:25.658 --> 23:25.958 [SPEAKER_01]: But. 23:26.528 --> 23:45.820 [SPEAKER_01]: yeah so it's yeah it definitely crosses into like you can't claim ignorance to this extent and again if you have any like doubt about this or anything where you're like you know do they have evidence of this or they just assuming this it gets worse and worse and worse I don't know the next exhibit if you would 23:45.800 --> 23:58.155 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, and I wish I had video recording this, but he's basically showing on the PowerPoint presentation like screenshots, texts, financial charts, so they've got plenty stacked up here. 23:58.388 --> 23:59.350 [SPEAKER_00]: were fake. 24:00.473 --> 24:10.134 [SPEAKER_00]: You see a number four where it says taking a 90 day loan for first citizen's bank in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars. 24:10.815 --> 24:18.051 [SPEAKER_00]: So what they did is they took the net and I'm not going to reallments to get stuff that exciting, but the first three were legit. 24:18.031 --> 24:32.679 [SPEAKER_00]: and then it's being approved by the chairman and the secretary, but you see where they added the bank language, it's kind of highlighted there, the phrasing someone said his suspect, and then they put a line for the pastor to sign, so that wasn't how the minutes looked. 24:32.739 --> 24:34.723 [SPEAKER_00]: We can go to the next exhibit. 24:35.581 --> 24:39.347 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the minutes that were actually used. 24:39.367 --> 24:43.413 [SPEAKER_00]: So the minutes were one, two, three, the Secretary and Sharon's sign. 24:44.034 --> 24:51.084 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, this was not just, we were taking out loans that we forgot to tell people about. 24:51.104 --> 25:02.601 [SPEAKER_00]: This was the more that they were orchestrating, working together, forging documents, and all of this was being done in a way to obligate Liberty Church. 25:02.581 --> 25:03.742 [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, they're going into the

bank. 25:04.102 --> 25:07.265 [SPEAKER_01]: They're taking the minutes as proof of board approval with all these signatures. 25:07.746 --> 25:11.789 [SPEAKER_01]: But they're inserting a line before the signatures with this loan approval. 25:12.250 --> 25:17.955 [SPEAKER_01]: So literally nobody but 4G and Gray apparently knew that this was happening. 25:18.415 --> 25:19.596 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is bad, right? 25:20.037 --> 25:22.739 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to be a financial expert to say that's not good. 25:23.039 --> 25:23.400 [SPEAKER_02]: Correct. 25:23.520 --> 25:25.321 [SPEAKER_02]: And they obviously knew. 25:25.802 --> 25:26.422 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as well. 25:26.623 --> 25:32.588 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you're, again, intentionally doing these things. 25:32.568 --> 25:35.352 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, $100,000 for a 90-day loan, right? 25:35.372 --> 25:36.534 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, where's the money going? 25:36.634 --> 25:37.876 [SPEAKER_01]: What's the intent to pay it back? 25:38.076 --> 25:44.445 [SPEAKER_01]: And like, Gibbs points out, which is important to remember because I think it's easy to go like, oh, these guys were doing this thing. 25:44.505 --> 25:49.112 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you remember the church, like, they're obligating the ministry to cover that loan. 25:49.172 --> 25:54.319 [SPEAKER_01]: So like, if he pulls on a hundred grand and I'm saying this hypothetically, and I don't know that this is the case, and it's not. 25:54.419 --> 25:55.581 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just throwing this out there. 25:56.081 --> 26:00.668 [SPEAKER_01]: But he takes on your grand out and they go to Vegas for a weekend and they blow it all on black. 26:00.648 --> 26:03.212 [SPEAKER_02]: the church sauce to pay that money valuable to pay that back. 26:03.272 --> 26:03.552 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 26:04.053 --> 26:07.639 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's an extreme example, but this is also an extreme case. 26:07.719 --> 26:08.740 [SPEAKER_02]: So the church is on the hook. 26:08.860 --> 26:15.951 [SPEAKER_02]: The taking out personal loans, like they would not have been able just to go to the bank and get this get the 90 day $100,000. 26:16.211 --> 26:18.395 [SPEAKER_02]: Which is why they need the board approval and correct. 26:18.535 --> 26:29.912 [SPEAKER_02]: The bank is using the church's finances as the collateral needed to show that they are financially viable and that they can actually 26:29.892 --> 26:38.281 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the stuff that should irritate for lack of a better word, irritate people who have been giving ties and offerings for years. 26:39.042 --> 26:43.928 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think about all of the vision campaigns or whatever fundraising efforts have been. 26:43.948 --> 26:52.577 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're yourself giving thousands of dollars to a church, you don't want this stuff happening, Willie, no, like you want it to go toward the ministry. 26:52.597 --> 26:57.823 [SPEAKER_01]: There's something cool about everyone

pulling their money to do things that serve the community 26:58.242 --> 26:59.264 [SPEAKER_01]: to be used like this. 26:59.304 --> 27:04.915 [SPEAKER_01]: Like a personal piggy bank is not ideal, especially when it puts the church in a really compromised position. 27:04.935 --> 27:10.986 [SPEAKER_01]: I think Gibbs says in this clip, his defense for most of the questions Gibbs asked was, oh, forget it. 27:11.066 --> 27:11.607 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know. 27:11.988 --> 27:16.276 [SPEAKER_01]: And he has a very convenient scapegoat in forgy because he can't answer questions. 27:16.817 --> 27:19.322 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, they have some evidence that came up that, 27:20.230 --> 27:21.351 [SPEAKER_01]: that doesn't look good for Scott. 27:21.592 --> 27:24.536 [SPEAKER_00]: I can see here, and I will read it down here. 27:24.556 --> 27:32.145 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't see that one myself, but what you will see is Scott Gray texting. 27:32.165 --> 27:39.515 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna turn on VATES person world, but I think one of his defenses to me is basically forging dead. 27:39.635 --> 27:40.416 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know. 27:40.970 --> 27:45.301 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and these texts and emails seem to refute some of them. 27:45.601 --> 27:52.499 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of sure there were things that for you did, he didn't know, but at the end of the day, you know, he's asking for you. 27:52.519 --> 27:54.443 [SPEAKER_00]: I received a letter to my life lock. 27:54.504 --> 27:57.932 [SPEAKER_00]: It says citizens asking me if I applied for a loan. 27:57.912 --> 28:00.718 [SPEAKER_00]: My name would show up on our turtle island, is that correct? 28:00.738 --> 28:02.342 [SPEAKER_00]: Just checking if I should say yes. 28:02.843 --> 28:06.812 [SPEAKER_00]: Forgey, yeah, that's a good song and it must be, they're getting close to being finalized. 28:07.233 --> 28:09.519 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, they kind of chatted a little more. 28:09.559 --> 28:12.185 [SPEAKER_00]: Then Scott says, any word from the bank. 28:12.726 --> 28:15.853 [SPEAKER_00]: So he knew he was asking, they were feeling pressure. 28:15.833 --> 28:24.866 [SPEAKER_00]: They asked for the last two years financial balance sheets, they emailed back, they needed stuff, and Scott's like, wow, okay, thanks, he let me know when you have a minute for quick call. 28:25.067 --> 28:34.441 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to get my Verizon bill paid by MS, they were kind of chronically just so you're aware, maxed out credit cards, okay, and I'll talk about this, but you guys are taking it. 28:34.461 --> 28:37.525 [SPEAKER_01]: Just so you do know if those are personal credit cards, they're not going to get charges. 28:37.545 --> 28:39.428 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, sure, they're going to cards, yeah. 28:39.408 --> 28:45.617 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he doesn't get into his personal finances like this is when he says other running up credit cards It's like the church credit cards. 28:45.657 --> 28:46.919 [SPEAKER_01]: We're carrying all of them. 28:46.939 --> 28:55.651 [SPEAKER_01]: We're kind of maxed out balance is all the time And he says I don't remember if I had the clip keyed up, but he's like there was tons of situations where people would go to like Chick-fil-a for you activity in the car. 28:55.691 --> 28:58.615 [SPEAKER_01]: We get to climb to they make a payment to lower the balance like they were 28:58.595 --> 29:00.720 [SPEAKER_01]: carrying streamed that on credit. 29:00.740 --> 29:11.142 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which begs a lot of questions because obviously from that, you know, six, seven hundred thousand dollar increase in a few months up in an and eliminating eight people from payroll is a factor in that. 29:11.463 --> 29:13.327 [SPEAKER_01]: Especially when all that least for those. 29:14.169 --> 29:14.730 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, 29:14.710 --> 29:36.500 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd say five if you include for it, but at least four of those are his family, that we're also, you know, allegedly using these credit cards as in probably not getting paid small salaries, but not sure, but yeah, that's me either here and over there, the question that pops up into my mind is, why do you have to go max out credit cards and continue getting loans? 29:36.721 --> 29:41.207 [SPEAKER_02]: And when cash flow seems strong inside of the church. 29:41.187 --> 29:59.411 [SPEAKER_00]: Just so you know, I mean, that the mafia charges lower rate in the credit card company, okay, so I mean, you might have all gone to the mall for it to get out of your 25% mic, but this church was just constantly bumping into its credit limits, so there's a lot of tax that emails had to try to spend it. 29:59.531 --> 30:01.474 [SPEAKER_00]: And if I was a staff one, 30:01.454 --> 30:04.906 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, that ain't a stop that was a hundred percent legitimate. 30:04.946 --> 30:13.135 [SPEAKER_00]: We're taking senior adults to the Fed, in front of car 12 work, because it would just perpetually be maxed out and there are their high loves. 30:13.469 --> 30:24.805 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, I mean, again, just those last three clips, like I think Ray was more aware than, at least it seems he was far more aware than he let's on in that initial Facebook post that I read. 30:25.165 --> 30:26.988 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, either scenario is not good. 30:27.448 --> 30:32.655 [SPEAKER_02]: You either have to, you either were aware or you are very incompetent. 30:32.675 --> 30:34.258 [SPEAKER_01]: Dude, that's a great, that's a great point. 30:34.558 --> 30:39.004 [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's where I was telling you there, they, you know, we were talking about situation and I was like, 30:39.642 --> 30:47.087 [SPEAKER_01]: either this person in this company is doing something on their own and the owner has no idea. 30:47.253 --> 30:49.556 [SPEAKER_01]: or the owners behind it, which is bad too. 30:50.497 --> 30:53.701 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you get to situations like that, you go, both of those suck. 30:54.101

--> 31:03.452 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if the owner is aware, or if the owner is completely unaware that this is happening with upper leadership in his team, he's two hands off of his own business. 31:03.532 --> 31:05.735 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, he needs to take more control over what he's doing. 31:06.476 --> 31:12.383 [SPEAKER_01]: If he does know, you know, obviously, with this case, like if gray knows this is going on, 31:12.363 --> 31:24.242 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's severe legal consequences for every single thing talked about here, but if he doesn't know, it's like, well, why are you the senior pastor where you're leading an or freshman, as long as that hasn't much? 31:24.282 --> 31:24.522 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 31:24.903 --> 31:26.485 [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, it's bad either way. 31:26.666 --> 31:32.395 [SPEAKER_02]: It's also, not to bring it back to the abuse thing, but it's also, I mean, this is the show to do it. 31:32.675 --> 31:33.777 [SPEAKER_01]: I know, it's going to bring it back. 31:33.877 --> 31:34.878 [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard not to, you know? 31:34.899 --> 31:38.404 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just another, another, like, you can't, you just, you know, 31:38.384 --> 31:43.255 [SPEAKER_02]: You can't just shuffle around people who are convinced like the the behavior continues. 31:43.455 --> 31:43.556 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 31:43.576 --> 31:44.658 [SPEAKER_02]: The behavior doesn't get better. 31:45.199 --> 31:48.607 [SPEAKER_02]: If there's no repercussions or consequences for the behavior. 31:49.108 --> 31:57.928 [SPEAKER_02]: So bringing in somebody who is doing something as evil as, you know, abusing a child and then expecting them to just be like, 31:57.908 --> 31:59.932 [SPEAKER_02]: I trust this guy. 31:59.952 --> 32:02.817 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, there's no way that he's trying to steal from the church, you know, so. 32:02.857 --> 32:07.706 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's, again, you're, you're claiming ignorance, but it's not just ignorance. 32:07.826 --> 32:10.651 [SPEAKER_02]: It is, it is much more nefarious than that. 32:10.952 --> 32:12.735 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a big question mark over this whole thing. 32:12.775 --> 32:19.427 [SPEAKER_01]: Is, you know, obviously with everything revealed about Scott here in this report. 32:19.407 --> 32:21.470 [SPEAKER_01]: it's a raise the question for a lot of people. 32:22.011 --> 32:23.954 [SPEAKER_01]: Did he know about 4G or did he not? 32:24.295 --> 32:37.997 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, because the story up until this point has been nobody knew about it except for 4G and the victim, but a lot of people are going, you know, you're doing this much together, you're doing this much, you know, essentially financial crime. 32:38.237 --> 32:38.698 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 32:39.168 --> 32:56.697 [SPEAKER_01]: together, like, what leverage was there, how much was known, how much was, you know, and again, that goes into speculation, which I try to avoid on the show, but when you're doing something as serious as all of this, it calls in a question your testimony and your transparency about everything else, as it should, like, yeah, as it should. 32:56.937 --> 32:57.919 [SPEAKER_01]: So, 32:57.899 --> 33:04.449 [SPEAKER_01]: You've already heard that there were unauthorized loans allegedly taken out that have all some forgery. 33:05.491 --> 33:10.659 [SPEAKER_01]: There was extreme spending on church credit cards, budget really not being counted for at all. 33:11.460 --> 33:23.438 [SPEAKER_01]: But wait till you hear, and I'm sure this will shock you, as someone who grew up in ministry and adjacent to it, when you hear what else was happening simultaneously to all of this going on. 33:23.458 --> 33:23.799 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you ready? 33:24.760 --> 33:25.041 [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm. 33:25.061 --> 33:25.341 [SPEAKER_01]: There we go. 33:25.321 --> 33:48.763 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm at time staff were asked not to take pictures, yeah so I mean yeah like so that's that honestly again like many things that they're gonna talk about over the course of this episode it bothers me so much when people are given the impression that we're all in this together like you said for the mission 33:49.351 --> 33:59.682 [SPEAKER_01]: And then they're giving up paychecks, time with family, like all the things that come with being in ministry, unfortunately in this world, and meanwhile, 34:00.522 --> 34:04.427 [SPEAKER_01]: There's all this stuff happening in the background where people are benefiting and you're not. 34:05.028 --> 34:10.395 [SPEAKER_02]: But the person who's leading it is not willing to make the same sacrifice. 34:10.435 --> 34:11.257 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. 34:11.297 --> 34:21.831 [SPEAKER_02]: That's what, because like even in business, man, like we had a software startup, you know, there's hard times and good times and all the things mixed in when you're trying to grow a business. 34:21.891 --> 34:22.632 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 34:22.612 --> 34:38.470 [SPEAKER_02]: And I just, I always felt like if I was asking you guys to like go through a period of hard work or to take a cut and pay or something like that, I was always doing the same thing alongside of you. 34:38.570 --> 34:42.675 [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's, it's just, it's the whole, the Simon Cynic leaders eat last thing. 34:43.476 --> 34:46.319 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like you, like you are the one leading this enterprise. 34:46.379 --> 34:48.822 [SPEAKER_02]: You can't go to your staff and say, 34:48.802 --> 34:52.429 [SPEAKER_02]: it's time for you guys, you know, we're going through a bit of a pinchier. 34:52.589 --> 35:01.947 [SPEAKER_01]: So especially when to sacrifice them buckle up, the Lord will provide and especially when it's couched in that spiritual lingo, which is a big, big issue. 35:02.188 --> 35:03.891 [SPEAKER_02]: But in the meantime, 35:03.871 --> 35:08.538 [SPEAKER_02]: I will continue doing whatever I want to do, that's the part where I have a problem with it. 35:08.598 -->

35:12.944 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessarily even a problem with a time to cut pay. 35:13.185 --> 35:15.688 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, look, I understand stuff happens all the time. 35:15.748 --> 35:29.068 [SPEAKER_02]: In my start-up, I went months without taking a paycheck at all, in effort to make sure that I could still pay the people that were working for me and trying to make the mission happen, and during that time, 35:29.048 --> 35:50.483 [SPEAKER_02]: Didn't get to eat out a bunch didn't you know what I mean like that but that's part of the deal So it's not necessarily a matter of like oh, I'm upset that he asked people to take a pay cut It's just that if you're in any leadership context, whether it's a business a church, whatever If you're the leader that's asking your people to make sacrifices then you should not only be willing to make the same ones You should be taking the lead said sacrifices 35:50.463 --> 35:58.814 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is at home for me because like, I know, and you've seen it first hand with friends and film members that have been impacted by this type of thing happening in churches. 35:59.475 --> 36:09.568 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I've shared this story before on the show, but just to give context that this, this happens, like this piece alone happens far too much, but I happen to be involved in a similar story where, 36:09.548 --> 36:22.912 [SPEAKER_01]: I worked for an organization, the leader was paying himself a fat salary behind the scenes, no books, no nothing, treating the ministry like his personal slash fund, my starting salary with that organization was $300 a month. 36:23.714 --> 36:27.540 [SPEAKER_01]: And a few months later, I got my first raise to $600 a month. 36:29.003 --> 36:30.105 [SPEAKER_01]: I was engaged. 36:30.085 --> 36:38.102 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't get engaged when you're making six hundred awesome up and I reached out to ask you know, can I make some more money? 36:38.783 --> 36:50.187 [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I asked was because he was going to hire he wanted me to put a now hiring thing on the website, you know, to advertise a ministry position. 36:50.167 --> 36:53.651 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I said, why are we interviewing someone for any position right now? 36:54.011 --> 36:55.393 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that because we need more people on the team? 36:55.953 --> 36:57.795 [SPEAKER_01]: I said, we can't afford the people we have on the team now. 36:58.095 --> 36:59.036 [SPEAKER_01]: How are we going to pay new people? 36:59.637 --> 37:02.820 [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, Eric, who's the director, the visionary? 37:03.441 --> 37:04.622 [SPEAKER_01]: And who's the media guy? 37:04.943 --> 37:05.503 [SPEAKER_01]: That's me. 37:05.523 --> 37:06.144 [SPEAKER_01]: In case you didn't know. 37:06.785 --> 37:10.909 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, that's not meant to be degrading, but to say where the best we operate within our strengths. 37:10.929 --> 37:13.572 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm building a team building and expansion is one of mine. 37:13.772 --> 37:14.393 [SPEAKER_01]: I know what I'm doing. 37:14.413 --> 37:15.454 [SPEAKER_02]: This is an actual piece of community. 37:15.474 --> 37:16.495 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm reaching out. 37:16.475 --> 37:18.664 [SPEAKER_01]: Let me be clear, I'm reading my text. 37:18.684 --> 37:19.428 [SPEAKER_01]: Not no kidding. 37:19.448 --> 37:20.171 [SPEAKER_01]: This is legit. 37:20.753 --> 37:22.561 [SPEAKER_01]: Copypaste from my Facebook Messenger. 37:22.802 --> 37:23.565 [SPEAKER_01]: Messages. 37:24.085 --> 37:26.288 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I understand that. 37:26.408 --> 37:28.671 [SPEAKER_01]: I also understand that none of us are receiving a full paycheck. 37:28.891 --> 37:34.278 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, operating on the idea that he's not, not even close to a full page. 37:34.378 --> 37:37.822 [SPEAKER_02]: No, that's not like that's less than minimum wage. 37:37.862 --> 37:39.004 [SPEAKER_01]: It was very bad, yeah. 37:39.024 --> 37:40.646 [SPEAKER_02]: It is like illegal. 37:41.026 --> 37:42.208 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 37:42.228 --> 37:44.010 [SPEAKER_01]: So I said, I know none of us are received. 37:44.030 --> 37:48.195 [SPEAKER_01]: So again, I'm bought into the idea that we're all sacrificing for the ministry. 37:48.456 --> 37:50.398 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I know this is not this story. 37:50.819 --> 37:52.000 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 37:51.980 --> 37:55.504 [SPEAKER_01]: This is basically this, it's not something that happens. 37:56.465 --> 37:57.787 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is the first time I've ever happened. 37:57.827 --> 37:59.649 [SPEAKER_01]: This is something I personally experienced. 38:00.230 --> 38:03.794 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I said a couple of things that I said, I've got a lot of skin in the game. 38:04.235 --> 38:06.698 [SPEAKER_01]: I've right to be concerned when I see a potential money suck appearing. 38:07.219 --> 38:08.620 [SPEAKER_01]: Left me on, right for 15 minutes. 38:09.441 --> 38:13.546 [SPEAKER_01]: I said, you're making me lose hair, L-O-L, and I'm sweating shaky, like freaking out. 38:13.606 --> 38:16.950 [SPEAKER_02]: I was gonna say, I can feel the anxiety pouring through the camera. 38:16.971 --> 38:17.491 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know me? 38:17.511 --> 38:19.033 [SPEAKER_02]: I know who you are. 38:19.013 --> 38:26.609 [SPEAKER_02]: And it takes a lot to push you to confront in this type of Yes, yeah, so he said tell me what do you need? 38:27.030 --> 38:29.977 [SPEAKER_01]: I said money He said I'll gonna help. 38:30.017 --> 38:35.869 [SPEAKER_01]: I said money and he said how much and I said just enough to have some security For my fiancee and getting married. 38:36.290 --> 38:37.613 [SPEAKER_01]: She said how much money? 38:37.964 --> 38:49.262 [SPEAKER_01]: So again, putting the ball in the court, I said, if I just knew I had enough to pay rent for an apartment and meet a couple of basic needs of necessary, it was basically I felt like if we didn't raise up my need to go to our mission

field, then we're kind of screwed. 38:50.084 --> 38:56.935 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, I'm happy for you because you're gonna learn a completely new dimension of faith and reliance on God. 38:56.915 --> 39:00.822 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I, yes, 600 bucks a month for two people in the 21st century will do that. 39:01.603 --> 39:08.155 [SPEAKER_01]: He says, anyone who has ever desired to be significantly used by God has had to experience times of complete and utter dependence on God. 39:08.496 --> 39:12.283 [SPEAKER_01]: And what I could do, but won't, is to replace God and just meet the need. 39:12.563 --> 39:16.290 [SPEAKER_01]: I would be robbing you of a great learning and growing experience. 39:16.270 --> 39:28.265 [SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, so that's for beta messages that I got and this person again, he's saying all of that about like reliance on God, deep seated needs all this sort of thing, he's paying himself well over six figures. 39:28.285 --> 39:35.815 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, nobody knew on the team at all was using the Ministry of Funds as a slash fund like it was really bad so. 39:35.795 --> 39:44.608 [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, like, if I want to say, you know, something in this line, like, per se, I was like, I hate this, this sucks, it's that. 39:45.049 --> 39:51.278 [SPEAKER_01]: And I saw that happen with my parents for so many years, like, the abuse financially could be its own podcast. 39:51.518 --> 39:56.305 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I guess it's your faith will pull you through this. 39:56.606 --> 39:58.208 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but. 39:58.188 --> 39:58.890 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm good. 39:59.671 --> 40:00.173 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 40:00.193 --> 40:00.373 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 40:00.393 --> 40:06.287 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like like it's almost like my faith was tested in a different arena So this is not gonna be my test. 40:06.647 --> 40:16.450 [SPEAKER_02]: Well then the audacity just to say that like I could do this But that steals your blessing from God that just reminds me of that there's a certain illustration that made the rounds back in the day 40:16.430 --> 40:39.771 [SPEAKER_02]: Where it was the guy in the lifeboat in the middle of the ocean and is praying to God to come save them and God sends a boat and Then he says, you know, oh no, no, no, no, no, thank you I'm waiting for God to save me and God sends another boat and a bigger boat this time and he says no, thanks I'm waiting for God to save me and then the punch line is essentially the guy ends up dying in the middle of the ocean from 40:39.751 --> 41:00.679 [SPEAKER_02]: thirst and then gets to heaven and goes, God, why didn't you save me and he said, meet me halfway, get in the boat and it's like this is, this person's direct ability to effect it, it's like, why would you not just look at it as this is God using me to help this young man through this difficult time because it's within my power to do so, rather than just being like, 41:00.659 --> 41:04.064 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, this is going to be a good faith testing experience for you. 41:04.224 --> 41:04.525 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 41:04.725 --> 41:04.945 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 41:05.065 --> 41:09.292 [SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's always easy to be like the, you know, to steal the Jay Sheddy thing. 41:09.352 --> 41:11.275 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like live like a month and it's a lot easier. 41:11.335 --> 41:13.718 [SPEAKER_01]: Step one millions of dollars in the bank account. 41:13.818 --> 41:14.039 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 41:14.159 --> 41:15.160 [SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to be at peace. 41:15.641 --> 41:16.462 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, with the world. 41:16.903 --> 41:18.826 [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, so this drove me crazy. 41:18.846 --> 41:22.551 [SPEAKER_01]: I know I haven't even gotten through this audio clip, but I had to share some personal perspective here. 41:23.473 --> 41:25.355 [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, but here's the, here's the full clip here. 41:25.956 --> 41:29.181 [SPEAKER_00]: At times staff were asked not to take pictures. 41:29.380 --> 41:41.439 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, staff sometimes, we have a disaster, you have good staff here and everybody's saying, hey, we've got a type up and we're going to not take a paycheck and everybody's in, but that has to be board-authorized, known, approved. 41:41.980 --> 41:47.169 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't be asking people one of the time, hey, whatever to pay you the sponge, just keep it on the down globe. 41:47.930 --> 41:50.494 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the kind of thing where those loans 41:50.474 --> 41:55.919 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so you're gonna stand legally, it's illegal for any one person. 41:56.419 --> 42:00.843 [SPEAKER_00]: Staff or one member got obligated to church financially without proper authority. 42:01.884 --> 42:03.365 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we got that. 42:03.946 --> 42:07.069 [SPEAKER_01]: So he's asking people must take paychecks or taking out these crazy loans. 42:08.049 --> 42:11.573 [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, again, to point out to that the church is in a good position, cash for the wise. 42:11.933 --> 42:12.934 [SPEAKER_01]: Cash for the wise, yes. 42:13.014 --> 42:15.316 [SPEAKER_01]: Same leverage wise, very dangerous position. 42:15.576 --> 42:15.776 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 42:16.217 --> 42:16.357 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 42:16.377 --> 42:18.979 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm just saying like they're not in a good position, cash for the wise. 42:18.959 --> 42:29.609 [SPEAKER_02]: but that's what is the red flag because as soon as this person and few people leave the church, now the sudden where there's excess funds and over a million dollars in cash in the bank. 42:29.629 --> 42:32.551 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, well, something was happening to that money. 42:32.651 --> 42:40.779 [SPEAKER_02]: The church didn't just, the church didn't just go as soon as he left like, hey, let's all start giving 100% more, like it was the same stuff that was happening. 42:41.219 --> 42:43.261 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of red

flags being raised. 42:43.541 --> 42:44.402 [SPEAKER_01]: Right, absolutely. 42:45.063 --> 42:48.966 [SPEAKER_01]: But so he asked me to take pay cuts, not take pay checks, 42:48.946 --> 43:03.943 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's taking out all these loans, you know, allegedly he's doing all of this Seems like there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that, but I'll throw in allegedly and they're just to cover my own Behind and yours by proxy. 43:03.963 --> 43:04.363 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you. 43:04.383 --> 43:12.472 [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome, but Scott Bray is also doing this in addition to this Allegedly, according to David Gibbs and the findings of this investigation. 43:12.953 --> 43:18.379 [SPEAKER_00]: Gray, self-adjusted, and gave himself the additional Compensation 43:19.034 --> 43:27.716 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, he denies this and I will show you some of his denials but his text tell a different story. 43:28.217 --> 43:30.563 [SPEAKER_01]: I need to steal this line from David Gibbs. 43:30.880 --> 43:34.944 [SPEAKER_01]: The text tell a different, it's very Chris Hansen. 43:34.964 --> 43:35.345 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. 43:35.425 --> 43:38.147 [SPEAKER_01]: He says this, but the text tell a different story. 43:38.828 --> 43:41.231 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like when he pulls out Chris Hansen pulls out the chat log. 43:41.451 --> 43:41.751 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 43:41.771 --> 43:44.814 [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, you said you were going to do XYZ. 43:45.535 --> 43:45.775 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 43:45.795 --> 43:46.956 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to start doing it for the pizza. 43:47.137 --> 43:48.758 [SPEAKER_01]: The text tell a different story. 43:49.399 --> 43:55.285 [SPEAKER_00]: Stockray, self adjusted, and gave himself the additional compensation. 43:55.990 --> 44:04.684 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, he denies this, and I will show you some of his denials, but his text tell a different story. 44:06.047 --> 44:17.746 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of his codes with this was, again, they were on an auto-pack, okay, so you get like a pay, digitally, through the banks, auto-possil. 44:18.487 --> 44:22.133 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he would have 4G for a paper check. 44:22.433 --> 44:26.419 [SPEAKER_00]: And that ended up trying to be in code for second paycheck. 44:27.040 --> 44:33.327 [SPEAKER_00]: So he would get a take-a-check that would match his regular paycheck and get the auto deposit. 44:33.387 --> 44:35.689 [SPEAKER_00]: So you all configured that out pretty easily. 44:36.210 --> 44:37.651 [SPEAKER_00]: It's two pay tickets, right? 44:37.671 --> 44:39.253 [SPEAKER_00]: You get dealt, but you shouldn't be gay. 44:39.934 --> 44:47.362 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that didn't always show up then on his tax return, which is another theme that we have kind of discovered. 44:47.522 --> 44:54.870 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of this was how much can I hit the church to pay that then doesn't show up is 44:54.850 --> 44:58.695 [SPEAKER_00]: So these double payments were a problem. 44:59.376 --> 45:06.206 [SPEAKER_02]: This seems, again, allegedly, worse to me than even a lot of the business fraud cases that I've seen over the last few years. 45:06.406 --> 45:13.676 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're starting to make sense why the investigator said this was the worst case that I'd ever seen, or one of the worst cases they'd ever seen. 45:13.716 --> 45:21.206 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, again, like the, the ignorance argument is making less and less and less sense here. 45:21.386 --> 45:21.927 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 45:22.428 --> 45:22.528 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 45:22.508 --> 45:23.991 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I thought it was gone at clip three. 45:24.172 --> 45:28.782 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the, the alleged, oh, I was, I didn't know what was going on. 45:28.822 --> 45:34.054 [SPEAKER_01]: I was just this in, and honestly, like this, in my opinion, listening to this. 45:34.709 --> 45:41.578 [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard for me to believe that this is something that started around December 2023 when they started like, correct. 45:41.759 --> 45:48.828 [SPEAKER_01]: Because the, you know, when I, it's the same thing I see with sexual abuse cases, like, there's a certain level of brazeness that starts happening. 45:48.868 --> 45:50.751 [SPEAKER_01]: I was gonna say there's arrogance involved here. 45:50.771 --> 45:58.962 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and to be texting about it, like, to be getting a paper check, to be leaving as much of a paper trail, 45:58.942 --> 46:03.727 [SPEAKER_01]: To me, I have a hard time thinking that this isn't something where it was a trickle at first. 46:04.008 --> 46:04.288 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. 46:04.308 --> 46:08.713 [SPEAKER_01]: It was, oh, this is nobody noticed this, nobody noticed this, nobody noticed this. 46:09.594 --> 46:12.798 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm here, you know, two decades later, how it's just the way things are done. 46:12.858 --> 46:13.639 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, write me a check. 46:13.879 --> 46:14.019 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. 46:14.540 --> 46:15.841 [SPEAKER_01]: Or here, take the credit card. 46:16.082 --> 46:24.291 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like there's stories that he shared in the meeting of, you know, that, you know, I think it was him or it was somebody in the church that was sharing this with me. 46:24.541 --> 46:25.943 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the kids would go by swing. 46:26.043 --> 46:27.085 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, just take the church card. 46:27.486 --> 46:31.492 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that level, which like that is nothing compared to everything else. 46:31.512 --> 46:35.157 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like the level of arrogance to say like, yeah, leave a paper trail of this stuff. 46:35.197 --> 46:39.304 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's forge minutes, you know, and say, hey, we're gonna have you sign here. 46:39.324 --> 46:42.969 [SPEAKER_01]: The board says we didn't all sign on this, but now there's an extra line here. 46:43.029 --> 46:45.333 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't care how ignorant you are about money. 46:45.353 --> 46:47.877 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you're

getting double paid. 46:48.117 --> 46:48.658 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 46:48.638 --> 46:49.459 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't go. 46:49.719 --> 46:50.180 [SPEAKER_01]: That's weird. 46:50.220 --> 46:52.183 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm really on top this month, right? 46:52.303 --> 46:53.565 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you notice that stuff. 46:54.045 --> 46:58.392 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, like using the cards for fast food like There is some ignorance there. 46:58.452 --> 47:00.134 [SPEAKER_01]: You see business owners all the time, though. 47:00.314 --> 47:01.336 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is a business meeting. 47:01.416 --> 47:04.019 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, you see that stuff. 47:04.039 --> 47:07.484 [SPEAKER_01]: But the scale of this is just hard to hard to ignore. 47:08.506 --> 47:13.212 [SPEAKER_01]: So you just get in self additional compensation and it gives continues here with this. 47:13.192 --> 47:18.661 [SPEAKER_00]: A band ended the historical accountability of the budget at Liberty Baptist Church. 47:19.723 --> 47:26.694 [SPEAKER_00]: His spending on the church credit card was excessive and significantly undocumented. 47:27.536 --> 47:33.586 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when we say undocumented and swing way all what it was for, we have no receipts, there's no documentation. 47:34.287 --> 47:35.689 [SPEAKER_00]: How did we discuss? 47:36.580 --> 47:38.303 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll just say this too. 47:38.343 --> 47:49.402 [SPEAKER_01]: This is why I say a ledge financial mismanagement, something seem like a ledge fraud is like, if this went to the court of law, which it doesn't seem like it's going to and we'll get to that at the end of this conversation. 47:50.183 --> 47:55.652 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's so much of this because of how badly managed the finances were. 47:55.632 --> 47:57.095 [SPEAKER_01]: that most of it is what he said. 47:57.136 --> 47:59.521 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like we don't know where this money went. 47:59.601 --> 48:01.767 [SPEAKER_01]: Which again is also horrifically bad. 48:02.528 --> 48:05.375 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously there's some things that look explicitly criminal. 48:05.957 --> 48:08.663 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it would be hard to argue that they weren't. 48:08.778 --> 48:16.865 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like, the fact that you're gonna hear hundreds of thousands of dollars is just completely like, we don't know where that went, is crazy. 48:17.106 --> 48:22.610 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, that's just, yeah, especially when it's literally one of your main responsibility in the organization. 48:22.691 --> 48:23.051 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 48:23.071 --> 48:26.974 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and it's helpful for him and forgy that for you is in charge of that. 48:27.034 --> 48:29.297 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, who else is gonna notice it? 48:29.877 --> 48:30.357 [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah. 48:30.638 --> 48:36.523 [SPEAKER_00]: I pray a band in the historical accountability of the budget at Liberty Baptist Church. 48:37.246 --> 48:44.292 [SPEAKER_00]: his spending on the church credit card was excessive and significantly undocumented. 48:45.113 --> 48:51.178 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when we say undocumented, and something like that, we know what it was for, we have no receipts, there's no documentation. 48:52.079 --> 48:53.060 [SPEAKER_00]: How did we discuss? 48:54.481 --> 48:59.486 [SPEAKER_00]: The excessive spending was discovered after Tim Fordy suicide. 48:59.506 --> 49:05.751 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, not trying to be insensitive, that's obviously a sad thing, but while they were 49:06.541 --> 49:14.998 [SPEAKER_00]: and graze it on forges gone and there were strange charges that began to show up on the church credit card. 49:15.468 --> 49:17.371 [SPEAKER_00]: And so people were like, well, what's this? 49:17.691 --> 49:18.252 [SPEAKER_00]: What's this? 49:18.372 --> 49:20.975 [SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of self-discovered. 49:21.015 --> 49:24.500 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, again, it's amazing how immediately it's discovered once he's out of the picture. 49:24.720 --> 49:25.582 [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't take a year. 49:25.862 --> 49:32.131 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was later like, oh, now someone else has to just got handed all these books or like, they're of, or like, they're a hell of hell. 49:32.151 --> 49:34.113 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about systems in the future. 49:34.133 --> 49:39.180 [SPEAKER_00]: How many believe we should never have it where it couldn't get discovered the way soon? 49:39.160 --> 49:45.774 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I want to, you know, I'm not, I'm wanting to say here, you know, while learning, you know, through this process. 49:45.914 --> 49:50.443 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, as we have all paid the tuition, I believe we all need to get the education. 49:50.483 --> 49:52.307 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to do this for a good way. 49:52.868 --> 49:54.993 [SPEAKER_01]: The Chinese and they have all those lines. 49:55.013 --> 49:57.017 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to steal all these lines, but. 49:56.997 --> 50:09.730 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I mean, it is a good point, like I think that's one of the things, again, I'll reiterate this, like when it comes to sexual abuse cases or financial, one of the biggest things that bothers me is I'll cover the story, the next person comes in, it's all structured the exact same way. 50:09.770 --> 50:17.859 [SPEAKER_01]: And so like, I had this conversation with a pastor a couple of years ago and he's like, yeah, I just love how we operate. 50:18.459 --> 50:26.768 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was the same way that they had operated basically when the last person's there, I said, I get that you're a better guy and you're not going to do this. 50:27.642 --> 50:32.488 [SPEAKER_01]: But why would you leave the system set up so when you leave, the next guy can come in and do the same thing? 50:33.028 --> 50:42.179 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, and I always say it's like having a king that rules everything with an iron, it's like, you can have a benevolent leader, but it's better to have

a system where that bad leader can't come into power at all. 50:42.279 --> 50:42.580 [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. 50:42.600 --> 50:52.992 [SPEAKER_01]: Rather than just trying to spot a good leader, cause obviously from this story of many others, human beings are woefully in equipped at spotting good leaders, like with 100% precision. 50:53.275 --> 50:55.218 [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of how it discovered itself. 50:55.578 --> 51:01.266 [SPEAKER_00]: It was not, you know, some people were like, oh, the decences pop up for people just get grumpy here. 51:01.326 --> 51:02.548 [SPEAKER_00]: This is about Starbucks. 51:02.588 --> 51:04.711 [SPEAKER_00]: No, it was at that moment. 51:04.871 --> 51:09.357 [SPEAKER_00]: There was like this bizarre, like wherever these charges coming in, people started asking questions. 51:09.978 --> 51:16.287 [SPEAKER_00]: And once it was discovered, it turned him to a pretty significant amount of money. 51:16.868 --> 51:22.135 [SPEAKER_00]: And so having worked with the CPA, every work with Kristen, if we could throw up exhibit number four, 51:23.043 --> 51:42.739 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, and you guys again may have a little trouble seeing it, so let me just say this to you What we came up with unbudgeted expenses, okay, so this would be the insurance housing some of that unbudgeted 90,000 to 123 dollars and 62 cents, so that was out of budget 51:43.242 --> 51:47.091 [SPEAKER_00]: 9 Ministry Related Expenses, and by the way, this is everybody. 51:47.271 --> 51:49.917 [SPEAKER_00]: We didn't just focus on the grades we wanted to staff wine. 51:50.338 --> 51:54.147 [SPEAKER_00]: 90, $129.21. 51:54.734 --> 52:03.462 [SPEAKER_00]: unknown expenses total costs, and remember, some of these could be with you, some, but there's no documentation, we don't have a clue what it is. 52:04.002 --> 52:09.988 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're trying to figure it out, 216,327 dollars and 30 cents. 52:10.728 --> 52:20.898 [SPEAKER_00]: And for those of you that are addition-oriented, the total, 399,680 dollars and 13 cents. 52:20.918 --> 52:23.560 [SPEAKER_00]: So the grant total is about 400 rent. 52:23.911 --> 52:44.350 [SPEAKER_01]: And so and I'll remind everybody that's just examining December 2023 to September 2025 and it's making the most out of the nothing they have right off of yeah So so about very close to half a million over an 18 to 19 month period 52:44.752 --> 52:50.598 [SPEAKER_00]: We, you know, working through all of this, I mean, you can see why we were doing these emergencies. 52:50.758 --> 52:55.824 [SPEAKER_00]: Stop, stop, stop, stop is we were way, way, way, way over spending. 52:56.865 --> 52:57.546 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 52:57.566 --> 53:04.633 [SPEAKER_00]: The amount of money that was being spent on each cracker issue was just kind of unbelievable. 53:05.074 --> 53:10.219 [SPEAKER_01]: You have almost $400,000, that's completely, a really unaccounted for within the ministry. 53:10.655 --> 53:13.182 [SPEAKER_01]: And people are probably wondering, where did some of that money go? 53:13.222 --> 53:14.284 [SPEAKER_01]: Do we know where any of it went? 53:14.846 --> 53:17.994 [SPEAKER_01]: And that brings me into this next clip here. 53:18.034 --> 53:21.142 [SPEAKER_01]: This clip number 11 of 16, by the way. 53:21.162 --> 53:22.285 [SPEAKER_01]: If you want any how many clips are there. 53:24.087 --> 53:26.089 [SPEAKER_00]: visit paying mother. 53:26.750 --> 53:41.464 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if they would leave town in the church you pay for all the trout, there was some travel that was paid for by the church that he would then, you know, they'd get honorariums out speaking and, again, it's just very, very messy. 53:41.484 --> 53:45.228 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the church is paying a lot of bills that should be paying. 53:45.248 --> 53:53.436 [SPEAKER_00]: The credit cards get put down whenever we want 53:53.416 --> 53:59.382 [SPEAKER_00]: It says this was reimbursed, but again, it's hard to know, lady's being sliced to funeral. 53:59.402 --> 54:07.051 [SPEAKER_00]: You know what funeral, who what we were doing, trying to read to mom's funeral in Florida and burial. 54:07.351 --> 54:09.674 [SPEAKER_00]: We paid for all the hotel and all the travel. 54:10.494 --> 54:13.698 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, let me say this, okay, just so you guys know. 54:14.659 --> 54:16.521 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're seeing your pastor as a mother, die. 54:17.041 --> 54:33.242 [SPEAKER_00]: And if the board says, hey, pastor, we know you're going down there, we know this is going to be a lot on you, dear family, and we the church want to give you $5,000 to make it up money as extra income, and we want you to spend it on the travel. 54:33.302 --> 54:36.406 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't want you guys to even have to think about it or if I just want to do that. 54:36.906 --> 54:46.879 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it was authorized, and it went on his taxes, I hardly live that would be 100% legal. 54:47.399 --> 54:54.809 [SPEAKER_00]: that I have the credit card, I'm going to just spend it, I'm the man, I do what I want, and you know, just do whatever. 54:55.410 --> 54:59.996 [SPEAKER_00]: And then not turning receipts, but you know, his wife was one of the supposed to reconcile this stuff. 55:00.677 --> 55:00.957 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 55:00.977 --> 55:12.333 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, again, it wouldn't be crazy for a church to say, hey, your mother said we're going to fly you out, take care of everything, get whatever hotel, like, you know, save your seats, we'll reimburse you whatever. 55:12.353 --> 55:15.617 [SPEAKER_01]: That's all normal, but as 55:15.749 --> 55:17.954 [SPEAKER_01]: You can just decide, yeah, my mom's sick. 55:18.055 --> 55:18.857 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a pastor for church. 55:18.917 --> 55:22.706 [SPEAKER_01]: We happen to have a bigger bank account in the church and I have personally, I'm gonna just pay for it. 55:22.726 --> 55:23.729 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you can't do that. 55:23.749 --> 55:26.295

[SPEAKER_01]: The same way, you know, we work in business together. 55:26.416 --> 55:28.761 [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't just grab your card and be like, well, I work with Travis. 55:29.704 --> 55:33.032 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna go on this trip for this purpose. 55:33.012 --> 55:33.994 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he doesn't understand. 55:34.054 --> 55:34.494 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll just do it. 55:34.675 --> 55:36.718 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, or I'm going to keep my expenses low enough. 55:36.738 --> 55:37.459 [SPEAKER_01]: You won't even notice. 55:37.600 --> 55:37.720 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 55:37.740 --> 55:39.503 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like that doesn't work. 55:39.863 --> 55:40.524 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't do that. 55:41.085 --> 55:49.860 [SPEAKER_02]: And you can't as the leader be the one to decide on the like that sort of where the the comparison to a business breaks down to some extent. 55:50.240 --> 55:55.209 [SPEAKER_02]: And and obviously depends on the size of the business and, you know, a lot of boards will have control over that on businesses as well. 55:55.229 --> 55:56.050 [SPEAKER_02]: But 55:56.030 --> 56:02.061 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're the founder of a company and owner of a company, then you might be able to do a lot of this stuff. 56:02.082 --> 56:02.202 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. 56:02.262 --> 56:03.865 [SPEAKER_02]: And be the one who's deciding these things. 56:04.366 --> 56:13.363 [SPEAKER_02]: But when you are a church leader and you're raising money from the people who are sacrificing to accomplish the mission you've enrolled them in, 56:13.343 --> 56:29.732 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you there there has to be checks and balances because of because of this even if you're even if you're not an evil person or a bad person and doing intentionally the checks and balances should exist for the purpose of making sure that you are not just 56:29.712 --> 56:35.240 [SPEAKER_02]: negligent, or ignorant, which obviously like we've talked about, I just don't think that's the case here. 56:35.280 --> 56:38.184 [SPEAKER_02]: There's plenty of evidence to suggest that it's the opposite of that. 56:38.445 --> 56:38.665 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 56:39.146 --> 56:45.315 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so yeah, that's the big thing here is like, yes, the church in many ways is a business, but also it's an on-profit. 56:46.116 --> 56:49.040 [SPEAKER_01]: I worked for an on-profit for, well, I've worked for a few non-profits. 56:49.200 --> 56:54.488 [SPEAKER_01]: One, I've shared the story of how that was managed, very similar to this, but 56:54.468 --> 56:58.293 [SPEAKER_01]: It worked for a properly ran non-profit for about two years. 56:59.174 --> 57:02.018 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything has to be, it's annoying, everything has to be voted on. 57:02.259 --> 57:19.963 [SPEAKER_01]: It's incredibly hard to do anything in a non-profit because if you want to use any funds for anything, you have to have board meeting, you have to have minutes, real minutes, you have to vote on it, you have to get

someone to, you know, second, you second the motion to vote on it even like it's a huge, huge pain. 57:20.564 --> 57:22.146 [SPEAKER_01]: And so again, for runs. 57:22.126 --> 57:23.528 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to avoid this. 57:23.808 --> 57:28.335 [SPEAKER_01]: So to run like you're an entrepreneur, that's just like, well, you know, I am going to go here and I don't know. 57:28.355 --> 57:31.300 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah, it's not, not good. 57:31.380 --> 57:33.583 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll go ahead and continue here. 57:33.623 --> 57:35.546 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's some of the other things that money was spent on. 57:35.566 --> 57:38.190 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to ask him to throw it up unless they want to. 57:38.490 --> 57:41.675 [SPEAKER_00]: Then this one page, I just pulled out, because I think he gives you an idea. 57:42.476 --> 57:46.722 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Helen Dale golf shot, Church experience 160 bucks. 57:47.403 --> 57:50.648 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I took the guest preacher golfing. 57:51.067 --> 57:52.188 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, we don't know. 57:52.809 --> 57:54.851 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if there was a guess of free-tron that day. 57:54.891 --> 57:57.114 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if it was him, his son, his buddy. 57:57.194 --> 57:57.935 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what it is. 57:58.536 --> 58:02.380 [SPEAKER_00]: My blog, we bought $300 worth of my blog for those who are not familiar. 58:02.400 --> 58:03.862 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the expensive pack. 58:03.882 --> 58:04.883 [SPEAKER_01]: Nope. 58:04.903 --> 58:06.024 [SPEAKER_01]: So, the expensive pack. 58:06.125 --> 58:07.066 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an expensive pack. 58:07.086 --> 58:07.586 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an expensive pack. 58:08.447 --> 58:12.612 [SPEAKER_01]: So, was it Gibbs senior, or Gibbs, or Gibbs, or Gibbs, Gibbs junior? 58:13.233 --> 58:13.974 [SPEAKER_01]: It's very confusing. 58:14.014 --> 58:15.255 [SPEAKER_01]: The young one is not junior. 58:16.276 --> 58:19.420 [SPEAKER_01]: His dad, I feel like how to story about 58:20.142 --> 58:23.671 [SPEAKER_01]: a guy in the church buying his dad a Mont Blanc pen or something. 58:23.771 --> 58:26.117 [SPEAKER_01]: I do remember a story with Mont Blanc. 58:26.277 --> 58:30.989 [SPEAKER_01]: Now with David Gibbs, Junior, whether the story was even true. 58:31.009 --> 58:33.134 [SPEAKER_01]: No, who really knows, who really knows. 58:33.174 --> 58:34.879 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Mont Blanc is a very expensive pen. 58:34.919 --> 58:36.683 [SPEAKER_01]: And... 58:36.882 --> 58:46.737 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just like you go by a pack of bicks, you know, I didn't know what it was till I googled it, which tells you it's expensive. 58:46.757 --> 58:49.000 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the Rolex of pens. 58:49.161 --> 58:53.267 [SPEAKER_02]: No, it's like you could buy a Casio from Walmart or you could buy a Rolex. 58:53.868 --> 58:55.270 [SPEAKER_02]: And Mont Blanc is that. 58:55.370 --> 58:56.792 [SPEAKER_02]: It's a luxury pen

company. 58:57.173 --> 58:59.236 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if they're watching us pretty strong that day. 58:59.276 --> 59:01.479 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if it was him, his son, his buddy. 59:01.559 --> 59:02.721 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what it is. 59:02.701 --> 59:07.750 [SPEAKER_00]: My blog, we bought $300 worth of my blog for those of you not familiar. 59:07.770 --> 59:09.674 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the expensive pan of designer. 59:09.694 --> 59:11.958 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's more like a ink cartridge. 59:12.379 --> 59:13.341 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I mean? 59:13.361 --> 59:13.922 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right. 59:13.942 --> 59:14.984 [SPEAKER_00]: Seriously. 59:15.004 --> 59:21.656 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the hands of Scott, and he just wanted the new pan, or was it given to a guest, and then here's the other issue. 59:22.037 --> 59:23.359 [SPEAKER_00]: Who authorizes that? 59:23.980 --> 59:39.122 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you have honorariums, you have policies and things that shouldn't be done, but he was very much in the gift being doling out money, but at the same time, over here, following emergency funds to be hang on. 59:40.003 --> 59:42.226 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was an act that caught me in all that. 59:42.326 --> 59:45.691 [SPEAKER_00]: Eric's men's clothing, again, he said it was for a guess. 59:45.711 --> 59:46.292 [SPEAKER_01]: What was the brand? 59:46.793 --> 59:47.253 [SPEAKER_01]: Tickners? 59:47.714 --> 59:48.395 [SPEAKER_01]: What's that? 59:48.435 --> 59:48.916 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. 59:49.376 --> 59:49.977 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it tickners? 59:49.997 --> 59:50.418 [SPEAKER_01]: That way he said? 59:50.538 --> 59:50.999 [SPEAKER_01]: I think so. 59:51.520 --> 59:53.262 [SPEAKER_01]: I just want to get a sense of. 59:53.242 --> 59:54.443 [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't heard of that before. 59:54.764 --> 59:58.928 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, tickners, men's, clearly, I want to just get a sense of the price points here. 59:59.709 --> 01:00:06.577 [SPEAKER_02]: That's the tough part about that is that if the finances were fine, then maybe some of these things might have been okay. 01:00:07.398 --> 01:00:16.708 [SPEAKER_02]: But when the finances are in disarray and you're asking staff to not have a paycheck and then you're spending money on golf, pens, and expensive custom suits or whatever it's always says. 01:00:17.189 --> 01:00:19.992 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, so I'm on tickner's website. 01:00:20.512 --> 01:00:28.680 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at a T-shirt, a C-film green T-shirt, and a pair of khaki shorts. 01:00:29.421 --> 01:00:30.202 [SPEAKER_01]: How much do you think? 01:00:30.242 --> 01:00:31.183 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's take prices right. 01:00:31.543 --> 01:00:35.527 [SPEAKER_01]: How much do you think that this ensemble costs? 01:00:35.547 --> 01:00:40.552 [SPEAKER_01]: How much is the green T-shirt and how much are these khaki shorts? 01:00:40.572 --> 01:00:42.574 [SPEAKER_02]: I've got to assume it's so much more than I'm thinking. 01:00:42.774 --> 01:00:45.777 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna say 350 bucks. 01:00:45.757 --> 01:00:54.581 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so a green t-shirt, just a green t-shirt, no bells and whistles, is 85 bucks from, and this is the cheapest thing here on the website. 01:00:55.223 --> 01:00:56.868 [SPEAKER_01]: Kacky shorts, $99.50. 01:00:56.908 --> 01:01:01.420 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm trying to think of a scenario. 01:01:02.480 --> 01:01:09.351 [SPEAKER_01]: where well for golf trips, you know, I'm starting to pieces together, but that's something else. 01:01:09.391 --> 01:01:09.771 [SPEAKER_01]: Goodness. 01:01:09.791 --> 01:01:10.152 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. 01:01:10.172 --> 01:01:12.435 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was an odd dichotomy in all that. 01:01:13.317 --> 01:01:14.118 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, really quick. 01:01:14.318 --> 01:01:17.684 [SPEAKER_01]: Let me also pull up Montblanc because I do want to get people a sense of this too. 01:01:17.784 --> 01:01:19.386 [SPEAKER_01]: Because you say like expensive pens. 01:01:19.707 --> 01:01:25.095 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was going to say that $300 to me sounds like again, sounds like an ink cartridge refill for a Montblanc pen. 01:01:25.075 --> 01:01:28.482 [SPEAKER_01]: He bought the pen before December 2023 and bought it real. 01:01:28.502 --> 01:01:32.028 [SPEAKER_01]: So just to people know how much a pen is at Mont Blanc. 01:01:32.048 --> 01:01:33.371 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's the first ant pops up on the site. 01:01:34.213 --> 01:01:40.705 [SPEAKER_01]: Masters of Art homage limited edition, 4810 fountain pen, $4,500 yet. 01:01:40.685 --> 01:01:41.386 [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I was saying. 01:01:41.406 --> 01:01:43.370 [SPEAKER_02]: I was three hundred bucks sounds really low to me. 01:01:43.550 --> 01:01:45.934 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they also sell and and they don't just sell pens. 01:01:45.994 --> 01:01:49.881 [SPEAKER_01]: They sell bags, cufflinks that probably would be in that range. 01:01:50.282 --> 01:01:57.294 [SPEAKER_01]: Small other good stationary, you know, maybe he was writing request to borrow money on the stationary from on block. 01:01:57.855 --> 01:01:59.858 [SPEAKER_01]: Right me a paper check, please. 01:01:59.838 --> 01:02:06.852 [SPEAKER_02]: Sign it with this pen, but yeah, I mean, it's just all the luxury that I tell people all the time to never buy run the money show that I run. 01:02:06.912 --> 01:02:13.044 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just excessive to find this on the church's dime while you're asking staff to go without a page. 01:02:13.064 --> 01:02:15.990 [SPEAKER_01]: And this also raises another layer again, like. 01:02:17.017 --> 01:02:34.485 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to say it like I know I have a lot of listeners that go to churches that are about board and they care about this thing, they give to all these different causes related to the church, but this is stuff too that like churches should think about like when your pastor goes and they speak half the year and they're going to

always churches. 01:02:34.586 --> 01:02:42.298 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, are they going to churches where they getting gifted Mont Blanc pens and staying in the four seasons and going golfing and 01:02:42.278 --> 01:02:47.763 [SPEAKER_01]: also asking you to sacrifice working over time to, you know, give extra. 01:02:47.783 --> 01:02:50.405 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, and to make sure you're on your church Wednesday. 01:02:50.485 --> 01:02:50.585 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 01:02:50.605 --> 01:02:52.147 [SPEAKER_01]: You've got to ask questions about this stuff. 01:02:52.167 --> 01:03:00.294 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's, it's, it's really ridiculous, not just for the people, you know, I think there's something about like honoring people, giving them a special gift here and there. 01:03:00.334 --> 01:03:04.597 [SPEAKER_01]: But also like this industry of guys that just like go speak at each other's churches and conferences. 01:03:04.637 --> 01:03:05.338 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was going to say. 01:03:05.358 --> 01:03:08.381 [SPEAKER_01]: And get handed like, hey, buddy, you know, let's go golfing. 01:03:08.401 --> 01:03:11.003 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, nothing wrong with that. 01:03:10.983 --> 01:03:28.384 [SPEAKER_01]: then they're going and saying like give it all you know hear a my lord send me and it's really just a voice you know a preacher voice club of just people you know patting each other on the back all the time yeah financial is just because with your money exact with the people who are putting money in the plate like 01:03:28.364 --> 01:03:45.408 [SPEAKER_01]: the people who are there for give it all Sunday, and you know, will you give a month of your salary to the church like it's this should make you mad if you're in a congregation like this, you know, just because the pastor you just hired has a degree from a college in Bible and is a great speaker. 01:03:45.428 --> 01:03:53.359 [SPEAKER_02]: And in this case has a dad who was a massive pastor in it and has kids that are evangelists does not mean that they should automatically have your trust. 01:03:53.339 --> 01:03:54.020 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. 01:03:54.040 --> 01:04:03.240 [SPEAKER_02]: There should be a trust but verify situation where it's like, you're obviously bringing this person in because you trust them to some degree and went through, they went through some form of a hiring process or something. 01:04:03.741 --> 01:04:12.580 [SPEAKER_02]: But just because they're in that position does not mean that they just have unbridled access to funds and don't get checks and balances because they're 01:04:12.560 --> 01:04:29.404 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the unfortunate reality of any position and not just pastoral positions, but any position where somebody's put into the limelight where the spotlight is on them, it will inherently attract, then we talked about this before, it will inherently attract these types of personalities. 01:04:29.384 --> 01:04:53.147 [SPEAKER_02]: which is why it's a higher percentage in these fields and whether it's government positions or Fortune 500 executive teams or churches, there are people that are given this sense of superiority to some degree or at least this sense of unbridled authority and in any scenario like that, it will inherently attract people who want to be that figurehead. 01:04:53.127 --> 01:04:55.491 [SPEAKER_02]: And won't always do it the right way. 01:04:55.612 --> 01:04:58.056 [SPEAKER_02]: And does that mean that there are not people who do it the right way? 01:04:58.076 --> 01:05:04.709 [SPEAKER_02]: Of course not, there is a lot of plenty of great pastors and churches and plenty of great, you know, Fortune 500 leaders and things like that. 01:05:05.070 --> 01:05:11.341 [SPEAKER_02]: But it just means that you just because they hold the position, you cannot just give them all of your trust automatically overnight. 01:05:11.361 --> 01:05:13.245 [SPEAKER_02]: There should be the trust but verify. 01:05:13.276 --> 01:05:16.800 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because, I mean, I've had Brian Klaus in the show years ago. 01:05:16.820 --> 01:05:25.490 [SPEAKER_01]: I should have him back on, he wrote a book called Corruptible, which is how bad people are disproportionately drawn to power, disproportionately good at getting power, and disproportionately good at keeping power. 01:05:25.710 --> 01:05:40.667 [SPEAKER_01]: This all goes back to systems to quote his book directly, you know, he says power is magnetic to the Corruptible everywhere, whether you're in a church, you know, I'll put this here, whether you're in a church, law enforcement, you know, your local HOA. 01:05:40.647 --> 01:05:44.213 [SPEAKER_01]: power is magnetic to corruptible bad people everywhere. 01:05:44.834 --> 01:05:50.103 [SPEAKER_01]: But he says, good systems attract better leaders, bad systems attract rotten leaders. 01:05:50.523 --> 01:06:02.483 [SPEAKER_01]: So as much as I don't want to blame the victims sitting in the church, when it comes to the system that is set up within the church, like it is responsible for some of this too because the bad system is going to attract rotten leaders. 01:06:02.543 --> 01:06:05.929 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, you can go back to his father who, you know, 01:06:05.909 --> 01:06:08.052 [SPEAKER_01]: has a lot of sketchy things associated with it. 01:06:08.292 --> 01:06:10.555 [SPEAKER_01]: The gray name has baggage with it for a reason. 01:06:11.216 --> 01:06:15.322 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you just improve the system, you're going to protect yourself from bad leaders. 01:06:15.342 --> 01:06:22.171 [SPEAKER_01]: It should be common sense, but hopefully, if anything, I just hope that's a lesson taken away from this is like, how do we improve the systems? 01:06:22.732 --> 01:06:26.837 [SPEAKER_01]: Or we can trust, we can verify and we can have some way there that's there for the right reason. 01:06:27.104 --> 01:06:29.007 [SPEAKER_00]: There was an odd dichotomy in all that. 01:06:29.167 -->

01:06:30.689 [SPEAKER_00]: A ticker's men's clothing. 01:06:30.969 --> 01:06:32.912 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, he said it was for a guest. 01:06:33.833 --> 01:06:34.274 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. 01:06:34.294 --> 01:06:37.418 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, if you guys authorized all that, I don't think the members did. 01:06:37.499 --> 01:06:37.999 [SPEAKER_00]: Bordin. 01:06:38.600 --> 01:06:47.172 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if it's either past or had unilateral spending authority in that's hardened dough, there's a myriad chart here, $800. 01:06:47.152 --> 01:06:50.098 [SPEAKER_00]: and he says, you know, that might have had a vet. 01:06:50.840 --> 01:06:54.146 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't there, wasn't a fan, it wasn't a week there. 01:06:54.467 --> 01:06:55.349 [SPEAKER_00]: You just don't know. 01:06:55.369 --> 01:07:02.183 [SPEAKER_00]: So, what I'm trying to share with you, this is why documentation really helps people's names for reputation. 01:07:02.323 --> 01:07:05.329 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, have you ever hear fuck up and something? 01:07:06.085 --> 01:07:11.998 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's easy to forget, but especially we build back over the years, but that's why there has been processes in politics and restraint. 01:07:13.041 --> 01:07:19.736 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and I do believe he thought that he pretty much had that unilateral authority to spread. 01:07:21.179 --> 01:07:23.284 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mean, thoughts there. 01:07:23.956 --> 01:07:31.719 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I pretty self-explanatory, yeah, yeah, that's the thing putting this together as I like I wrote so many notes I kept going through so many drafts of this. 01:07:31.799 --> 01:07:36.413 [SPEAKER_01]: It's why ultimately it was like there's so many bounce off of you and talk through this because 01:07:36.967 --> 01:07:44.238 [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much of this that's just, you hear what happened in the solution feel self-evident because the cause of it feels so vote. 01:07:44.258 --> 01:07:48.204 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, one person, too much power, desiring to do this stuff. 01:07:48.684 --> 01:07:54.773 [SPEAKER_01]: And it looks like that took many forms from just carelessness to potential criminal actions. 01:07:54.793 --> 01:07:56.055 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, yeah. 01:07:56.035 --> 01:08:05.189 [SPEAKER_02]: My thing is like, I just, I always want to believe the best in people, you know, so I, like, you hear rumblings of a story like this and you just go like, oh, maybe it's just negligent. 01:08:05.229 --> 01:08:06.270 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's a magic. 01:08:06.290 --> 01:08:07.031 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's a magic. 01:08:07.051 --> 01:08:08.073 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right. 01:08:08.293 --> 01:08:14.623 [SPEAKER_02]: But the more you dig into it, the more you start realizing like, now some people just got away with it too long. 01:08:14.683 --> 01:08:16.746 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's been, that's been my experience. 01:08:16.766 --> 01:08:18.188 [SPEAKER_02]: I think even

a lot in the business world. 01:08:18.288 --> 01:08:20.912 [SPEAKER_02]: And I've seen this happen now, honestly. 01:08:20.892 --> 01:08:22.714 [SPEAKER_02]: more times than I'd like to see it happen. 01:08:22.855 --> 01:08:23.696 [SPEAKER_02]: Literally yesterday. 01:08:23.896 --> 01:08:25.118 [SPEAKER_02]: You sent me a rest. 01:08:25.358 --> 01:08:25.618 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 01:08:25.738 --> 01:08:33.909 [SPEAKER_02]: Somebody that I knew who was turns out siphoning money raised like $65 million in a fund and then is now on track. 01:08:33.929 --> 01:08:36.212 [SPEAKER_02]: I think he might think he was convicted and I think is what that article said. 01:08:37.414 --> 01:08:42.681 [SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, you, my initial thought is typically like, 01:08:42.661 --> 01:08:47.468 [SPEAKER_02]: most people I believe did not get into it with the intention of doing this. 01:08:48.049 --> 01:08:56.041 [SPEAKER_02]: Like they weren't, you know, even someone like Scott Gray probably like when he got into ministry, probably was not thinking like, oh, perfect. 01:08:56.081 --> 01:09:12.246 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm finally in a position to abuse power, you know, and make out financially and mess with the financial lives of my staff and siphon money from my church members, probably did not think that, but somewhere along the way, due to ineptitude and ignorance at first, 01:09:13.424 --> 01:09:30.285 [SPEAKER_02]: over time that excuse goes away like you were at this church for a really long time and then of course you do one little thing that doesn't get noticed and you do another little thing that doesn't get noticed you do another little thing and that doesn't get noticed and then and then you just the the power starts going to your head which why I use Lord arrogance earlier. 01:09:30.265 --> 01:09:59.698 [SPEAKER_02]: the arrogance to like get double paid from your church like you obviously know that and if anybody ever looked at it they would be able to tell it's not like it's not like it's the same accounting line to be like oh well this one's direct deposit this one's paper check so well that's what he's ever gonna find out like that it's just it is a high degree of arrogance that says that clearly I've been doing this pattern for quite some time and never been figured out so why would it change now lots of things like the best case scenario of that is like 01:09:59.678 --> 01:10:01.781 [SPEAKER_01]: You're an absolute idiot, right? 01:10:01.801 --> 01:10:13.137 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the best case scenario is like you actually are functioning on like one percent of your brain Yeah, being who we're doing just an unintelligent effort and you didn't notice two checks You know, but it's like it's hard not to have a single read on this. 01:10:13.557 --> 01:10:16.542 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah What do you see when you see that it's not just one thing? 01:10:17.283 --> 01:10:27.677 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes Several different areas that there's an egregious level of spending going on including and and Egregious lack of documentation including this one building projects 01:10:28.484 --> 01:10:29.567 [SPEAKER_00]: works. 01:10:29.607 --> 01:10:31.533 [SPEAKER_01]: This might be a power episode. 01:10:31.553 --> 01:10:33.158 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't get me started on building projects. 01:10:36.568 --> 01:10:36.909 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. 01:10:37.049 --> 01:10:40.199 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let me ask you this with Lancaster. 01:10:40.901 --> 01:10:42.004 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like 01:10:42.811 --> 01:11:07.350 [SPEAKER_02]: which was always very clearly planned and communicated like building projects like yeah they handled that more forthright yeah more like the corporation i remember they had like a master plan of what the whole campus was going to look like but i think it was before they even built the main auditorium and had it sitting outside because i talked about the vision and all that stuff there they were very forthright about this is what we're raising forward this is what we're going to use the money for 01:11:07.415 --> 01:11:17.187 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I feel like whenever I look at that as a pretty rare example of like I would remember going to conferences because they would always grow out all the things we're doing incredibly you know. 01:11:17.467 --> 01:11:26.178 [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like it was one of the few ministries where they'd say we're going to build this building over here and then you'd show up a couple of years later and it's like there and done. 01:11:26.238 --> 01:11:31.144 [SPEAKER_01]: And I know most ministries that I was around. 01:11:31.664 --> 01:11:59.393 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I was all over the country for a period of time, you to see them like doing their vision promise giving, you know, our faith promise giving or vision banquet, whatever the thing that they did, and they would have this very nebulous like, here's a drawing of what a big building would look like, and give a lot of money and then you go by years later, like, oh, use my childhood church for an example, they were doing a building fun from the time. 01:11:59.575 --> 01:12:10.789 [SPEAKER_01]: the pastor was there before the pastor that's there now, and I remember them saying every year, by the time you're in this grade, we'll have a gym and we'll have this. 01:12:11.690 --> 01:12:29.532 [SPEAKER_01]: And fast forward, and I remember when I was about to, when I was in 11th grade or 10th grade, they were like, by the time you're senior, we'll have a gym, we're gonna have all these classrooms, we're gonna have this big thing, they would pave, I helped pave the lot when I was in fourth grade, you know, to like get the ground level, not paved, but level all the dirt and everything out there. 01:12:30.254 --> 01:12:34.540 [SPEAKER_01]: And then they had to relive it several times because like, they'd be go for holes because it sat there so long. 01:12:35.322 --> 01:12:43.434 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I remember being a

senior and they're like, but time you guys come back, you know, you come back and visit us, we're gonna have a gym, we're gonna have all this, the next generation. 01:12:44.155 --> 01:12:54.670 [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, on that pad, they put in a ton of modulators, which is just like those basic, like you put them temporary spot, don't think it's temporary. 01:12:54.850 --> 01:12:57.274 [SPEAKER_01]: Have that being all their classrooms in there. 01:12:57.322 --> 01:12:58.429 [SPEAKER_01]: They've got a big empty field. 01:12:58.933 --> 01:13:00.101 [SPEAKER_01]: That's like their football field. 01:13:00.242 --> 01:13:01.228 [SPEAKER_01]: That's covering over roles. 01:13:01.772 --> 01:13:03.906 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, how much money? 01:13:04.679 --> 01:13:17.861 [SPEAKER_01]: was raised for years, where it's like, oh, we don't happen to that money, and again, I don't know that there's something just poorly planned, I don't know if it's like, their thing was always, we don't want to go into debt to do the property, so we're just going to have all the money. 01:13:17.921 --> 01:13:18.382 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 01:13:18.763 --> 01:13:23.731 [SPEAKER_01]: And the, oh, things are more expensive, as we're talking about money that sits there, is that it doesn't use for something. 01:13:23.912 --> 01:13:24.633 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 01:13:24.673 --> 01:13:25.675 [SPEAKER_01]: There's that use for something. 01:13:25.695 --> 01:13:27.197 [SPEAKER_02]: I just set you off on an episode. 01:13:27.217 --> 01:13:30.062 [SPEAKER_02]: You have the money that's sitting there. 01:13:30.042 --> 01:13:58.733 [SPEAKER_02]: it's going to be used you know like there's no version of like well we're just going to keep saving this for the next seven years until we can afford to pay cash type of the thing it's like if it if it doesn't have a specific purpose it's just going to be used for whatever purpose people want to use it for that did happen a couple times in Lancaster like they told us that we were going to have like a building for high school when I was like junior high or something right but time you get to high school will have like an actual building within door lockers and 01:13:58.814 --> 01:13:59.455 [SPEAKER_02]: and modular. 01:13:59.835 --> 01:14:02.539 [SPEAKER_02]: But to be fair, like they would just build a different building. 01:14:02.619 --> 01:14:04.621 [SPEAKER_02]: Like they just kept deprioritizing it on the list. 01:14:04.641 --> 01:14:06.444 [SPEAKER_02]: So to this day, they still don't have those. 01:14:06.464 --> 01:14:13.372 [SPEAKER_02]: They were supposed to be like an elementary school education building in a secondary education building built as a part of the master plan that they laid out when I was a kid. 01:14:13.993 --> 01:14:14.834 [SPEAKER_02]: But those things didn't happen. 01:14:14.854 --> 01:14:16.376 [SPEAKER_02]: But they would build other stuff. 01:14:16.416 --> 01:14:19.080 [SPEAKER_02]: They just dirted funds to like whatever the new priority is. 01:14:19.160 --> 01:14:19.400 [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. 01:14:19.620 --> 01:14:19.820 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 01:14:20.201 --> 01:14:25.007 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's Gibbs opinion on Graze response to all the questions and 01:14:24.987 --> 01:14:29.192 [SPEAKER_01]: all of the conversations he had with him, the limited conversations back and forth. 01:14:29.212 --> 01:14:37.022 [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, from my understanding, Gibbs took all of the bank statements, sent them to Gray, and let him write in the margins. 01:14:37.382 --> 01:14:46.113 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's what this was, and a lot of it was just like highlighted all of it, probably guessed, or probably this, and so here's Gibbs take on that. 01:14:46.333 --> 01:14:47.274 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is an opinion. 01:14:48.836 --> 01:14:52.260 [SPEAKER_00]: Scott Gray, demonstrated a lack of candor. 01:14:52.983 --> 01:15:00.811 [SPEAKER_00]: and truthfulness to the board, the staff, and various church members when asked questions about his spending or his leadership. 01:15:01.772 --> 01:15:05.656 [SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by that is, the stories don't pile. 01:15:06.357 --> 01:15:09.420 [SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes this was this way, sometimes it was that way. 01:15:09.941 --> 01:15:15.026 [SPEAKER_00]: So I never took the time to actually figure out the truth of all the different stories and things. 01:15:15.446 --> 01:15:21.032 [SPEAKER_00]: But when you tell all three different explanations to three different people, you know, two of them aren't correct. 01:15:21.552 --> 01:15:22.753 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's unfortunate. 01:15:23.794 --> 01:15:28.640 [SPEAKER_00]: I wish that I had received a humble turn of games. 01:15:28.680 --> 01:15:29.561 [SPEAKER_00]: I really messed up. 01:15:29.681 --> 01:15:30.742 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing this money. 01:15:30.842 --> 01:15:31.843 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I got carried away. 01:15:31.863 --> 01:15:32.524 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, our family. 01:15:32.564 --> 01:15:35.046 [SPEAKER_00]: We had to like read on the place and help me straight this out. 01:15:35.887 --> 01:15:36.248 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 01:15:37.309 --> 01:15:39.211 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting a little more of the competitive. 01:15:39.752 --> 01:15:41.113 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, a little more. 01:15:41.333 --> 01:15:42.174 [SPEAKER_00]: We did so much. 01:15:42.274 --> 01:15:43.335 [SPEAKER_00]: Those bunch of ingredients. 01:15:43.395 --> 01:15:44.196 [SPEAKER_00]: Those do here. 01:15:44.477 --> 01:15:44.877 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 01:15:44.857 --> 01:15:50.564 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just letting you know, yeah, that's a little unfortunate that the spirit is not a little more. 01:15:51.165 --> 01:15:51.765 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying. 01:15:52.226 --> 01:15:56.911 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, contrasting that with the statement that gray-shared, like, yeah. 01:15:56.931 --> 01:16:05.462 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, you can basically, you know, I, you know, we have to, I mean, legally, have to be

allegedly and in my opinion. 01:16:06.022 --> 01:16:08.806 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, take all the information being given in these clubs. 01:16:09.046 --> 01:16:09.226 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. 01:16:09.406 --> 01:16:11.269 [SPEAKER_01]: Take that statement and do with that what you will. 01:16:11.529 --> 01:16:13.311 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a financial expert. 01:16:13.713 --> 01:16:17.661 [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing looks particularly good for Scott Gray going through this story. 01:16:17.681 --> 01:16:21.508 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to go ahead and share here the executive summary. 01:16:21.569 --> 01:16:28.122 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the kind of overview of the exact, you know, findings of their report. 01:16:28.362 --> 01:16:29.905 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll go ahead and play this here. 01:16:30.045 --> 01:16:31.809 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I can I can read some off his walks. 01:16:31.849 --> 01:16:34.354 [SPEAKER_01]: I take some notes to kind of condense all of this. 01:16:34.434 --> 01:16:35.957 [SPEAKER_01]: But here's here's a little bit of that here. 01:16:36.106 --> 01:16:39.291 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give you the executive summary statement. 01:16:39.331 --> 01:16:41.755 [SPEAKER_00]: It's two sentences, so just listen to you. 01:16:42.015 --> 01:16:44.038 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a five minute and three second clip. 01:16:44.078 --> 01:16:47.584 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to just let it play out and then I'll add anything I feel like I need to. 01:16:48.005 --> 01:16:51.330 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to give you the executive summary statement. 01:16:51.370 --> 01:16:53.733 [SPEAKER_00]: It's two sentences, so just listen to this. 01:16:54.755 --> 01:16:58.922 [SPEAKER_00]: Scott wrote mismanaged and abused to slig ship all our cligry back. 01:16:58.942 --> 01:16:59.322 [SPEAKER_00]: It's church. 01:16:59.583 --> 01:17:00.544 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no question. 01:17:01.908 --> 01:17:06.924 [SPEAKER_00]: Barcanon is leadership financially, victimized, this structure. 01:17:07.004 --> 01:17:10.054 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I put you through the unnecessary stress along those other things. 01:17:11.439 --> 01:17:14.027 [SPEAKER_00]: But now, let's talk about moving forward. 01:17:14.800 --> 01:17:16.842 [SPEAKER_00]: What is it that we, it's a church, do you? 01:17:16.923 --> 01:17:18.685 [SPEAKER_00]: How do we move forward? 01:17:19.586 --> 01:17:25.673 [SPEAKER_00]: The deacames of pastoral staff, and our work with them on this, have unanimously proven to go in forward plan. 01:17:26.254 --> 01:17:29.758 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be through it with you quickly, it's 12 things, but it will be fast. 01:17:29.778 --> 01:17:33.442 [SPEAKER_00]: To never let this happen again, you know? 01:17:33.562 --> 01:17:36.546 [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, how many believe we need to learn from pastoral staffs? 01:17:36.746 --> 01:17:37.146 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know. 01:17:37.467 --> 01:17:39.289 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a tough forward plan. 01:17:39.978 --> 01:17:51.672 [SPEAKER_00]: The deacons and pastoral staff will refer all future employing the references for Reverend Brey to legal counsel so we can learn any future employers. 01:17:52.894 --> 01:17:55.537 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, do we want Reverend Brey to get a job? 01:17:56.078 --> 01:17:56.839 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. 01:17:56.859 --> 01:18:00.604 [SPEAKER_00]: Do we want him to go forward and live his life and have a future? 01:18:00.644 --> 01:18:05.850 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we're not out to get anybody, but we do not want him to victimize another church. 01:18:06.556 --> 01:18:12.804 [SPEAKER_00]: And if a church calls and says, should we put even charge, as our executive pastor went and brought our finances? 01:18:13.545 --> 01:18:16.509 [SPEAKER_00]: We will be a strong, in fact, we would not recommend it. 01:18:17.510 --> 01:18:19.153 [SPEAKER_00]: Then at that point, we're done, right? 01:18:19.433 --> 01:18:20.594 [SPEAKER_00]: Church is doing what they're going to do. 01:18:20.855 --> 01:18:21.936 [SPEAKER_00]: Great, that's what he's going to do. 01:18:22.437 --> 01:18:24.019 [SPEAKER_00]: But we're not going to cover this up. 01:18:24.239 --> 01:18:33.171 [SPEAKER_00]: So I want everybody to hear, we're not going to, I'm like pretend and just wink away, but another church goes through a difficult moment. 01:18:33.151 --> 01:18:39.521 [SPEAKER_00]: At this time, now here we have this because some of you are going to wrestle some of you are going to be happy about me just saying. 01:18:39.541 --> 01:18:50.277 [SPEAKER_00]: In consultation with legal counsel, deacons of pastoral staff have decided to not pursue civil or criminal charges against credit. 01:18:50.297 --> 01:18:57.268 [SPEAKER_00]: Now let me explain the thinking, and if we start or something different, we may well want to do it. 01:18:58.312 --> 01:19:00.315 [SPEAKER_00]: let's talk about criminal. 01:19:00.375 --> 01:19:04.862 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, criminal is state of North Carolina versus Reverend Craig. 01:19:04.882 --> 01:19:06.704 [SPEAKER_00]: We become the victim. 01:19:06.724 --> 01:19:12.973 [SPEAKER_00]: We end up going to court and we sit there and say, this guy stole my money and he mismanaged it. 01:19:13.294 --> 01:19:14.275 [SPEAKER_00]: Very public. 01:19:14.295 --> 01:19:16.398 [SPEAKER_00]: Newsman is there, WRL, others. 01:19:16.959 --> 01:19:18.782 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very wide clip. 01:19:19.142 --> 01:19:20.164 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. 01:19:20.184 --> 01:19:21.726 [SPEAKER_00]: Scott Gray's defense. 01:19:22.828 --> 01:19:26.513 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the dead guy did it, the 01:19:26.965 --> 01:19:28.927 [SPEAKER_00]: If the board didn't do it, they should have done it. 01:19:29.608 --> 01:19:31.149 [SPEAKER_00]: The church members knew this time. 01:19:31.189 --> 01:19:43.681 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you just start into a being public morass of trying to prove beyond a reveal doubt that he didn't have authority to raise his own. 01:19:43.701 -->

01:19:47.244 [SPEAKER_00]: You and Eric, him say, because most guys do, well, I had that authority. 01:19:47.405 --> 01:19:48.426 [SPEAKER_00]: I was told I could do it. 01:19:48.486 --> 01:19:54.171 [SPEAKER_00]: He can so prove that this chairman said, yeah, it just turns into a huge distraction. 01:19:54.978 --> 01:19:56.600 [SPEAKER_00]: And let me say this to you too. 01:19:57.501 --> 01:19:59.323 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe Liberty Church is going to change. 01:19:59.363 --> 01:20:01.185 [SPEAKER_00]: It's Dr. Come here excited about that. 01:20:02.367 --> 01:20:04.269 [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm going to believe the devil's good at the distraction. 01:20:05.871 --> 01:20:15.883 [SPEAKER_00]: And if we're going to spend the next two years with a prosecutor and tell Ms. Green that she's going to Christmas going to have sit with them, get all these records and pray to me. 01:20:15.903 --> 01:20:21.930 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're just going to put a huge amount of time that for many years or else to try to put a van in jail and make. 01:20:22.180 --> 01:20:30.452 [SPEAKER_00]: And so we feel like probably at just point criminal charges are not in allergy interest in terms of moving forward. 01:20:30.472 --> 01:20:41.168 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, simply, we've got a court, we could still, we could say, you took our mind in that permission and he's going to raise all the same defenses, but we're going to win because it's pretty obvious what he did. 01:20:41.738 --> 01:20:44.782 [SPEAKER_00]: and he'll blame for and you whatever, but we'll get enough. 01:20:44.802 --> 01:20:52.392 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll get a piece of paper that says, Grey owes us, let's say it's 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, he owes all of it to whatever it is. 01:20:53.673 --> 01:20:56.497 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to say that piece of paper is worth nothing. 01:20:57.779 --> 01:20:58.039 [SPEAKER_00]: You can. 01:20:58.059 --> 01:21:02.745 [SPEAKER_00]: OK. All we've done is publicly disseminate our mismanagement. 01:21:02.785 --> 01:21:03.826 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's embarrassing. 01:21:03.846 --> 01:21:06.750 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all of us should be local bearers, so we need what you've seen your guy. 01:21:07.591 --> 01:21:16.985 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and we've made it all public, we started off, their liberty cancels at it, and you have something that's basically non-collect them. 01:21:17.005 --> 01:21:22.653 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Gray showed up in this place reasonably broke from what I've been told. 01:21:24.135 --> 01:21:29.243 [SPEAKER_00]: Way over spent while looking to see her, over spenders generally don't invest money well. 01:21:30.164 --> 01:21:32.788 [SPEAKER_00]: They pretend they have money, but they generally don't. 01:21:33.545 --> 01:21:35.094 [SPEAKER_00]: I did talk to C.T. 01:21:35.135 --> 01:21:40.467 [SPEAKER_00]: Townsend, I asked straight up, do you think Grey's having money to pay back to church? 01:21:41.054 --> 01:22:03.957 [SPEAKER_01]: And for people listening, CT Townsend is the pastor of the church that Scott Gray went to immediately after this, and it's interesting to me now because Scott Gray put out a statement saying he's not pursuing ministries, taking a beat, you know, all this stuff, but his Facebook profile up a couple days ago said Scott Gray of angelistic ministries, he was that CT Townsend's church who's a well-known evangelist in pastor, and 01:22:03.937 --> 01:22:12.529 [SPEAKER_01]: So, like, all the things seem to look like he was going there to try to spark a new chapter, but that's why it gives mentions referencing C.D. 01:22:12.549 --> 01:22:15.293 [SPEAKER_01]: Townsend to say, hey, do you think yes, I might have paid back the church? 01:22:15.614 --> 01:22:16.675 [SPEAKER_00]: I did talk to C.D. 01:22:16.715 --> 01:22:17.176 [SPEAKER_00]: Townsend. 01:22:17.477 --> 01:22:21.743 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked straight up, do you think graves having money to pay back the church? 01:22:22.804 --> 01:22:30.315 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, there's got so these broke, he's living in a trailer, 01:22:30.785 --> 01:22:35.985 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, again, some of you all could say, I don't know, there's a fun bunny, but our assessment. 01:22:36.033 --> 01:22:43.004 [SPEAKER_00]: is that that civil judgment would put the church through stress and would ultimately be uncolectable. 01:22:43.524 --> 01:22:49.093 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the moving forward financial plan obviously a lot here has happened and basically here's what he ended up laying out. 01:22:49.213 --> 01:22:54.080 [SPEAKER_01]: I won't play through it because it would take a lot of time, but here's kind of the summary here. 01:22:54.421 --> 01:22:59.969 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is the the 12 step plan basically moving forward and feel free to jump in if you have any thoughts on any of these. 01:23:00.650 --> 01:23:02.513 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is kind of a summary here. 01:23:03.050 --> 01:23:06.515 [SPEAKER_01]: But number one is to establish independent financial oversight. 01:23:06.955 --> 01:23:11.381 [SPEAKER_01]: So create a finance committee within the board that operates independently from pastoral leadership. 01:23:12.302 --> 01:23:19.251 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, that's people that prepare the budget, they enforce policies, they look over expenses, all that sort of thing. 01:23:19.932 --> 01:23:23.657 [SPEAKER_01]: Number two is implementing segregation of financial duties. 01:23:23.637 --> 01:23:28.125 [SPEAKER_01]: So no single individual should control multiple stages of financial transactions. 01:23:28.666 --> 01:23:46.978 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, if there's authorized, if a pastor authorizes spending, then the financial administrator would process the payments, the financial administrator would sign the check, independent person would, you know, deal with reconciliation, there'd be oversight from a committee like there'd be multiple layers that is normal for a non-profit. 01:23:46.958 --> 01:23:49.642 [SPEAKER_01]:

Requiring dual signatures for large payments. 01:23:49.922 --> 01:23:52.426 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a strict payment authorization policy. 01:23:52.966 --> 01:23:55.690 [SPEAKER_01]: Two signatures are required for checks above a certain threshold. 01:23:56.131 --> 01:23:58.654 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Pastor shouldn't sign checks or have bank access. 01:23:59.195 --> 01:24:01.558 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's probably a good thing to have. 01:24:03.020 --> 01:24:04.102 [SPEAKER_01]: Number four, Dmitriy. 01:24:04.122 --> 01:24:05.704 [SPEAKER_02]: And these are all good things to have. 01:24:06.005 --> 01:24:08.648 [SPEAKER_02]: Even if the person is proven copy. 01:24:08.688 --> 01:24:09.449 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, leader. 01:24:09.570 --> 01:24:15.598 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and he did not just because he was incompetent, but you know, it was incumbent on finances. 01:24:15.578 --> 01:24:19.827 [SPEAKER_02]: It's this should exist inside of the organization regardless and to your point. 01:24:20.228 --> 01:24:25.038 [SPEAKER_02]: It's fixing the system to prevent, right, this thing from happening again in the future. 01:24:25.098 --> 01:24:27.804 [SPEAKER_02]: Regardless of the intention of the person who may or may not be in charge. 01:24:28.045 --> 01:24:30.911 [SPEAKER_01]: And someone above board isn't going to block it any of these. 01:24:30.971 --> 01:24:31.512 [SPEAKER_01]: Correct. 01:24:31.492 --> 01:24:35.300 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, they should be the one to suggest what would happen. 01:24:35.681 --> 01:24:48.128 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, maybe you should have eyes on this because I'm about to do this big thing and I want there to be, you know, like I said, even if you're someone who's like a gray supporter, which they do have them, this is something where it's like, you know, say he did nothing wrong. 01:24:49.050 --> 01:24:50.513 [SPEAKER_01]: In my opinion, that's not the case. 01:24:51.488 --> 01:25:02.362 [SPEAKER_01]: say grade did nothing wrong and this is all a result of that bookkeeping and everybody is just how to get in and all this sort of like it's everybody else's fault somehow. 01:25:02.382 --> 01:25:08.910 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah if that's all true and the church just wanted out of their pastor there's a mutiny and they made this look worse than it is. 01:25:09.290 --> 01:25:11.573 [SPEAKER_01]: If he had put all these things in place, 01:25:11.553 --> 01:25:14.177 [SPEAKER_01]: He could easily refute all of this, correct. 01:25:14.538 --> 01:25:20.206 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, the fact that he can't refute is also an issue that might be worthy of him not having a position as senior pastor anymore and all that sort of thing. 01:25:20.246 --> 01:25:25.715 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, even if you're somebody's watchness who's like, I still don't hear anything that convinces me that he did something wrong. 01:25:25.735 --> 01:25:29.721 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, he should have the literal receipts, you know, to prove that. 01:25:30.302 --> 01:25:33.326 [SPEAKER_01]: Step four, they recommended was adopting formal financial policies. 01:25:33.947 --> 01:25:37.813 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is something that's amazing that the church has been around for decades and doesn't have them. 01:25:37.793 --> 01:25:41.820 [SPEAKER_01]: They should adopt a written financial policies and procedures manual approved by the board. 01:25:41.900 --> 01:25:43.784 [SPEAKER_01]: That's done in consultation with legal counsel. 01:25:43.844 --> 01:25:50.716 [SPEAKER_01]: The fact this doesn't exist in any form is insane because like, it's not like he went and planned a church and they haven't got up to this yet. 01:25:50.736 --> 01:25:55.144 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like he took over this church from his dad who was there for decades before him. 01:25:55.462 --> 01:26:09.471 [SPEAKER_01]: if you know his dad, this probably is not surprising, but spending approval limits reimbursement rules, credit card use, cash handling procedures, conflict of interest policies, benevolence fund procedures, like all of the above should be implemented, number five, conduct regular independent financial reviews. 01:26:09.731 --> 01:26:12.677 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's amazing, it hasn't been happening with a CPA firm. 01:26:12.944 --> 01:26:18.419 [SPEAKER_01]: And number six, continue to monitor cash handling procedures, church offerings, our common vulnerability. 01:26:18.881 --> 01:26:27.966 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is something good to think about for churches where you're carrying literal plates full of money to back rooms with multiple people, you know, having a couple different people. 01:26:27.946 --> 01:26:53.464 [SPEAKER_01]: two unrelated people counting offerings immediate deposit procedures counters signing count sheets number seven improve financial reporting transparency require regular financial reports to the board incredible this wasn't happening already i'm gonna say the home these uh report should include budget versus actual account balances major expenditures like this is finance 101 in any organization of any so by the way this sounds extremely complicated it's not no it's not 01:26:53.444 --> 01:26:56.710 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, most of this is I looked at this number, do you see this number? 01:26:56.971 --> 01:26:57.853 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll sign my report. 01:26:57.973 --> 01:26:58.654 [SPEAKER_01]: You send your report. 01:26:58.674 --> 01:27:05.648 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, you can have still have people that figure away through and, and, you know, for getting great if they were in that position, would have both signed something. 01:27:06.209 --> 01:27:08.914 [SPEAKER_01]: But then you know, these two guys signed it exactly. 01:27:08.935 --> 01:27:11.740 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're the ones that are the issue, not something else. 01:27:11.720 --> 01:27:14.124 [SPEAKER_01]: implement expense documentation requirements. 01:27:14.885 --> 01:27:15.446 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, guess what? 01:27:15.766 -->

01:27:17.168 [SPEAKER_01]: Crazes wasn't happening already. 01:27:17.629 --> 01:27:23.478 [SPEAKER_01]: Receipts for all reimbursements, explanation for expenses, board approval for unusual expenditures. 01:27:24.058 --> 01:27:25.821 [SPEAKER_01]: Finance 101 in any organization. 01:27:26.222 --> 01:27:31.149 [SPEAKER_01]: Cash reimbursement, prohibit cash reimbursements without receipts, personal use of ministry credit cards. 01:27:31.710 --> 01:27:34.153 [SPEAKER_01]: Number nine, limit pastor financial authority. 01:27:34.314 --> 01:27:37.238 [SPEAKER_01]: This is something that should just exist everywhere. 01:27:37.218 --> 01:27:56.358 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just covered, well, I can't say that specifically, but there's a story in particular that I've covered in the past, and a pastor was able to, you know, make decisions financially that enabled his abuse of a victim, and it's because nobody else had eyes on the books. 01:27:56.618 --> 01:28:04.947 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it was so clearly he was opening doors from self financially with, you know, and I've seen cases where pastors are buying hotel rooms or they're being like, you know, 01:28:04.927 --> 01:28:10.516 [SPEAKER_01]: A pastor shouldn't have the ability and there should be other people checking and having eyeballs on what he's doing. 01:28:11.017 --> 01:28:16.326 [SPEAKER_01]: So the senior pastor should lead spiritually, which means they should be able to say, I think, I was leading us this way. 01:28:16.706 --> 01:28:18.028 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we should do this. 01:28:18.149 --> 01:28:18.349 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 01:28:18.910 --> 01:28:20.012 [SPEAKER_01]: But they shouldn't be the one to go. 01:28:20.032 --> 01:28:23.657 [SPEAKER_01]: Swipe all of the money you put the offering plate for the last year, just got spent on it. 01:28:23.678 --> 01:28:25.500 [SPEAKER_01]: And that does not make you less of a leader. 01:28:25.721 --> 01:28:25.901 [SPEAKER_01]: No. 01:28:26.001 --> 01:28:26.462 [SPEAKER_01]: By the way. 01:28:26.442 --> 01:28:36.639 [SPEAKER_02]: It makes you your job as to communicate the vision for the ministry or the business and to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses and fill your weaknesses with people who have that as a strength. 01:28:37.220 --> 01:28:48.619 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you are somebody who's had zero financial training and have no idea of what a P&L looks like or what a balance sheet looks like or you've never opened up Google Sheets or Excel in your life then. 01:28:48.599 --> 01:28:57.757 [SPEAKER_02]: you should not only be willing to do it, but it is like 100% your responsibility to find somebody who's competent and capable and can help you do that thing. 01:28:58.359 --> 01:29:02.247 [SPEAKER_02]: And it does not make you less than if you're giving somebody else control over that. 01:29:03.188 --> 01:29:03.289 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 01:29:03.309 --> 01:29:08.920 [SPEAKER_01]: Number 10, do do do diligence and all incoming senior pastor

candidates, I will add to this. 01:29:08.900 --> 01:29:14.887 [SPEAKER_01]: every single employee of all interior that comes and works in your church in any capacity, you know, at least for the full criminal background check. 01:29:14.947 --> 01:29:21.415 [SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to senior pastor candidates, full criminal background check, full credit check, full reference check, talk with prior churches. 01:29:21.856 --> 01:29:29.305 [SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing that concerns me about all of this is like the one step that liberty is going to be taking is informing churches who ask. 01:29:29.285 --> 01:29:32.931 [SPEAKER_01]: But I just know this world that I know a lot of yours is what bother asking us. 01:29:32.951 --> 01:29:33.832 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just the last name. 01:29:33.852 --> 01:29:36.877 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and which, which I'll just say this. 01:29:36.977 --> 01:29:45.370 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're somebody who's listening to this, who goes, Eric, why are you taking it upon yourself to publish this episode when the church is already been hurt by this? 01:29:45.491 --> 01:29:48.255 [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to inform the next church. 01:29:48.235 --> 01:29:59.196 [SPEAKER_01]: The reality is, just like sexual abuse churches don't communicate with each other, and so, you know, if a church doesn't do their due diligence, doesn't want to ask the prior church, doesn't do a background check. 01:29:59.817 --> 01:30:07.071 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, my hope is, if Scott Grey pops his head up in Florida, for example, and says, I'm going to pass her a church. 01:30:07.051 --> 01:30:13.177 [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody that's attending the church finds this, watches it, goes, hey, that's a bad idea, and it actually gets addressed. 01:30:13.618 --> 01:30:20.405 [SPEAKER_02]: So my hope is that there's a pastor who listens to this, who goes, I didn't know that that was not allowed, right? 01:30:20.425 --> 01:30:25.150 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know that this would, man, I should reach out to somebody and get some help with this, because I have no idea what I'm doing. 01:30:25.170 --> 01:30:27.212 [SPEAKER_02]: Right, I'm out over my, like over my skis here. 01:30:27.392 --> 01:30:32.097 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, people that I knew in Bible College that I look at and they're like, they get handed these roles. 01:30:32.077 --> 01:30:44.311 [SPEAKER_02]: with 300 people in the church, where it's like it's not big enough for like, with something like Lancaster, it was like there were a lot of checks and balances by the way, somebody still stole $100,000 from the church, but even when they did it right. 01:30:44.591 --> 01:30:58.607 [SPEAKER_02]: But my point is like, at these smaller churches, like they, the congregants just want a good pastor and they're so oblivious to the idea that this could potentially be something that happens, that they, that they don't do any sort of research into their background or 01:30:58.587 --> 01:31:07.159 [SPEAKER_02]: They assume because there are charismatic leaders that they know what they're doing, when it comes to handling finances, but the two skills are so not even close to each other. 01:31:07.599 --> 01:31:09.442 [SPEAKER_02]: Like most CEOs don't even know. 01:31:09.642 --> 01:31:12.126 [SPEAKER_02]: That's why there's a CFO and a control over it. 01:31:12.146 --> 01:31:15.711 [SPEAKER_02]: Even CBAs, sometimes because all with other CBAs, it's very complicated. 01:31:16.111 --> 01:31:18.955 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, some of this stuff is basic. 01:31:18.975 --> 01:31:24.763 [SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully somebody hears this one goes like, oh man, I know it to the people who are giving me their money. 01:31:24.743 --> 01:31:31.110 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, to manage this with the best, to the, to the, to the best degree that I possibly can. 01:31:31.130 --> 01:31:32.271 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I haven't even if that's not my back. 01:31:32.391 --> 01:31:34.774 [SPEAKER_01]: I attended a Southern Baptist Church for a little while. 01:31:35.294 --> 01:31:37.216 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just lost the independent Baptist, they were listening. 01:31:37.517 --> 01:31:38.718 [SPEAKER_01]: I went to a Southern Baptist Church for a while. 01:31:38.838 --> 01:31:41.000 [SPEAKER_01]: They had a person that worked in the office for years. 01:31:41.060 --> 01:31:42.702 [SPEAKER_01]: They stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. 01:31:42.782 --> 01:31:45.285 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, it, this is going to happen. 01:31:45.505 --> 01:31:48.408 [SPEAKER_01]: An organization, A size, you guys own a small business in Vegas. 01:31:48.448 --> 01:31:49.249 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, 01:31:49.229 --> 01:31:51.972 [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have people that steal money out of the tip chart that's not there. 01:31:52.072 --> 01:31:55.935 [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have people that work the register and leave it a little short. 01:31:56.015 --> 01:31:59.539 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like that stuff is going to happen, but you have to have cameras. 01:31:59.779 --> 01:32:00.740 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to have forms. 01:32:00.760 --> 01:32:01.681 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to have accountability. 01:32:01.721 --> 01:32:04.343 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to have two people closing and not want like all that sort of stuff. 01:32:04.864 --> 01:32:18.156 [SPEAKER_01]: So doing the due diligence at all incoming senior pastor candidates, full criminal background check, credit check, reference check, talk with prior churches, have a written agreement with any incoming senior pastor clearing clearly spelling out job description and compensation details. 01:32:18.136 --> 01:32:33.512 [SPEAKER_01]: Crazy didn't already have that number 11 update the true spy laws to reflect this increased financial accountability So to increase it's to have the bylaws in point away sick so like this is how we're proceeding and number 12 Create a published whistleblower policy 01:32:34.252 --> 01:32:37.436 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this

is not just finance, but you should have this in your ministry. 01:32:37.836 --> 01:32:51.231 [SPEAKER_01]: Who do you report things to, to provide a confidential method for reporting financial concerns, reports may go to finance committee chair, board chair, general legal counsel, and then there should be protection guaranteed against retaliation. 01:32:51.271 --> 01:32:54.014 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is pretty normal in every business that should exist. 01:32:54.554 --> 01:32:57.578 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll just say, I just mentioned this is for everything, not just financial stuff. 01:32:57.978 --> 01:33:04.225 [SPEAKER_01]: If it's sexual abuse, the report goes to the police first, not to anybody else they put in a list. 01:33:04.205 --> 01:33:25.133 [SPEAKER_01]: crumple that up and throw it away and police first for that but for finance it makes sense to go to finance committee board chair legal counsel first and foremost and so yeah I mean ultimately I mean now we've gone through all of this holy smoke setting this is a two-hour episode or something so you've heard all of this for the first time I kind of give you like a 10,000-foot view 01:33:25.585 --> 01:33:26.667 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any big takeaways? 01:33:26.967 --> 01:33:33.077 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want me to reread Scott Gray statement in light of this to reconsider some of this stuff he said? 01:33:33.097 --> 01:33:35.421 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think that would end the episode. 01:33:35.461 --> 01:33:37.704 [SPEAKER_02]: But I do, there's a couple things first. 01:33:37.724 --> 01:33:40.669 [SPEAKER_02]: I think the trust but verify thing is paramount. 01:33:40.709 --> 01:33:43.273 [SPEAKER_02]: It's crucial. 01:33:43.253 --> 01:33:51.203 [SPEAKER_02]: If somebody is opposed to these things because they're throwing out the what you don't trust me thing, it's like that is a huge red flag. 01:33:51.563 --> 01:33:54.347 [SPEAKER_02]: And the answer is, yes, we do trust you. 01:33:54.647 --> 01:34:05.761 [SPEAKER_02]: But in order to make an effort to ensure that there's never a reason that we have to now not trust you, these things are in place so that we can move forward with the system that regard this. 01:34:05.781 --> 01:34:07.563 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're a good leader, the next leader is a bad leader. 01:34:08.384 --> 01:34:11.067 [SPEAKER_02]: This will allow us to be able to 01:34:11.047 --> 01:34:18.497 [SPEAKER_02]: But then the other thing to me is that this is probably, this is just my own anecdotal thoughts and experience on this. 01:34:18.557 --> 01:34:20.280 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have any data to back this up. 01:34:20.841 --> 01:34:35.721 [SPEAKER_02]: But I ought to assume that this is much more rampant than any other forms of abuse within the church because of what I mentioned at the very beginning when we first started this because of the just gross incompetence that a lot of these church leaders have, not even to their own fault. 01:34:35.701 --> 01:34:40.032 [SPEAKER_02]: So, it probably a lot of them are even ignorant of their own ignorance. 01:34:40.072 --> 01:34:42.178 [SPEAKER_02]: They just don't know what they don't know about these things. 01:34:42.739 --> 01:34:45.306 [SPEAKER_02]: So, this is like... 01:34:46.231 --> 01:34:53.638 [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, the sexual abuse physical abuse behind that, this is probably the probably one of the biggest issues that faces churches in general. 01:34:54.278 --> 01:35:03.607 [SPEAKER_02]: And as a percentage is much greater than any other form of abuse, because of how easy it can be, because there's no checks and balances, because trust is given without being earned. 01:35:04.087 --> 01:35:16.238 [SPEAKER_02]: And so if you are somebody who goes to church constantly and you're giving to that church, you owe it to your family, your church family, 01:35:16.218 --> 01:35:33.282 [SPEAKER_02]: To make sure that you're doing due diligence around due diligence around these things and making sure that these other things are in place at the church that you go to and if they're not again It's a big red flag and there should be some questions that that are asked because you if you are going to give some of your hard earned income 01:35:33.262 --> 01:35:48.519 [SPEAKER_02]: to the mission that you want to support, which I am a big advocate of, gives your money, wherever you want to give your money, but make sure that the people you're giving your money to are trustworthy and are people who are going to use the money for the thing that they're actually saying they're going to use the money for. 01:35:49.039 --> 01:35:56.587 [SPEAKER_02]: And know that this is probably one of the bigger issues that's facing the church today as a whole, and there's a documentary that came out recently about this. 01:35:56.748 --> 01:36:01.733 [SPEAKER_02]: So, and this is not just the IFB thing, this is rampant across all forms of 01:36:01.713 --> 01:36:03.917 [SPEAKER_02]: of non-profits, even not just churches. 01:36:05.080 --> 01:36:17.764 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I guess I will close up this episode by reminding you, if you've hung in there this long to hear all of this, you know, from the period of December 22nd, 2020 to December 2nd, 2025, 01:36:17.744 --> 01:36:25.771 [SPEAKER_01]: There's been costs to the church of almost $400,000, $399,680 and $13,000 to be exact. 01:36:27.072 --> 01:36:29.374 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the senior pass as exact as they could be. 01:36:29.755 --> 01:36:47.751 [SPEAKER_01]: As exact as it could be over that period, that's over 93,000 of unbudget expenses, over 90,000 of nominees should relate expenses, and $216,000, $327 and 30 cents of unknown expenses, 01:36:47.731 --> 01:37:07.630 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll say here, I mean, Tim 4G is responsible for $123,000 plus dollars of that, Stephen Gray, $5,436 plus dollars of that, Scottie Gray, over $5,000 of that, Philip Gray, almost $7,000 of that, Karen 4G, $14,000 plus dollars of that. 01:37:07.610 -->

01:37:13.860 [SPEAKER_01]: Jennifer Gray, $2,000 plus dollars of that, several other staff members with fairing amounts under them. 01:37:14.421 --> 01:37:21.512 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the senior pastor Scott Gray, $79,887 in 25 cents of responsibility there. 01:37:22.193 --> 01:37:27.341 [SPEAKER_01]: And so when you compare and contrast that with the statement saying, I want to be clear about this. 01:37:27.722 --> 01:37:32.790 [SPEAKER_01]: I did not steal from Liberty Baptist Church nor did I use church finances for personal gain. 01:37:32.770 --> 01:37:36.096 [SPEAKER_01]: the question he should be answering is, where do the money go? 01:37:36.136 --> 01:37:37.920 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, who benefited from this? 01:37:38.521 --> 01:37:40.244 [SPEAKER_01]: Because it definitely wasn't the church. 01:37:40.284 --> 01:37:43.170 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, we heard that in the beginning, like, the church wasn't benefiting. 01:37:43.230 --> 01:37:43.831 [SPEAKER_01]: It was bleeding. 01:37:44.272 --> 01:37:45.955 [SPEAKER_01]: It seems for a season. 01:37:46.255 --> 01:37:48.239 [SPEAKER_01]: He benefited from it, but then squandered it. 01:37:48.399 --> 01:37:51.585 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, staff members were, you know, not getting paychecks. 01:37:51.605 --> 01:37:55.673 [SPEAKER_01]: If the church wasn't stolen from, and if he didn't benefit from it, you know, 01:37:55.653 --> 01:37:56.955 [SPEAKER_01]: what happened and who did. 01:37:56.975 --> 01:37:59.117 [SPEAKER_01]: I think is a question everyone should be asking. 01:37:59.538 --> 01:38:02.060 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I appreciate everybody listening to this episode. 01:38:02.241 --> 01:38:14.054 [SPEAKER_01]: I think there is a lot of lessons to take from this, whether you're a ministry that's doing everything by the books, but you want to be a little bit more airtight, whether you're somebody in the congregation that's never thought to ask where your money goes once it hits the offering plate. 01:38:14.675 --> 01:38:17.498 [SPEAKER_01]: It should make you think twice before dropping the next envelope. 01:38:18.179 --> 01:38:18.960 [SPEAKER_01]: And 01:38:18.940 --> 01:38:26.170 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, I see this all the time, but like a great way to tell if you're in a good church is to go ask questions and see how those questions are met. 01:38:26.611 --> 01:38:32.540 [SPEAKER_01]: So definitely be sure to ask questions so things like this don't happen and try to do anything else before we sign off. 01:38:32.600 --> 01:38:33.381 [SPEAKER_01]: Now it's a great way to end it. 01:38:33.461 --> 01:38:35.784 [SPEAKER_02]: The truth does not shy away from questions. 01:38:35.804 --> 01:38:36.325 [SPEAKER_02]: So if 01:38:36.305 --> 01:38:44.194 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're asking questions and it's met with this combative approach rather than transparency, then there's probably a red flag there. 01:38:44.375 --> 01:38:48.960 [SPEAKER_02]: So I appreciate you, Eric, for having me on to talk a little bit about this. 01:38:49.321 --> 01:38:52.144 [SPEAKER_02]: And then if you're listening to Travis Mix Money, we'll catch you guys on the next episode. 01:38:52.625 --> 01:38:56.970 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we have enough here to do a series every week. 01:38:56.990 --> 01:38:57.090 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 01:38:57.110 --> 01:39:00.855 [SPEAKER_01]: You've been listening to the Preja Boys podcast hosted by Eric Squizinski. 01:39:01.475 --> 01:39:05.400 [SPEAKER_01]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Ridley. 01:39:05.380 --> 01:39:24.975 [SPEAKER_04]: I said, come on, come on We are gathered here today To praise the Holy Father Feel the glory of His name Anyone can worship here so long Is you x-ray, paying your ties And follow rules even the ones God didn't make any Bible