Delivering on the Promise: Update

An article in the Louisville Courier-Journal today follows up on the $150 million pledge to the PC(USA), and the financial troubles the maker of the pledge, Stanley W. Anderson, is currently having. Another article is in Forbes today.

Some key grafs:

Detterick defended his decision not to check Anderson's ability to pay the money before announcing the pledge with great fanfare.

He said the church is "unlike a business that oftentimes requires verification of capability" to pay.

"When people make a pledge of a gift to the church, we accept that gift, we accept that pledge with gratitude and grace," Detterick said.

Detterick said in an interview that churches routinely accept pledges without checking donors' credit ratings.

"There's no potential exposure to the church," he said. "If the gift comes, we'll start the process of doing the grants, and not before."

The money is due by the end of November, said Detterick.

I will grant the assertion that churches do not check donors' credit ratings. However, with a huge gift like this, and with all the publicity it has generated, one would think some background check would be advisable.

Some Presbyterians questioned why the church announced such a large gift without doing more of a background check, but they agreed that it's not usual church practice to do so.

"Churches by nature are trusting organizations," said Charlie Evans, stated clerk of the Presbytery of Western Kentucky.

He said the Anderson pledge had inspired him because his presbytery had already been planning a new church.

Yes, churches are trusting organizations, but a little more financial savvy and wisdom couldn't hurt.

Again, I hope this man sorts out his financial problems and the huge gift becomes a reality. And maybe I am reading my own bad experiences with this sort of thing into this situation, and colors my view. But I find the lack of checking, even a minimum of checking, to be troublesome.