Church misused tsnunami and Katrina donations

Hundreds of parishioners packed into a cavernous meeting room at Redmond's Overlake Christian Church Thursday evening to find out the real reason their senior pastor, Rick Kingham, had left. Kingham, one of the founders of the Promise Keepers men's movement, had resigned without explanation the previous Sunday after eight years leading the church.

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Several sources have told Seattle Weekly that the church took money that parishioners had donated for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina and used it to cover church operating expenses. The church has been in bad financial shape, suffering $1 million--plus annual operating losses for at least the last four years, according to records reviewed by the Weekly.


http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-02-21/news/cash-and-carry.php

Let's see...FEMA employees stole millions of Katrina money...Churches stole the Katrina money...it's a wonder there was any left for everyone to find new homes...oh wait, there wasn't.
But I recall the OUTRAGE when one of the Katrina victims bought a designer purse that cost a few hundred bucks.
God what is wrong with people.

count 'em

two

the religious bigots steal everything that isn't nailed down, don't they, i doubt this fine church ever intended to send the money to new orleans and sure as hell they were never going to send one red cent to indonesia

not doubting you - just expressing my despairing shock. My heart heaves for those members of the church who gave hard earned $ believing that they were giving to a bigger cause (of trying to address the needs of others) who have to face the reality that greed trumps Christian values for many "christian" leaders. But my heart heaves a hundred times more for the displaced whose lives have been disrupted and in many cases dessimated by the tragedy and who have no light in sight. :-(

here ya go:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/022307dntswkatrina.28ba51f.html

Two residents got the keys Thursday to what are believed to be the first homes built in the Lower 9th Ward since Hurricane Katrina hit 18 months ago, and officials hope the houses – elevated against floodwaters and designed to withstand 160 mph winds – will help spark a revival in the devastated neighborhood.

of what ails us... but I am pretty certain that it won't be covered. The lack of "recovery" in the Gulf Coast esp for those on the lower end of the economic spectrum - continues to be ignored. A national tragedy on so many levels. :cry:

Yeah for ACORN.
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=4174&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=2716&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=18967&cHash=7122375e81

Living and hour east in Mississippi, this doesn't surprise me in the least. Nothing much is getting built here, either. :( This is something everyone should know about. I hate to see this important-if-depressingly-inadequate-recovery news get lost in this thread.

It is going to take a while for a bunch of places to account for the money given for these disasters and a pox on those that didn't send it off. Not only does it not help those it was meant to help, but it causes those who donated to question whether they should donate next time or not.

"What Leng, and the other church leaders at the meeting, didn't say is that the church handed over the money only after parishioners pressured them to do so."

What does "Promise Keeper" mean to this man?

I'm just so shocked.

Sid

The question is -- do they want to do something about it, besides asking the pastor to resign? That $37 million campus they built in the Bob Moorehead era is turning out to be quite a bit more of a mortgage than they initially anticipated, especially with conflicting numbers on the drop in membership over the past few years.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/303446_overlake13.html

We asked a family we know that attends there during the Moorehead scandal why they continued to attend. "Well, we trust the board." Uh-huh.

Julie

We just sent six guys from Oregon down to Lucedale, Mississippi for a week last month to swing hammers, hang sheet rock and put houses destroyed by Katrina back together. Damn, we could have scammed a cool million dollars instead of running our teeny tiny congregation on a $50,000 annual budget. Might even be able to pay our pastor a full-time salary.