THE NEW CARPETBAGGERS

In 2007, Senator Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, launched an investigation into the finances of six major Christian ministry organizations. Thank you, Senator Grassley, for bringing attention to the excesses of a few! They needed the exposure and those that have refused to comply with requests for financial records have indicted themselves!

At the end of the Civil War, large portions of the South had been destroyed. As the nation struggled to recover and rebuild, huge amounts of money were being used in the devastated areas for the massive rebuilding effort. As we have seen in modern-day Iraq, when large amounts of money pour into an area for rebuilding, some of the funds get spent without proper oversight, and finances and materials simply disappear, taken by the unscrupulous.

During the rebuilding of the South, a group of unscrupulous profiteers appeared and took advantage of the haze and fog of the aftermath of war. The profiteers became known as “carpetbaggers” because they traveled light and fast. The carpetbaggers quickly moved into devastated areas that were rebuilding and spread the word about their alleged specialties of building and engineering. They made outrageous claims of what they had done in other areas and they used their personal charm and charisma to gain access to the overworked and overburdened local government leaders. The carpetbaggers set up offices and shell companies and as soon as they had money and supplies coming their direction, they took the money and ran, leaving the devastated areas worse off than when they had arrived. The hopes and dreams of the vanquished about rebuilding and getting on with their lives were smashed to new lows by the immoral and unethical carpetbaggers.

I have said before that when a neglected truth is brought back to the forefront, there is often an overstatement of the validity of the truth. Some will take the truth and push it too far; they overstate it and overemphasize it. Usually after a period of time, balance is achieved and the truth settles into a prominent position without the excesses.

There will always be some who take extreme positions on what Christians should have or not have in the way of material possessions. Some say that Christians should have little or nothing; they seem to espouse a form of socialism. These folks put an inappropriate spin on Acts 4:32-36 and try to suggest that this proves that Christian socialism is the right way—and they are wrong.

Others say that if you plant your financial seed in the right place, usually into their ministry, you are going to reap a 30-, 60- or 100-fold harvest, guaranteed! To prove their claims of God’s abundant blessing, they subtly let slip how well they are personally doing with their big homes, expensive clothes and new jet airplanes. To these preachers, these possessions are necessary props for their illustrated sermons. To successfully preach the prosperity message while living humbly and simply just won’t get the offerings; it doesn’t prove their point…or so they think.

The new carpetbaggers have brought confusion and disillusionment to the church instead of properly teaching that God will never be unfaithful to His people. He will always meet our needs (however, that doesn’t mean filet mignon when hamburger will do or a Rolls Royce when a Ford is more than adequate).

The new carpetbaggers do not properly teach what the blessing of God is and the purpose of His blessing. The whole of Psalm 67 is worthy of your spending some time reading. Verses one and two are especially potent about the blessing of the Lord and its purpose.

The carpetbaggers of the Civil War era operated on two levels. Publicly, they were gregarious and positive about what they could get done. Privately, they schemed and plotted and then they slipped away before anyone could discover their illegal and immoral plans. One of the “new” carpetbaggers had the audacity to run a letter on their ministry Website as an answer to Senator Grassley’s request for them to open their books and operation for public view. The published letter went to great pains to explain all the wonderful things the ministry does and to finally say, “No, we will not make our books available to the public, for we operate in privacy, not in secrecy.” To this statement, I reply, “Thank you…you have just defined yourself as a carpetbagger.”

And again to Senator Grassley, thank for doing what the church has been too cowardly to do. The refusal of several of the “televangelists” to be open about their finances and operations is their own indictment.

If the church cannot operate openly about finances, including salary and expenses, it is because there are things to hide.