“The fact that ECFA didn’t discover these violations itself is bad enough. But the fact that the group failed to act even after I reported these glaring violations is inexcusable. What it took to finally force the group’s hand was my report that MacDonald had funded African safaris, Florida vacations, and other luxury purchases with church funds. And even then, it took nearly a week for the group to act!”
(Julie Roys) The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) has suspended Harvest Bible Chapel‘s accreditation following my report last week about gross misappropriation of church funds to support James MacDonald‘s lavish lifestyle. Also last week, I confronted the ECFA for continuing to accredit Harvest despite my repeated appeals over several months to ECFA to investigate financial impropriety at the church.
On Friday, the ECFA released a statement announcing that Harvest may no longer represent that it is an ECFA member or display ECFA’s membership seal. The ECFA also said that because of new information, it has “concerns” that the church may be “in serious violation” of four of ECFA’s Seven Standards.
It’s stunning to me that it has taken this long for the ECFA to act. For example, in December, I reported that Harvest had used funds donated to Walk in the Word, MacDonald’s broadcast ministry, to pay for a deer herd at Camp Harvest in Michigan. This, despite the fact that MacDonald had claimed in a video formerly posted to the Walk in the Word website that “every dollar” donors give to Walk in the Word “goes directly into buying the airtime to get out the good news of Jesus Christ.” This was a blatant violation of ECFA Standard 7.2, which states: “Statements made about the use of gifts by an organization in its charitable gift appeals must be honored.”
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