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Preach the gospel. Die. Be forgotten. – Count Zinzendorf

We must be careful in speaking about God’s protection. The Lord delivered three men from the flames, but He has not delivered every faithful servant from death. Stephen was stoned. James was killed by the sword. Countless Christians have gone to their deaths confessing the same Lord who delivered the three men in Babylon. – Rev. Dr. Ronald Moore

All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size. – John Stott

“The frontiers of the kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution.” – J. Oswald Sanders

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” – attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo

“Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion.” – Os Guinness

Writing of the Apostles: “It is a constant marvel to see how these men spread a message radically opposed in its essence to the common wisdom of their age. Currently, the practice of Christianity still runs contrary to popular thought and we are confronted with the same challenge.” – A. Hophan

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

WHEN THE COLLECTION PLATE RUNS DRY

The correlation is not hard to see.

As churches decline, numerically and spiritually, the rot that was always there rises to the surface, and the temptation to steal grows sharper. It happens in business. It is happening, with depressing regularity, in the church.

Follow the Money

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has tracked what it calls “ecclesiastical crime” for decades. Its researchers estimate that one in three churches will be victims of embezzlement and that more than a quarter of those will never report it. If present trends hold, the annual cost to churches worldwide will reach $170 billion by 2050. Those are global figures, but North America has had its own reckoning. A Villanova University survey found that 85 percent of responding Catholic dioceses had uncovered embezzlement within the previous five years, and 11 percent had lost more than half a million dollars. Only 3 percent audited their parishes every year; 21 percent seldom or never did. Trust was the system, and trust was the vulnerability.

Rome has no monopoly here. A retired Missouri priest pleaded guilty to sending his sister $100,000 stolen from his parish and admitted writing himself a $200,000 check from the church account. In the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, Canon Edward Monk, for 21 years rector of St. John’s, Corsicana, was arrested in December 2024. He was charged with stealing more than $300,000, with fraudulent use of an elderly person’s identity and with abuse of that person’s credit card. The Episcopal Church’s Court of Review has since ordered a new hearing, so his canonical case remains open. On Staten Island, an Episcopal rector was accused of taking nearly $85,000 meant for church upkeep and struggling parishioners and spending it on Botox, plastic surgery, liquor and clothes. And the Episcopal Church has never quite lived down Ellen Cooke, its national treasurer, who embezzled $2.2 million from 815 Second Avenue before she was found out in 1995.

The Sexual Scandals

The Catholic scandal is the best documented, and the numbers keep coming. In the latest annual audit, 973 survivors reported 1,070 allegations, 168 more than the year before, and settlement payouts jumped 69 percent. But the dates tell their own story. As in earlier audits, most of the alleged abuse took place decades ago, between the 1960s and the 1980s, and only 24 of the 1,070 allegations involved someone who is still a minor. Rome is paying today for the sins of a generation ago.

Protestants who once watched Rome’s agony with a certain smugness have lost that luxury. In 2022, Guidepost Solutions found that Southern Baptist leaders had ignored abuse reports and resisted reform for two decades. Two Executive Committee officials kept a list of accused ministers, which last ran to 703 names, and never acted to remove any of them from positions of power.

The Celebrity-Pastor Model

The contrast with Rome is instructive. The Catholic allegations surfacing now are largely old sins dragged out by lawsuits and bankruptcies. The megachurch scandals are mostly recent. Bill Hybels resigned from Willow Creek in 2018 amid accusations from multiple women. Carl Lentz was fired from Hillsong New York in 2020 for infidelity. Ravi Zacharias died in 2020, and the next year an investigation commissioned by his own ministry found he had sexually abused massage therapists. These are not relics of the sexual revolution. They are the fruit of a celebrity-pastor model built over the last 30 years: charismatic founders, compliant boards and almost no outside accountability.

Robert Morris is the exception that proves the rule. At its peak his Gateway Church in Texas drew some 100,000 attendees across nine campuses. In October 2025 he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing Cindy Clemishire, beginning when she was 12. The abuse began in 1982, but it took more than 40 years to come to light. Gateway’s own investigation found that all but three of its elders knew something of the matter and failed to inquire further.

Not Only Boys

The press too often misses that this is not only homosexual abuse of boys. It is also older men with spiritual authority preying on women. Baylor University’s landmark study found that 3.1 percent of women who attend services at least monthly had been targets of clergy sexual misconduct as adults, about seven women in an average congregation of 400. Ninety-two percent of the advances were made in secret, and two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else. The researchers insisted these were not affairs but abuses of spiritual power.

England

England has had its own reckoning. The Makin Review found that John Smyth abused about 30 boys and young men in Britain and some 85 in Africa, and that those who received a 1982 internal report on him took part in an active cover-up. It cost Archbishop Justin Welby his job. Then came Soul Survivor, where a Church of England safeguarding investigation found that Mike Pilavachi had shown coercive and controlling behavior over a 40-year span.

Why Now?

Part of the answer is money. The Boomers are dying, and their checkbooks close with them. Between 2016 and 2022, giving to places of worship dropped 16 percent among Boomers, 31 percent among Millennials and 41 percent among Gen X. The Church of England’s finance chief has warned that an 81-year-old is eight times as likely to be in church as an 18-year-old, and the finances are already feeling it. A priest facing a shrinking parish, a shrinking stipend and a pension of uncertain worth stands closer to temptation than he did when the plates were full.

Not Ancient History

Lest anyone think this is ancient history, consider the last eight months. In March, Pope Leo XIV announced the resignation of Emanuel Shaleta, the Chaldean Catholic bishop of San Diego. Shaleta had been arrested at San Diego’s airport as he tried to leave the country, and he is charged with embezzlement and money laundering. Prosecutors say he took more than $270,000 from his own church; he has pleaded not guilty. Days ago in Kansas, a Catholic priest charged with stealing more than $100,000 from his parish appeared in court for violating his bond. He is accused of running up more than $159,000 in unauthorized charges on the parish credit card between 2021 and 2025. In Tennessee, a church’s “financial stewardship pastor” has been indicted for allegedly taking more than $350,000 over his nine years on staff. In South Carolina, a Baptist pastor and his wife are accused of spending more than $200,000 in church money on personal expenses, a motorcycle and luxury vehicles. Bishop, priest, pastor, and even the man hired to teach stewardship: the collection plate tempts every rank.

Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out

But money is the occasion, not the cause. Morris and Smyth did their worst in the boom years. Decline did not create the rot; it stripped away the cover. When a church stops believing that sin is sin and that judgment is real, it stops policing its own. When the money dries up, what was hidden is found out. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23) was never a threat. It was a promise.

FOLLOW THE MONEY, FOLLOW THE COMPASS

The Compass Rose Society met in London last week at One Whitehall Place, as it does every October. There was prayer, reports were read, and the evening ended with dinner at Lambeth Palace hosted by Archbishop Sarah Mullally. Bishop Anthony Poggo, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, called on Anglicans to “build bridges” in a polarized world. It was all very gracious and very Anglican.

It is worth remembering where this society came from. It traces its origins to George Carey’s 1994 visit to war-ravaged Sudan. Carey, an evangelical Archbishop of Canterbury, came home appalled at what he saw and wanted the suffering church of Sudan to be heard and helped. The Society’s first instinct, then, was mission and relief for a persecuted African church. Give credit where it is due.

Now look at who holds the compass today. The president is Daniel Gutiérrez, the liberal Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania. All three new board members come from Episcopal bodies: the dioceses of Texas and Florida and the National Association of Episcopal Schools. This year’s speakers included Bishop Robert Wright of Atlanta and Canon Chuck Robertson, senior adviser to the Presiding Bishop. The Society’s own literature says one of its aims is to keep the Episcopal Church a “vibrant member” of the worldwide family. Its fundraising now highlights support for women’s leadership across the Communion.

And look at the money. The Society says it has raised more than $17 million. In 2017 it provided more than a fifth of the Anglican Communion Office’s unrestricted income, with its members concentrated in the United States, Canada and Hong Kong. Through Continuing Indaba it funded Episcopal dioceses to “wrestle” with Global South dioceses over sexuality. Wrestling, in this setting, has generally meant persuasion.

This was not a coup. It was a shift, and a telling one. A society begun to serve a suffering African church has become a channel through which a shrinking American denomination keeps its seat, and its voice, at Canterbury’s table. The Global South provinces now walk with GAFCON and the GSFA. The Episcopal Church brings the checkbook.

Bishop Gutiérrez told members that hope has a name, and that name is Jesus Christ. Amen. But Sudan’s Anglicans knew that long before the Compass Rose Society existed, and they did not need a London dinner to prove it. The compass still points somewhere. It no longer points south.

WASTED MONEY IN A DIMINISHING CHURCH

The Church of England is heading for financial ruin, and this time the warning comes from inside the house. In a new report, Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church, Canon Robin Gill, a theological adviser to two Archbishops of Canterbury, and Professor John Craven, a former member of the Archbishops’ Council, say 37 of the 42 dioceses are now running deficits, up from 19 only a few years ago. Attendance is down a quarter since 2015, a third of those still in the pews are over 70, and giving has fallen 30 percent in ten years.

So what has the Church done? It has expanded the bureaucracy. Diocesan staff have grown about 80 percent since 2005, from 1,300 to 2,300, adding net-zero officers, safeguarding specialists and racial justice leads while the number of parish clergy has fallen sharply. There are four times as many bishops as in Victorian days, serving far fewer worshippers. On top of that sit £190 million for a net-zero target the Church admits it will miss and £100 million for Project Spire’s slavery reparations. The faithful are answering with their wallets. They see these schemes as extravagant and won’t pay for them.

The authors call for halving the number of dioceses and cutting staff hard. They are right. But no restructuring will refill pews emptied by a church that abandoned the Gospel. Administrators can’t save a church that has stopped preaching Christ.

RWANDA INSTALLS A NEW PRIMATE

The Anglican Church of Rwanda has a new archbishop. The Rt. Rev. Dr. Manasseh Gahima, Bishop of Gahini since 2019 and previously its assistant bishop, was elected in September and installed in Kigali on October 25. He also serves as president of the Council of Protestant Churches of Rwanda. He succeeds the Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, who led the province from 2018 and remains chairman of GAFCON. This is no gain for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rwanda is solidly in GAFCON’s camp, and no charm offensive by Sarah Mullally will change that.

TWELVE CHURCHES AND A COMMUNION REDRAWN

The Diocese of the Southern Cross, Australia’s orthodox Anglican refuge, is quietly growing. On October 10 in Brisbane, two lay ministers were ordained deacons and their congregations came in as Member Churches. The Anglican Church of the Torres Strait is about to join as the twelfth. In Perth, the Rev. Mekyal Keira of the Sudanese Kush Southern Cross Anglican Church was ordained a presbyter. Twelve churches will not shake Lambeth Palace. But they are a local sign of a global realignment that has moved from protest to building permanent structures.

That realignment has come fast. After Sarah Mullally was named, GAFCON declared itself the authentic Anglican Communion. It created a Global Anglican Council under its chairman, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, and made Abuja its headquarters. The GSFA shares the grief but has taken a different road, building its own covenanted house next door. Meanwhile Mullally is courting the Africans who have not left, with stops in Ghana and Cameroon. It is a skillful play. But a photo opportunity is not a doctrine of marriage.

I went to Singapore twice in the early years and on to Kuala Lumpur. I saw those Global South bishops planting churches one congregation at a time. Some have since gone to their reward and never saw Abuja, but Abuja is their legacy. Canterbury still has the cathedral, but the Anglican future is being built somewhere else.

CENTRAL FLORIDA BISHOP ANSWERS “JESUS TRANSITIONED” SERMON: “THE BODY IS NOT A COSTUME”

Bishop Justin Holcomb of Central Florida has sent his clergy a 13-page essay, The Body of Jesus Christ: Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, Ascended, Returning. It answers New York priest Flourish Klink’s sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, preached with Bishop Matthew Heyd presiding, which claimed God is trans and that Jesus “transitioned” at the resurrection. Without naming the preacher, Holcomb grants that God is beyond sex, then turns the argument around. The Son took a real, male body from Mary, and calling that body provisional revives the errors Chalcedon condemned: Docetism and the Eutychian confusion of the two natures. The risen Christ showed his wounds and ate fish before his disciples, glorified but not replaced. “The body is not a prison and it is not a costume,” the bishop writes. It is a rare sight: an Episcopal bishop answering novelty with the creeds. Read the full story and the bishop’s essay here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/one-bishop-taught-the-other-presided

APPEALS COURT SIDES WITH EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN ICE LAWSUIT

A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit brought by the Episcopal Church and 26 other Christian and Jewish groups against the Trump administration. The suit challenges the administration’s January 2025 decision to scrap the “sensitive locations” guidance that had shielded churches, schools and hospitals from immigration raids. A district judge threw the case out in April 2025, ruling that the faith groups had not shown a credible threat and lacked standing. On October 20, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit reversed that ruling 2-1 and sent the case back. The ruling does not bar ICE from houses of worship, but it lets the plaintiffs try again for protection while the case proceeds. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris gave thanks for what they called a milestone in a multi faith effort to protect religious freedom. – with reporting from the Church Times

SCOTLAND’S EMBATTLED BISHOP TO RETIRE

The Rt. Rev. Anne Dyer, the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney and Scotland’s first woman bishop, will retire in February when she reaches the church’s retirement age of 70. Her tenure was consumed by bullying complaints from clergy and staff. She was suspended in 2022, and in 2024 the church’s independent procurator dropped disciplinary proceedings as not in the public interest, even while acknowledging a realistic prospect of conviction.

JAMES TALARICO: AN EPISCOPALIAN IN WAITING?

James Talarico, the Texas state legislator and Presbyterian seminarian running for the U.S. Senate, may or may not win on November 3. Either way, he already has a spiritual home waiting for him, and it isn’t the PC(USA). It’s the Episcopal Church.

Consider his credentials. He says the Bible is silent on abortion, though Elizabeth hailed Mary as “the mother of my Lord” while Jesus was still in the womb. He says God is non-binary, though Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father.” He says Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism all circle the same truth, though Jesus said no one comes to the Father but through Him. And he offers welcome without repentance, though Jesus began His ministry with one word: “Repent.”

At 815 Second Avenue, that is not heresy. It is a résumé. The Episcopal Church will let you believe almost anything, so long as it isn’t the plain teaching of Scripture, the Book of Common Prayer or the Thirty-Nine Articles. Mr. Talarico would sail through any diocesan commission on ministry in the land. He might even make a fine bishop.

There is one doctrine, however, that TEC will not let you question, and that is gay marriage. Just ask Bishop William Love, who was driven from the Diocese of Albany for refusing to embrace it. On that point Mr. Talarico is already orthodox by Episcopal standards. The Thirty-Nine Articles he can skip. The rainbow flag is not optional. You can read my take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-gospel-according-to-talarico

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