I have a formal complaint to make against First Presbyterian Church, located at 31 E. Vine St.in Stockton, California. I was an accountant there for the past five years and I feel that not only were the circumstances surrounding my leaving the church (as well as others leaving) tainted with the poor ethics in which this church operates but many other situations that happened over the past five years were tainted with poor ethics as well. I will attempt to describe my experiences over the last five years at the church to give you an idea of the dubious character with which this church operates.
I first started working at First Presbyterian early 2001 as an accountant hired from the Accountemps Robert Half staffing agency. I was promised by Steven Carter, who was the church's pastor, that if I was employed by the church for at least four months the church would purchase my contract from the agency and make me their official employee. Since I am a Christian that was raised in the Reformed tradition I jumped at the chance to finally have a Christian client. Little did I know what was coming in the future.
I noticed right away that something was wrong when the pastor Steven Carter would ask for accounting reports regularly as well as updates. The pastor would frequently get travel reimbursements and expense reimbursements that he would describe on pieces of notebook paper for me to cut him a check for. While I was making out a reimbursement for a church member named Barbara Roek that spent some of her own money to fund a church activity I was told by Steven, Never mind the Roek's, they have money, get my reimbursement ready! In a very harsh voice. Ironically, he was just the opposite when it came to member reports. It was normal for us to get over a dozen of complaint letters (or phoned in complaint forms filled out by the secretary) following a print run of the quarterly giving statement. It was normal for some members to be confused as to what the reports meant or for them to have a discrepancy as our counters were known for the transposition errors in assigning envelope numbers. I was in the office one day answering each complaint from the stack in the order they were received, notifying the members and making the appropriate change in the computer. Steven saw me doing this and told me to put the members with the most income on the top of the stack. He said, We have to roll out the red carpet to the wealthier members, if we don't they'll go someplace else with their money! Also in a very harsh voice. It seems this church was only about money. I wonder who Steven would have sided with if he would have been alive in the New Testament times when Jesus and Judas Iscariot would disagree over what to do with the money.
The accounting system the church was using during Steven's administration was very confusing and it needed to be rebuilt from scratch. They did a poor job at organizing the church's previous accounting system and it threw things off horrendously. For example, the way the books were set up each of the individual restricted use funds were set up in Holding Funds as equity accounts. The money from a Sunday's offerings designated for use in one of these funds would go directly to the fund without filtering through income first. Therefore, the only income or expenses board members ever saw (aside from seeing these mysterious funds on the rarely looked at balance sheet) was the general fund used to pay operating expenses (utilities, etc.) This resulted in a system that allowed anyone to take any amount of money they want out of the books and it would not show up on the financial statements. Stealing from this church would be easy for anybody under this system. There was no account given from anybody for checks issued from these holding funds. Since it did not show up on the books no one would question it. Not only was this unethical, but it was illegal under rules established in GAAP, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, adopted by the AICPA. It's no wonder the church was to head into a year long deficit the next year. Only so much window dressing was able to keep the financial statements looking good. The cash flow would have to be used up sooner or later.
There were many other questionable moments during Steven's tenure at the church. One was a very silly mistake made out poor judgment during one of his sermons. Steven was a conscientious war objector and following the 9/11 attacks he made the statement There is nothing worth fighting for from the pulpit. This prompted many war veterans attending the church at the time to resign. Steven's wife was rarely seen at the church and many unconfirmed rumors began circulating that she had mental illness. Steven was quickly losing popularity among the general church membership and very suddenly announced his decision to leave. He was transferring to another church somewhere back east. One church member told me, He cheated us, I'm glad he's gone. Let's just leave it at that! Take that for what you will. I was also glad he was gone as I thought about quitting several times as he was very abusive and would raise his voice at me frequently.
Church member Jared Van Zwaluwenburg (a CPA) and I went over the accounting system and Jared told me where he thought some of the accounting principle violations were. Based on that information I redesigned the accounting system from scratch and started requiring verification for all money going out. This was necessary because the previous accounting system threw us into a year-long deficit where the church did not have enough money to pay its bills. Many saw this as an intrusion on Jared's part. However, I think the church saw Jared as a threat because they began to pile work on him with putting him on different committees and having him look over financial statements. Jared was working 10 hours a day at the time during tax season and was barely able to juggle his personal life, work life, and what this church was putting on him. Following a heated argument with a couple of session members, Jared wisely decided to quit and join another church.
After Steven left the church we hired an interim pastor John L. Jack Eisel and had a new group of session members lead by Doug Hunt and Joel Franklin, who were more serious about the church's operations than the previous administration. Jack was a much kinder, soft-spoken gentleman and everyone on the staff enjoyed working with him. While under the new leadership we struggled to get out of the deficit the previous administration left us in, but we did get out of it. Jack instituted many good programs during his time at the church, including a Midsummer Night program held on Friday nights during the summer months where a jazz or blues band would play in the church park and the community was invited for free food and music while the church got an excellent chance to fellowship. Jack also started Sunday night Bible studies at various members houses since we didn't have Sunday night services. The two years Jack was at First Presbyterian were the best two years I think the church has probably ever had. Membership kept increasing through Jack's outreach based programs. Jack was a much better leader than Steven and nobody wanted to see him leave. Jack would spend time with Gayle Litz (music director) on a weekly basis putting together a good worship program for the church. They would put a lot of time into designing good worship services, making sure the songs fit the theme of the sermon, and planning good special events for holidays and other times. Sadly, this was all about to change.
The pastor nominating committee decided to hire Tom Pitman following a phone interview. I believe he was already friends with some of the members of the committee, like Rick Brewer. The first noticeable change was that Tom did not feel comfortable being alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex, so he would not work with Gayle the way Jack and Steven did in planning the church services and special events.in fact, all special events, such as the Midsummer Nights, Sunday night Bible studies, and holiday events with other churches, were immediately cancelled with no replacements. The new session headed by Jim Louden, also one of Tom's friends, cared very little about these events and were spearheading a new lazy, hands off management approach to the church. This was seen in how Tom was running things. One church member told me that Tom went in and told everyone in the office (I think Joanne and Gayle were in there at the time) that he tells his wife everything that happens during the day and keeps no secrets from her and that he won't be alone with any woman except his wife.
As a result of this approach church services were getting very sloppily planned. No sermon title would be put in the church bulletin because Tom would not give a sermon title.in fact, he claims he never writes sermons until Saturday night. Gayle was left to just pick some songs at random for the service. Gayle could not stand to work around Tom any longer and resigned from the church to take a position at another church. The members were not told the real reason she was resigning. They gave the congregation a completely fabricated explanation for her leaving.
Other peculiar behavior noted from Tom included: performing exorcisms to cast out demons, laying on the floor during a church service, encouraging some to refuse communion due to guilt or unconfessed sin (something not practiced in the Presbyterian church), and preaching very condemning sermons. Many were telling me that Tom came from a Pentecostal background, which would explain all of the above. Tom at first requested Mondays and Tuesdays off so he could be with his sick father. His father gets better and he still keeps taking Mondays and Tuesdays off. He was only working a couple hours per day Wednesday and Thursday and the office was closed Fridays but he told people he came on Fridays and Saturdays but one member that lives close to the church told me that she never saw him there on those days. The salary he is being paid is excessive for someone that works so few hours. He was making about $5,600 per month including his housing allowance. With so little time he is there I believe he could also hold down a job somewhere else. A pie chart diagram in the QuickBooks accounting software at the church showed that his salary represented 1/3 of all of the church's expenses. If this church's members knew how their money was being spent they would leave immediately. Very little work was being generated there. Few, if any, special events were being planned. Nothing on the scale of what Jack had anyway. The secretary Joanne was in the office for 8 hours doing nothing all day. She was playing solitaire or reading most of the time. Under Steven and Jack she was working all day on assignments related to the pastor's plans. Under Tom she was doing mostly nothing. Joanne was being abused verbally by members of the new session and Tom was not very nice to her either. Rick Brewer, one of the members of session, had Joanne in tears once because she simply told someone they weren't following proper protocol for booking a wedding in the sanctuary. He had no right to raise his voice at her or treat her that way.
Employees were not being treated the same at the church anymore. I complained about a gas smell in my office. I asked them to install a carbon monoxide detector and all they installed is duct tape around my windows. One employee was attacked twice on property and the police had to be called. The first time a guy pulled a knife on her. The second time a guy came in to use the phone and forced her hand onto his penis and sexually assaulted her. Another employee saw what was happening through the window and called the police. I was asked to not say anything about the above two to church members. They were afraid membership would drop and people wouldn't feel safe showing up anymore.
Joanne was tired of the verbal abuse by Tom and session and decided to quit to go work at another church. When she resigned I went to session with a new cost cutting plan to reduce Joanne's office job and my job into one position. I told them I needed the extra work and would do it for $100 less than what they were currently paying Joanne. Around the same time Rick Brewer's wife Kathy Brewer was laid off from her accounting position at the Nestle chocolate factory and needed another full-time job. A church member came to me in confidence and told me that session had agreed on my plan but were going to give the job to Kathy and lay me off. She said she wasn't supposed to tell me under any circumstances until they were through with getting more from me but she thought it was only fair for me to know. I didn't believe it until she showed me a confidential document from the meeting telling about the new position they had an idea for. Right when I saw the document I felt like someone hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I knew that the ethics were pretty poor at the church but this was low even by First Presbyterian standards.
I was loyal to this church. I would even take work home and work on it. I would even work Sundays following church services. I wasn't supposed to but people came to me with things that they needed done. They kept promising they would buy my contract from the temp agency but they never did. I fellowshipped and broke bread with these people and this is how they repaid me. Before they could use me to do any more work I wrote a letter of resignation to session telling them how saddened I was by what they did and that I was quitting before they could fire me. This is sad that Christians would behave in this manner if they even are Christians.
Therefore, I am asking that disciplinary actions be taken against the members of session and decision makers at First Presbyterian Church that were responsible for what happened to me including Pastor Tom Pitman, Doug Hunt, Joel Franklin, Jim Louden, Harriet Washburn, Dr. Mike Panzer, Frank Beasley, Rick Brewer, and Kathy Brewer. I am requesting that a formal apology be made from all of the above on behalf of First Presbyterian Church in the form of a letter on church letterhead, a public apology during a Sunday worship service, and an apology on their website. I am also requesting that a cash settlement be made because of a hostile work environment and unjust termination. The only reason I am asking for this is I have been out of work the past month over their unethical treatment. That church had $50,000 in the bank when I left plus investments so I know they could afford a small settlement. I am also requesting that an in-depth investigation is made into the inner workings of First Presbyterian Church including, but not limited to: Pastor Tom Pitman, session, Joanne leaving, Gayle leaving, and financial accountability regarding the hours Tom works, his pay, Kathy Brewer's pay, the conflict of interest present by Kathy being Rick's wife, and other financial matters.
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