A secretary at a church in northeastern Florida has been arrested and charged with grand theft after it was discovered she had racked up more than $570,000 in personal charges on a church credit card over a period of years.
Melissa Ganey English, 44, was a financial secretary for Amelia Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Fernandina Beach, from January 2019 to October of last year.
Sometime last year, two new finance committee members noticed discrepancies in the church’s financial records. In reviewing statements from a church credit card in English’s name, they discovered hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of personal expenses.
English used to card for Amazon and Walmart purchases as well as extravagant items like Sea World tickets, Airbnb rentals, hotel stays and even a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon.
“The suspect abused her position of trust for years, using church funds meant for ministry and community service to instead fund her personal lifestyle,” said Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper. “Our office is committed to seeking justice for the victims of this extensive financial crime.”
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When confronted, English confessed to the crime, and her employment was terminated.
In a statement, church leadership said the church is fully cooperating with law enforcement and that no other church members have been implicated in the crime.
“While the last few months have been incredibly hurtful and difficult, it would be easy to become distracted from our main mission as a church,” the statement said. “Amelia Baptist Church remains committed to the values that make us a church family.
“We continue to work diligently to proclaim the good news of the Gospel, to see lives transformed by the love of Jesus and care for people. While events such as this could cause us either to feel despair or have a sense of superiority, the Bible is clear that we all have a sinful nature and thus we must approach this with humility: because apart from Christ we are all capable of much worse (Matthew 15:19); and hopefully, by placing our faith in Jesus we can be transformed (Romans 10:13).”
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press and has been reprinted with permission.
Laura Erlanson is managing editor of Baptist Press.
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11 Responses
Should we be making such a stink about such a small amount of money? Couldn’t this church have just accepted this as a consensual transaction between her and those donating to the church, granted her forgiveness, and recommended her in the role of financial secretary to another SBC church a couple of counties over? It seems really harsh the way this is going down!
David, shall we assume that you’re indulging in sarcasm? What’s half of a million dollars among friends, correct?
You not only shall assume this…you shall absolutely CORRECTLY assume this, Cec! My comment was sarcasm with particularly emphasis aimed at: how ridiculous it would be to act this way for church employee financial sin? And…SO…why do we consistently take this approach within the SBC and the larger evangelical church relative to passing around (often accompanied by glowing references which we graciously provide) senior pastors and other ministerial staff that have committed clergy sexual abuse…seemingly always pointing accusing fingers at the violated and traumatized, while “softening” the sin by the claim that it was “consensual”.
Thanks for providing me the opportunity to state this beyond use of sarcasm, Cec!
Surely your post is meant to be sarcastic? If not, you’ve given us a great example of the kind of thinking that leads to all sorts of corruption in the church and other organizations. Would you feel differently if the suspect wasn’t an attractive white woman?
Something like that happened years ago at the church I used to attend. The result of the prolonged theft (Over $300,000) was that the K-8 school had to shut down. More details can be found in the link below.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Masters_of_Deception/2hrqvjccW5UC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=mary+anne+brueggeman+holy+cross&pg=PA6&printsec=frontcover
Independent audit, anyone? The former business manager at my church could have been fleecing the congregation and planning to retire in the Bahamas. If you brought up the fact that there was no financial oversight, it was all, “We trust her!” Yes, being trusted is how people succeed at fraud and embezzlement (and worse), duh.
She retired last fall, and they haven’t yet found that she was stealing, so maybe that was one problem she didn’t cause.
….so “Amelia Baptist Church remains committed to the values that make us a church family…..” Observing from afar, it appears that those values do not include preemptive protection of all members of the “family” from any one member of the “family” who has a unique interpretation of those values. This is no different than protecting children and women from molestation within and by a church. We should not assume that unchurched observers do not draw their conclusions about the efficacy of our theological thinking and relational presuppositions when they see an organization this size with apparently no internal controls, no compliance protocols, no separation of duties, no external audits, etc.
Churches should do external audits every one or two years, just for the congregations peace of mind.
Should TRR take a DOGE approach to moderators that allow comments to languish this long? Oh, wait…I see…this is a ploy on TRR’s part…something they adopted out of the MAGA playbook?
Most media sites have eliminated comments and I am very seriously considering it. I simply don’t have the bandwidth to moderate and certainly don’t if people are going to make these kinds of assumptions based on my inability to moderate quickly.
Oh, great…now they are ALL showing up! Please accept my apology, Julie! I guess…what craziness!