Ep. 316: Churches Implicated in Haiti Arms Deal, YouVersion’s Top Verses, Bankruptcy Judge “Claws Back” Donations

On today’s program, a bizarre story out of Haiti. Haitian gangs are using churches to smuggle arms into the country.  We’ll explain how that scheme works. And a church in Alabama has to pay back nearly a half-million dollars given to it a decade ago because the man who gave the gift has now declared bankruptcy. And this church is not alone. We’ll have details. Later in the program, we look at the popular bible app YouVersion. It’s released its annual list of the most searched Bible verses of the year. We begin today with news that an engineer for one of the nation’s largest Christian broadcasters has been sued over misappropriation of funds.The Association of Professional Radio Engineers (APRE) has filed a suit against Shane Toven, a senior broadcast engineer employed by Educational Media Foundation. Educational Media Foundation is the parent company of the K-Love radio network. FINAL THOUGHTS As I have said before, we are in the most critical time of the year for Christian ministries, including MinistryWatch, when it comes to fundraising. We need to raise about a quarter of our budget, about $117 thousand, in the months of November and December. We just passed the $78,000 mark, so we are about 2/3 of the way there. Which is great.  But we have less than 10 days to go. If you’ve already given, THANK YOU.  If you have not, I hope you will prayerfully consider a gift to MinistryWatch before year-end. And, of course, MinistryWatch is not alone. Some ministries raise 30 or 40 percent of their budgets during the last two months of the year. If you’d like to help us reach our year-end goal, just go to MinistryWatch.com and hit the donate button at the top of the page. But whether you give to us or not, we hope you will use our database to help you make giving decisions. And that you will give wisely and generously during this season. The producers for today’s program are Rich Roszel and Jeff McIntosh.  We get database and other technical support from Stephen DuBarry, Rod Pitzer, and Casey Sudduth. Writers who contributed to today’s program include Kim Roberts, Daniel Ritchie, Steve Rabey, Tim Padgett, Kathryn Post, Bob Smietana, and Christina Darnell. A special thanks to WLRN for contributing material for this week’s podcast. .Until next time, may God bless you.