Police investigate $1 million theft from Independence church

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A Baptist church that lost members in recent months over concerns about debt and its financial controls has asked police to look into a $1 million theft.

In a statement given to members of Tri-City Ministries earlier this summer, church officials said an employee who resigned last year was responsible for the loss. The money apparently was taken over a seven-year period. No criminal charges have been filed, and the investigation is continuing, said Bill Pross, a spokesman for the Independence Police Department.

The 2,000-member church started an independent audit in March, several months after many members of the congregation learned that the ministry had accrued some $15 million in debt.

The audit was long overdue, said some current and former members.

"I asked for an outside audit every one of the 13 years I was involved in the church," said Preston Smith, who left the church in January after he and another former member distributed a 27-page document to the congregation airing concerns about church management.

He added that the embezzlement accusation "raises more questions about the integrity of the ministry."

Tri-Cities' minister, the Rev. Carl Herbster, through a spokesman declined to comment on the investigation beyond the prepared statement.

Deacons said the church forwarded revelations from the audit to state authorities who already were reviewing Tri-City records, including a bank the church operates. The church formed the bank in the mid-1980s to use the deposits from church members to pay down other debts and pay interest to its own members rather than to commercial banks.

A spokesman for Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt's office has confirmed that the investigating is still pending.

Previously, Herbster said the church erred because it had not been reporting to the state the deposits received from church members. By statute, churches offering securities are exempt from state regulation, but they must report such transactions to the state's commissioner of securities.

Deacons said the church is working on a plan to make independent audits part of church policy.

"We are revising our accounting practices to hopefully preclude anyone from doing this again," said deacon George Parry.

In response to questions from the congregation about how the theft could go undetected for so long, Parry said the amount of money the deacons fear was embezzled would represent less than 4 percent of the ministry's operating budget. The ministry, which operates on about $5 million a year, runs a school, and has missions and existing or planned universities in Mexico, Europe and Canada.