A small-town church was devastated when Melissa Ganey English, a financial secretary at Amelia Baptist Church in Fernandina Beach, Florida, was arrested and charged with grand theft for allegedly misappropriating over $570,000. She used her ill-gotten gains to purchase SeaWorld tickets, Airbnb rentals, hotel stays, and a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon.
For context, churches are often victimized by callous financial criminals who take advantage of the trusting nature of religious communities. Churches, which are usually staffed by volunteers and may lack the financial oversight of larger institutions
In any case, Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper issued a statement condemning English for her alleged crime. He said, “The suspect abused her position of trust for years, using church funds meant for ministry and community service to instead fund her personal lifestyle. Our office is committed to seeking justice for the victims of this extensive financial crime.”
Building on this statement, Amelia Baptist Church gave its own comments to the press. The church said, “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. Amelia Baptist Church remains committed to the values that make us a church family.
Concluding their remarks, the church turned to scripture. It wrote, “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).”
Unfortunately, these scandals are all too common. As we reported, a former pastor at Faith Assembly of God Church, Brian Keith Herring, was accused of stealing $525,000 from his church. Local media reported that “police said that they had found over $333,594 was missing from various church accounts and they no longer had access to the church’s credit card account or the statements from the account.”
Continuing the report, “On Oct. 13, 2021, prosecutors said Herring turned in a laptop, an iPad and two phones that belonged to the church, which they noted had been factory reset and all church account information had been deleted from them. Police said an audit revealed that $524,634.24 was taken by Herring and used in credit card purchases and other account transactions. When authorities attempted to contact Herring at his home, they said they found it was empty and listed for sale. Authorities later contacted Herring by phone.”
For all of this, Herring was “sentenced to 17 years of probation, 800 hours of community service and ordered to pay $100,000 of restitution to the church for his crimes,” As more information comes out, it my explain why Herring was able to escape responsibility for his henous crime with only minor punishments.