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AFTERWORD
Church financial management is evidently difficult to appraise -
indeed on occasion is difficult to find - but if this study has erred
on the side of being serious, and maybe even clinical, that should not
be taken as other than a subjective bias on the part of the writer.
The subject does have its lighter side and more than one interviewee
was able to find it. Bearing that in mind it seems apposite to allow
the last word to go to Bestic who, in a distinctive, and at times
distinctly entertaining, study of religious financial management
(B1)
made the following comments:
"In the beginning, if I may plagiarize without being thumped
by a thunderbolt, I thought it was a simple question. How
do men of God acquire the coin of Mammon and how do they
spend it? Yet when I asked, I ran into barbed wire
entanglements that would have ripped the hair shirt off a
mediaeval monk.
Most religious leaders and evangelists, I found, will
plunge, fully mitred and mohaired, into the Old or New
Testament and surface with a text to fit any subject from
space travel for pregnant women to sex education for
minority groups under seven. ...
When I mentioned financial statements however, they
began to twitch and with a rare unity of voice hinted that
I should go and wash my tongue. Then, as if saddened by their
own intolerance of the moment, they explained gently that
there are no pennies in Paradise, that the entrance fee
cannot be paid in cash, nor even with a credit card, golden
for executives only".
