Pastor Scott Gray Investigation Allegedly Reveals False Documents, Secret Accounts & Luxury Items

0:00Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the preacher boys podcast. I know this in episode that people have been asking for for a very long time back in September of 2025. I shared about the resignation of pastor Scott Gray from his church Liberty Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina. And in that less than 30 minute statement, he admitted church finances were in disarray. He talked about loans being taken out with the outboard knowledge. And then he had a failure to supervise staff and it left the church's records in a mess. You can go back and listen to that episode for the full context. But everything that we've seen since then is indicated that him saying it left finances in a big mess was an understatement. It was a lot worse than he let on. So I want to cover this with an update. I have recordings of the meeting that they had just a couple of weeks ago discussing this. And yeah, there's a lot to cover here. I didn't want to do it myself. I brought in my friend Travis Chapel. He hosts the Travis Makes Money podcast. He is not, and neither am I a financial advisor, but he has done over

1:0550 Android interviews with entrepreneurs, business owners. He has talked to people who are generating millions, if not billions of dollars, in revenue. And so he can bring a unique perspective here. If you want to hear more from him, you can have her to the Travis Makes Money podcast wherever you listen to shows. But without further ado, let's get into the episode. All right. So for those of you that are listening and need to be caught up on the story so far, on May 20th, 2025, I reported a case that kind of started all of this. So one of the assistant

2:10pastors and someone heavily involved in the finances at Liberty Baptist Church died by suicide after admitting to sexually abusing a child. He spent years embedded in the financial infrastructure of this church. And the church also ran a school. So it fell right in line with stuff I usually cover. But not only was he someone who attended and was in a position of leadership there, he was the brother-in-law to the senior pastor, Scott Gray. And Forge was hired in two roles simultaneously. He was the associate pastor. He was the financial director. And so he had access to the congregation, but also the church's accounts. And I was a pastor's family member. There was no independent financial oversight in function between the two of them. And there was no one positioned to really check and balance what they were doing. So the alleged CSA had reportedly occurred before any of this. It was during his prior tenure at a former church pastored by his other brother-in-law, Bob Gray the second. And when Forge died in May of 2025,

3:11I actually spoke with Scott Gray on the podcast. He was extremely transparent at least. He presented full transparency. And so he was committed to pursuing the truth about what had happened. And I think that framing is interesting considering all this stuff we're about to get into in a second. So what happened next was after this took place, after the suicide took place, Gray went on as sabbatical with his family. And people of the church started noticing strange charges on the church credit card, started asking questions. And it snowballed into noticing that something was seriously wrong with the finances at the church up to this point. So ultimately, Scott Gray resigned from his position as senior pastor. And the church has been trying to figure out what happened, which leads me to this episode. On March 22nd, 2026, David gives a third an attorney with the National Center for Life and Liberty, who is retained by the church's board to conduct a formal review, spoke to the congregation talking about where the church's finances were over the last couple of years, and where they sit currently. And one of my insiders, and actually,

4:16a couple of different people who are insiders at the church have sent me recordings of this meeting. They've sent me a couple screenshots of some of the things that were said during the conversation. And so there's a lot to dig through in this discussion. Travis, I think it's a good thing to point out here. Since you always talk to entrepreneurs and business owners, like churches are as much as we hate to admit it, businesses. And when you see just from what I've read so far, when you know that there's that much of a lack of transparency around finances, what does that make you think about or feel? The first alarming thing is how much unbridled control they give to people who are by definition incompetent financially. Like these are people who largely went to unaccredited colleges, like the one that I went to, and had zero classes, like not even a basic accounting class or something like that, which blows my mind. Like where you're training pastors to go out into the ministry, one of their chief responsibilities is going to be raising money

5:19for the church and deploying capital for the church. It's like I went through four years of Bible college and they're teaching you Greek, but they never teach you how to manage your funds at your church. How do you use QuickBooks? Yeah, right, right, exactly. Not even a thought about that. They're focusing so much on eschatology and not at all, which is like something that you're never going to deal with in the day-to-day of running a church. Well, someday you will. In the future. Theoretically. But then they leave out something that is insanely crucial. And especially like at the places that have the colleges, they tend to be the larger ministries inside of that world. And you think that they would be like, hey, our CFO of our church is going to come in and teach a class about how even just raising capital. That's one huge responsibility that prohibits a lot of churches from growing and accomplishing their mission anyway. It's like, why are we not talking about raising funds? And then once you get those funds, here's some things that you're going to

6:20want to pay attention to so you don't end up in a alleged case like this because they just have zero financial training. But they're just like, here's the case, the kingdom. Like you got this on a credit degree, an accredited degree in Bible. Now you can now manage multi-million, a multi-million dollar organization and do it effectively. Like the lack of training is wild to me right off the bat. Yeah. Well, like I mentioned, March 22nd, 2026, which is where the recordings you're about to listen to come from. In light of that, in light of just all the rumors that have spread around this, the allegations of financial mismanagement, potentially fraud that have circulated. Pastros got gray issued a statement on April 14th. So two days ago, as of the time of this recording, he said, I've spent much time in prayer about whether to say anything publicly. Over the past several months, my focus has been on my family, my walk with the Lord and seeking wise counsel. During that time, I've chosen to remain quiet, but I feel it's now appropriate to share it from my heart. Serving as Pastor Liberty Baptist Church was one of the greatest honors of my life. From the very

7:20beginning, my family and I were loved, supported, and given the opportunity to serve in ways I will always cherish. So many of my most meaningful life moments happened during those years, and for that, I'll forever be grateful. The events that led to my resignation were deeply painful and in many ways overwhelming. In a very short period of time, our church family experienced loss, confusion, and significant challenges, especially surrounding areas that I trusted others to manage. That's an interesting difference there. The weight of all that has taken place is something I felt deeply, it's impacted my family, and ways that are difficult to clearly express. Then here's how he responds to some of these allegations. He said, I want to make it clear that as the pastor, I take responsibility for areas where stronger oversight and better system should have been in place. Leadership carries that responsibility, and I accept that. There are things I would handle differently in lessons I have learned that will stay with me for the rest of my life. At the same time, I want to be equally clear about this. I did not steal from Liberty Baptist Church, nor did I use church finances for personal gain. While I understand that concerns were raised and questions were asked, it's important for me to state that plainly. While I may not agree with every conclusion that's been made, I believe it's best

8:24not to engage in public disputes or attempt to argue details in this setting. My desire is not to create further division, but to a lost space for healing, for myself, for my family, and for the church. Over the past several months, my wife and I have relocated, stepped away from ministry, and I've focused on being ministered too. We sought counsel, spent time in prayer, and began the process of healing. This has been a season of humility, reflection, and growth. Moving forward, I believe it's right for me to continue stepping away from ministry for a season. My priority right now is my family, our spiritual health, and allowing the Lord to continue his work in our lives. I'm committed to learning, growing, and pursuing restoration in the days ahead. I want to express my sincere love for the people of Liberty Baptist Church. That love has never changed. My prayers that God would continue to bless the church, guide its leadership, and use it in a powerful way for his glory. Thank you for allowing me to serve you. This is something I'll always be grateful for in Christ Scott. All right, guys, so I had finished editing this entire episode, but I have to record this insert because I got an email that says, thank you for all your work and dedication to exposing the horrific abuse in the IFB world. I know you're currently working on and are most likely finished

9:25with your Scott Gray episode. Unfortunately, I was very much finished with it, but they wanted to share a screenshot from a IFB church that hosts him for Sunday service and a Valentine's party back in February. This is very public information. Since you're incredibly thorough, I wouldn't be surprised if you've already seen it. Fortunately, I was not very thorough and didn't see it until now. So I'm recording this insert. I said, I want to share because it directly contradicts his statement about stepping away from ministry. If you don't remember if Scott Gray said, over the past several months, my wife and I have relocated stepped away from ministry and have focused rather on being ministered to the pictures of him standing behind the pulpit teams to contradict that. And I said, thank you so much. I'm going to re-edit put this little insert in and share this. And then she said, oh, by the way, he also spoke at Mount Pigsaw Baptist Church in Alabama and sent me a sermon link. I thought I was in trouble, y'all. Freacher coming after you. It's a bad thing. Hey, man. If we're going to take a statement where he

10:26says I took the past several months, stepped away from ministry and focused on being ministered to, that's just a lie. So anyway, blatant lie, which to me, it just shows like how comfortable and willing he is to just lie about stuff that doesn't even matter. Like, this is the most, this is the most inconsequential part of his entire statement. Like, it didn't even need to be said. And so why include it when you literally know that it's not the truth? Just brings into question the entirety of the full statement because the other things are actually legally inconsequential. So like, if you're willing to lie about the thing that is not at all, of course you're willing to lie about the thing that could potentially bring up, like, prison sentence. Yeah, that's just a, yeah, the comfort to me is alarming. Yeah. So I mean, I think this is a great thing to have in the beginning of the episode to say, you know, for all the great defenders out there, we're starting an episode. I think this episode has some thorough explanations to why Scott Gray's, you know, response and statements

11:29on this don't really add up. But again, like Charles just said, if he's willing to lie about this stupid thing, he was willing to say I stepped outside of ministry for the last several months. And there's literal video of him preaching at a church just a month ago. Let's take everything he says with a grain of salt. But anyway, we'll go ahead and get back into the main episode. Thank you so much to the anonymous source that tipped me off on this. I really do appreciate it. And seriously, I know you guys assume that I see everything, but I don't. So always feel free to email me if you have tips on stories like this. I'll do my best to incorporate them in my reporting. But for now, let's get back into this episode. That's his response. I want to contrast that with what was said, response, potentially, yes, slashes, lawyers, response. And I want to contrast that with the meeting that was held on March 22nd, 2026. So I'm going to play a couple of clips. These are from David Gibbs, the third. So this is, if you're familiar with David Gibbs Jr. This is his son who works at a separate lie agency. And he is the church's council. So he is representing the church in this, helping oversee the investigation

12:33into it. And here is some recordings from that, that meaning he opened with sharing some of the good news and kind of T some of bad news that they would get into during this conversation. So here's the first clip. They at least begin by telling you the good news September 1st of 2025. So we're going back to right when your prior to your pastor resigned. The church had roughly $642,000 in the bank plus the ERTC fund, which is the employee retention tax credit money that came from the government, but wasn't truly a church income. The good news I want to start with is I'm March the 1st, which is this year, 2026. You have $1.314 million. That tells the story. Yeah, there's, yeah, you follow the money, you know, that's the beautiful thing about math and numbers, they don't lie. Yeah, there's no other way to interpret that. Right. Sure ERTC funds. Now for

13:37those of you that are not great with math, that's me. That is a $674,320 cash improvement over 7 months. 96,331 dollars per month. You have increased since your prior senior pastor left. And all of the ministry at the church is being done at this point with about eight less employees. So obviously when your payroll is down a little bit, your cash gives up. But if I could start with good news, how many are dividing the cash is up right now? And while we have issues to address from the past, how many are divided? We hit the break and we've got things more under control. There are cash numbers and things are going. We're not trying to get quick loans or things to acting in crisis. Now, I'm going to walk you back to what we have labeled a historical admission. And this is one of your past year resign. That's September 10th of 2025. He made three comments.

14:42All right. Come out one. He admitted that the church finances were in disarray. May I stop right there? That might be the understatement of the evening. Your church finances were a disaster. I think that's indicated by the amount of money that is suddenly appearing back in the church's banking sounds. Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, hearing that, it's telling that he, I think it was like an hour and 15 minute service. That's the good news. Yeah. There you go. That's one minute. That's that's the good stuff. What he lays out is next is the process that they followed for doing this investigation. So they actually retained somebody who works in this field and they gave some interesting commentary on this as well. The financial house was on fire and absolute disaster in every regard. So I just want, here's the charts to hear. It was back the process that we then instituted under your boards leadership and working with your pastoral leadership team. And outside CPA firm was

15:48retained to help recreate. Now, you've got to hear me. There were like no records. I mean, things were just shambles. We've there were secret bank accounts. I mean, this is a hard job. So I want you to get a little sense of this was not somebody to turn into receipts. This was a absolute mess. The CPA firm came in to help recreate and analyze what records did exist. The CPA firms recommended with expertise in the nonprofit sector and they worked often with churches. They called this one of the worst. If not the worst case, they had ever seen. And that is not something you want to hear from your CPA. The worst case. And someone, someone commented because I shared, I shared that quote on one of my posts and they said, really, that's the worst they've ever seen. It was only, you know, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. But you know, that's not that much. They must have seen millions of dollars in the worst case they've ever seen. But I want it. It's important to know and I'll show this in the next clip. Like they examined about a 19 month time period. Yeah. So the amount of funds

16:53they found missing in that frame extrapolated over a couple decades of ministry. Pretty rough. Also, worst does not just apply to the to the amount of cash that we're talking about here. It's also like he's like what are you saying? It's just negligence. Yeah. Which again kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. Of course, you cannot, you can't just blame the college that you went to forever. At some point you have to be like, hey, maybe I should just go take an independent accounting class and learn how to do this properly because it is, it matters. Or watch a video. Like when you are, when you are in a position where you are taking money from other people for the purpose of accomplishing a mission, your your fiduciary responsibility to those people is to me even greater than it is when you're running a business or something like that because you're collecting funds from people who are believing in the mission. So the the worst case ever does not necessarily mean that it's the most amount of money they've seen siphoned out of a church and it probably isn't. But it might have been the worst in terms of

17:58just the dislike what what David Gibbs said there is just the disaster that that came from this could have just been the fact that there was there was just no records and there was terrible accounting measures and there was no effort to to provide any sort of transparency into the church's finance. Our finances are large. So I want to point out that worst does not necessarily mean that it was the largest amount of money that they've seen. Right. Yeah. All right. Here's here's kind of the timeline of what they actually looked at reviewed. If everyone want to know how far back did you go? The review had to be limited to about December of 23 through September of 25. So that's roughly an 18 19 month time period because of the massive amount of work involved. The more we dug the less we were going to discover and just getting more and more complicated. The review was limited to spending and finance. Okay. So I want you to here. We didn't try to go into every possible issue or statement. There were a couple issues that

19:00came up repeatedly. I want you to at least know them. They were outside the scope of this investigation. So people asked me if it's Scott Gray, no, about Tim Forgey's child abuse in Texas when he hired and the answer was I don't know. He says he didn't but that was not part of the investigation. Obviously with Mr. Forgey ending his life and brother Gray resigning. There wasn't really any way to dig into that. Some other concerns that were brought up was how the suicide was communicated to the student body. People were feeling like how did the kids find out and the parents didn't know and it was handled awkwardly just to use. So the way that this happened just so people know someone inside the ministry shared this with me. But basically what they told me was when it happened, he didn't reach out to parents first. He called an assembly with the

20:00students at school and told them with like no counseling available, just like here's what happened, kids are crying and then it went to the parents strange behavior to go talk about something that heavy to kids without going like hey we're going to tell your parents and then we're crazy discussion when the kid gets in the car on the way home from school that day. You won't believe what happened. That also wasn't really investigated. So I'm kind of letting you know there were issues and some of you may have other issues if you say hey I was always wondering about this. This investigation was a complete performance review on the prior administration. We were pretty much limited to spending and finances. That was kind of the focus that we worked on. So those issues were left more or less unresolved and I'm also a fan when somebody resigns and they make that decision, they made a decision and you are at that point done evaluating their performance. That's kind of the overview of what the actual investigation was. Do you have any thoughts before

21:01I go into the first funny. So again if you've heard great statements if you listen to the full audio recording that I shared in a previous coverage of this which if you haven't, I'll link two in the show notes. Scott Gray really downplays a lot of what happened and a lot of it I think if you take it with the most generous reading is it is like oh they didn't term receipts or the budget was a little weird or they should have asked permission. But one of the things that gets shared very early on is something that sounds very much like just straight up fraud but I'll let Gibbs talk about it. Multiple names were taken out without legal authorization or the approval. Now remember great minute to that okay so that that was kind of not a big shocker that we would discover that but what was disheartening as we went into this is it appears that false minutes were created that Scott Gray signed these false minutes and that both he and

22:074G delivered these false minutes to secure these loans. So this wasn't just you know we didn't know what we were doing but I mean we basically forged documents to run these loans on the churches tab without any foreign knowledge or permission. Yeah it's difficult to claim ignorance when you are forging documents. Like I said there there is a lot of ignorance just generically and especially in the IFB world general because of what I referred to earlier but in business and in culture like it is complicated. Yeah so like there's there's a certain threshold of things that like everyone knows something's going to slip through the cracks. Right but this isn't something slipping through the cracks. This is intentional clearly intentional yeah to forge board documents to go get a loan is obviously something that somebody had to make a decision to do. No. Not just something that's like oh yeah we can totally like this is this is totally fine

23:10you know we can sign for other people and pretend like everybody knows about it. And I can't believe I've been covering the story for a couple of months now and I just realized the irony that his name is forgy. Shouldn't put that guy in charge of the finances but yeah so it's yeah it definitely crosses into like you can't claim ignorance to this extent and again if you have any like doubt about this or anything where you're like you know do they have evidence of this or they just assuming this it gets worse and worse and worse. We're going to the next exhibit if you would. And so and I wish I had video recording this but he's basically showing on the PowerPoint presentation like screenshots, texts, financial charts so they've got they've got plenty stacked up here. We're fake. You see on number four where it says taking a 90 day loan for first citizens bank in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars. So what they did is they took the

24:12minutes and I'm not going to read all the minutes to give us that that exciting but the first three were legit and the minutes being approved by the chairman and the secretary but you see where they added the bank language it's kind of highlighted there the phrasing somebody said his suspect and then they put a line for the pastor to sign so that wasn't how the minutes looked we can go to the next exhibit and this is the minutes that were actually used so the minutes were one two three to secretary and chairman sign and so you know this was not just we were taken out loans that we forgot to tell people about this was more that they were orchestrating working together forging documents and all of this was being done in a way to obligate liberty church. Basically they're going to the bank they're taking the minutes as proof of board approval with all these signatures but they're inserting a line before the signatures with this loan approval so literally nobody but

25:14forgit and gray apparently knew that this was happening I mean this is bad right don't need to be a financial expert to say that's not good correct and they obviously knew yeah as well like if you're again intentionally doing these things and then my question is like where's the money going? Well a hundred thousand dollars for a 90 day loan right it's like where's the money going? What's the intent to pay it back and like Gibbs points out which is important to remember because I think it's easy to go like oh these guys were doing this thing but if you're a member of the church like they're obligating the ministry to cover that loan so like if he pulls out a hundred grand and I'm saying this hypothetically and I don't know that this is the case and it's not I'm just throwing this out there but he takes under grand out and they go to Vegas for a weekend and they blow it all on black the church saws to pay that money valuable to pay that back right right and again that's an extreme example but this is also an extreme case so the church is on the hook the the taking out personal loans like they would not have been able just to go to the bank and get this get a 90 day

26:15a hundred thousand dollars which is why you the board approval and correct the bank is using the church's finances as the collateral needed to show that they are financially viable and that they can actually pay this this dollar amount back and this is the stuff that should irritate for lack of better word irritate people who have been giving ties and offerings for years and I think about all of the vision campaigns or whatever fundraising efforts have been if you're yourself giving thousands of dollars to a church you don't want this stuff happening will you know like you want it to go toward the ministry there's something cool about everyone pulling their money to do things that serve the community is a publisher mission but to be used like this like a personal piggy bank is not ideal especially when it puts the church in a really compromised position I think Gibbs says in this clip his defense for most of the questions Gibbs asked was oh for you did it I didn't know and he has a very convenient scapegoat in forgy because he can't answer questions but again they

27:17have some evidence that came up that doesn't look good for Scott why do you see here and I will read it down here I can't see that one myself but what you will see is Scott Ray texting and we're going to turn to him Vade is personal world but I think you know one of his defenses to me is basically forgy dead I didn't know okay and these texts and emails seem to refuse some of that okay I'm sure there are things that forgy did he didn't know but at the end of the day you know he's asking forgy I received a load on my life lock it says citizens asking me if I applied from alone my name would show up on our territory is that correct just checking if I should say yes forgy yeah that's a good summit must be they're getting close to being finalized you know they kind of chatted a little more then Scott said is any word from the bank so he knew he was asking they were feeling pressure they asked for the last two years financial balance sheets they email

28:19back they needed stuff and Scott's like wow okay thanks team let me know when you have a minute for quick call I need to get my Verizon bill paid by mx they were kind of chronically just so you're aware max it out credit cards okay and I'll talk about this but you guys are paying just so you know do we know if those are personal credit cards or church credit cards yeah yeah he doesn't get into his personal finances like this is when he says other running up credit cards it's like the church credit cards we're carrying all of them we're getting maxed out amounts is all time and he says I don't remember if I the clip cute up but he's like there was tons of situations where people would go to like Chick-fil-A for youth activity and the card would get declined they'd make a payment to lower the balance like they were carrying extreme debt on credit cards yeah which begs a lot of questions because obviously from that you know six seven hundred thousand dollar increase in a few months and eliminating eight people from payroll is a factor in that especially when at least four of those well I'd say five if you include four but at least four of those are his family correct that were also you know allegedly using these credit cards as

29:24and probably not getting paid small salaries but not sure but but yeah that's neither here nor there the the the question that pops up into my mind is why do you have to go max out credit cards and continue getting loans right and when cash flow seems strong yes inside of the the church just so you know I mean that the mafia charges lower rate in the credit card company okay so I mean he might have all gone to the mob for it would get under 25% money but this church was just constantly bumping into its credit limits so there's a lot of taxid emails having tried to spend it and by the way this is staff line you know I mean and even stuff that was a hundred percent legitimate we're taking senior dollars to the fed credit card swap work because they were just perpetually being maxed out and there they're high loves yeah so I mean again just those last three clips like I think Ray was more aware than at least it seems he was far more aware than he let's on in that initial Facebook post that I read well either either

30:26scenario is not good you either have to you either were aware or you are very incompetent too that's a great that's a great point because that's what I was telling you there they you know we're talking about situation and I was like either this person in this company is doing something on their own and the owner has no idea or the owners behind it which is bad too and when you get to situations like that you go both of those suck yeah like if the owner is aware or the owner is completely unaware that this is happening with like upper leadership in his team he's two hands off of his own business like he needs to pay more control over what he's doing if he does know you know obviously with this case like if if Gray knows this is going on I mean there's severe legal consequences for yeah every single thing talked about here but if he doesn't know it's like well why are you the senior pastor where you're leading an organization that has as much yeah so yeah it's bad either way it's also not to bring it back to the abuse thing but it's it's also I mean this

31:31is the show to do I know it's it's hard not to you know it's just another another like you can't you just you can't just shuffle around people who are convinced like the behavior continues yeah behavior doesn't get better yeah if there's no repercussions or consequences for the behavior yeah so bringing in somebody who is doing something as evil as yeah abusing a child and then expecting them to just be like oh you know what trust trust this guy you know there's no way that he's trying to steal from the church you know so well that's again you're you're you're claiming ignorance but it's not just ignorance it is it is much more nefarious than that well that's a big question mark over this whole thing is you know obviously with everything revealed about Scott here in this report it's raised the question for a lot of people did he know about forgy or did he not you know because the story up until this point has been nobody knew about it except for forgy and the victim but a lot of people are going you know you're doing this much together you're

32:34doing this much you know essentially financial crime right together like what leverage was there how much was known how much was you know and again that goes into speculation which I try to avoid on the show but it it when you're doing something as serious as all of this it calls into question your testimony and your transparency about everything else as it should like yeah as it should so you've already heard that there were unauthorized loans allegedly taken out that involved some forgery there was extreme spending on church credit cards budget really not being accounted for at all but wait till you hear and I think I'm sure this will shock you as someone who grew up in ministry and adjacent to it when you hear what else was happening simultaneously to all of this going on you ready there we go at time staff were asked not to take paychecks I mean yeah that like that's that's honestly again like many things that they're going to talk

33:38about over the course of this episode it bothers me so much when people are giving the impression that we're all in this together like you said for the mission and then they're giving up paychecks time with family like all the things that come with being in ministry unfortunately in this world and meanwhile there's all this stuff happening in the background where people are benefiting and you're not but the person the person who's leading it is also is not willing to make the same sacrifice right that that's what because like even in business man like in we just software startup you know there's hard times and good times and all the things mixed in when you're trying to grow a business yeah and that I just I always felt like if I was asking you guys to like go through a period of hard work or to yeah take a cut and pay or something like that I was always doing the same thing alongside of you like there's it just it's the whole the Simon Sinek leaders eat last thing

34:42yeah you know it's like you like you are the one leading this enterprise you can't go to your staff and say it's time for you guys you know we're going through a bit of a pinchier so especially when to sacrifice and buckle up the Lord will provide and especially when it's couched in that spiritual lingo which is a big big issue but in the meantime I will continue doing whatever I want to do that that's the part where I have a problem with it like it's not necessarily even like a problem with time to cut pay it's like look I understand stuff stuff happens all the time I'm in my startup I went months without taking a paycheck at all yeah in an effort to make sure that I could still pay the people that were working for me and trying to make the mission happen you know they're they're they're and during that time didn't get to eat out a bunch didn't you know what I mean like that but that's part of the deal so it's not necessarily a matter of like oh I'm upset that he asked people to take a pay cut it's just that if you're in any leadership context whether it's a business a church whatever if you're the leader that's asking your people to make sacrifices then you should

35:45not only be willing to make the same ones you should be taking the lead said sacrifices well this is it's home for me because like I know and you've seen it firsthand with friends and failing members that have been impacted by this type of thing happening in churches and I think I've shared this story before on the show but just to give context that this this happens like this piece alone happens far too much but I happen to be involved in a similar story where I work for an organization the leader was paying himself a fat salary behind the scenes no books no nothing treating the the ministry like his personal slush fund my starting salary with that organization was $300 a month yeah and a few months later I got my first raise to $600 a month um I was engaged don't get engaged when you're making $600 a month and I reached out to ask you know can I make some more money and the reason I asked was because he was going to hire he wanted me to put a now hiring thing on the website um you know to advertise a ministry position and so I said why are

36:51we interviewing someone for any position right now right because we need more people on the team I said we can't afford the people we have on the team now how are we going to pay new people and he said Eric who's the director the visionary and who's the media guy that's me in case you shouldn't know you said that's not meant to be degrading but to say we're the best when we operate within our strengths I'm building a team building an expansion is one of mine I know what I'm doing this is an actual piece of training I'm reall sorry let me be clear I'm reading my texts no kidding this is legit copy paste from my Facebook messages messages and I said I understand that I also understand that none of us are receiving a full paycheck again operating on the idea that okay he's not not even close to a full paycheck no that's not like that's less than minimum wage it was very bad yeah it is like illegal yeah so I said I know none of us received so again I'm bought into the idea that we're all sacrificing for the minister right and again I know this is not this story yeah but this is basically this story it's it's not something that happens oh this

37:56is the first time it's ever happened this is something I personally experienced and so I said a couple of things and I said I've got a lot of skin in the game I've right to be concerned when I see a potential money suck appearing left me on bread for 15 minutes I said you're making me lose hair lol and I'm sweating shaky like freaking out I was gonna say I can I can feel the anxiety pouring through the game you know I know who you are yeah and like it takes a lot to push you to confront in this type of yes yeah so he said tell me what do you need I said money he said how can I help I said money and he said how much and I said just enough to have some security for my fiancee and getting married he said how much money so getting put in the ball in the court I said if I just know I had enough to pay rent for an apartment and meet a couple basic needs if necessary because basically I felt like if we didn't raise enough money to go to our mission field then we're kind of screwed and then he said I'm happy for you because you're gonna learn a completely new dimension of faith and reliance on God and I said yes 600 bucks a month for two people in

38:59the 21st century will do that I says anyone who has ever desired to be significantly used by God has had to experience times of complete and utter dependence on God and what I could do but won't is to replace God and just meet the need I'd be robbing you of a great learning and growing experience and so yeah so that's verbatim messages that I got and this person again he's saying all of that about like reliance on God deep seated needs all this sort of thing he's paying himself well over six figures yeah nobody knew on the team at all was using the ministry funds as a slash fund like it was really bad so honestly like if I want to say you know something in this outline like personally I was like I hate this yeah this sucks it's that and I saw that happen with my parents for so many years like the abuse financially could be its own podcast and you know yeah I guess it's it's your faith will pull you through this yeah but I'm good

39:59right right yeah like like it's almost like my faith was tested in a different arena so this is not going to be my test well then the the audacity just to say that like I could do this but that steals your blessing from God that just reminds me of that there's a certain illustration that made the rounds back in the day where it was the the guy in the lifeboat in the middle of the ocean and is praying to God to come save him and God sends a boat and then he says you know oh no no no no thank you I'm waiting for God to save me and God sends another boat and a bigger boat this time and he says no thanks I'm waiting for God to save me and then the punchline is essentially the guy ends up dying in the middle of the ocean from thirst and then gets to heaven and goes God why don't you save me he said meet me halfway getting the boat no and it's like this is this is this person's direct ability to affect it it's like why would you not just look at it as this is God using me to help this young man yeah through this difficult time because it's within my power to do so right rather than just being like well you know this is going to be a good faith testing

41:03experience for you right yeah it's it's always easy to be like the the you know to steal the J Shetty thing it's like live like a monk and it's a lot easier step one millions of dollars in the bank account yeah it's easy to be at peace you know with the world but anyway so this drove me crazy I know I haven't even gotten through this audio clip but I had to share some personal perspective here and yeah but here's the here's the full clip here at time staff were asked not to take paychecks again staff sometimes we had a disaster you have good staff here and if everybody said hey we got to type up and we're gonna not take a paycheck then everybody's in but that has to be board authorized known approved you can't be asking people one of the time hey whatever to pay you the funds just keep it on the down glow that is the kind of thing with those loans so you're gonna stand illegally it's illegal for any one person staff or remember got obligated to church financially without proper authority okay so we got that so he's asking

42:04people must take paychecks taking out these crazy loans again to point out too that the church is in a good position cash flow wise cash flow wise yes and leverage wise very dangerous position right right well I'm saying like they're not in a good position cash flow wise but that's what is the red flagged right because as soon as this person and a few people leave the church now the sudden where there's excess funds and over a million dollars in cash and in the bank and it's like well something was happening to that money the church didn't just the church didn't just go as soon as he left like hey let's all start giving a hundred percent more like that it was the same stuff that was happening so there's a lot of red flags being raised right absolutely but so he's asking me will take pay cuts not take paychecks he's taking out all these loans you know allegedly he's doing all of this seems like there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that but I'll throw on allegedly in there just to cover my own behind and yours by proxy yeah thank you welcome

43:04but Scott Gray is also doing this in addition to this allegedly according to David Gibbs and the findings of this investigation gray self-adjusted and gave himself additional compensation now he denies this and I will show you some of his denials but his texts tell a different story I need to steal this line from David Gibbs the text tell a different it's very Chris Hanson exactly he says this but the text tell a different story it's like when he pulls out Chris Hanson pulls out the chat log yeah he's like you said you were going to do xyz yeah it's I'm gonna start here for the pizza the text tell a different story Scott Gray self-adjusted and gave himself the additional compensation now he denies this and I will show you some of his denials but his texts tell a different story

44:05and one of his codes with this was again they were on an auto pay okay so you get like a pay digitally through the banks auto deposit and then he would ask for G for a paper check and that ended up trying to be in code for second paycheck so he would get a pay check that would match his regular paycheck and get the auto deposit so you all can figure that out pretty easily it's two pay figures right you get duck but you shouldn't be gay now that didn't always show up then on his tax return which is another theme that we have kind of discovered a lot of this was how much can I get the church to pay that then doesn't show up his income to me so these double payments were a problem this seems again allegedly worse to me than even a lot of the business fraud cases that I've seen over the last few years you know

45:06well it's starting to make sense why the investigator said this was the worst case that they'd ever seen or one of the worst cases they'd ever seen yeah again like the the the ignorance argument is making less and less and less sense here yeah yeah like this is I mean I thought was gone at clip three I think the alleged oh I was I didn't know what was going on I was just this in and honestly like this for in my opinion listening to this it's hard for me to believe that this is something that started you know around December 23 when they started like correct because the you know when I it's the same thing I see with sexual abuse cases like there's a certain level of brazenness that starts happening I was going to say there's arrogance involved yeah and and to be texting about it like to be getting a paper check to be leaving as much of a paper trail like to me I have a hard time thinking that this isn't something where it was a trickle at first exactly it was oh this is nobody noticed this nobody knows this nobody knows this

46:09I'm here you know two decades later now it's just the way things are done hey write me a check right or here take the credit card you know like there's stories that he shared in the meeting of you know the you know that I think it was him or was somebody in the church that was sharing this with me but you know the kids would go buy something oh just take the church card like that level which like that is nothing compared to everything else but it's like the level of arrogance to say like yeah leave a paper trail of this stuff let's forge minutes you know and say hey we're going to have you sign here the board says we didn't all sign on this but now there's an extra line here and I don't care how angry you are about money you know when you're getting double paid yeah you don't go that's weird I'm really on top this month yeah you you notice that stuff again like using the cards for fast food like there is some ignorance there you see business owners all the time go yeah this is a business meeting it's like all expenses are yeah yeah you see that stuff but the scale of this is just hard to hard to ignore so he was given self additional

47:10compensation and what Gibbs continues here with this abandoned the historical accountability of the budget at Liberty Baptist Church his spending on the church credit card was excessive and significantly undocumented now when we say undocumented it means we don't know what it was for we have no receipts there's no documentation how did we discuss and I'll just say this too this is why I say alleged financial mismanagement something seemed like alleged fraud is like if this went to the court of law which it doesn't seem like it's going to and we'll get to that the end of this conversation like there's so much of this because of how badly managed the finances were that most of it is what he said it's like we don't know where this money went right which again is also horrifically bad obviously there's some things that look explicitly criminal I mean it would be hard to argue that they weren't but it's like the fact that you're

48:10gonna hear hundreds of thousands of dollars is just completely like we don't know where that went right is crazy you know like that's just yeah especially when it's literally one of your main responsibilities right in the organization yeah well and it's helpful for him and for you that for you was in charge of that you know like who else is gonna notice it so yeah I pray a abandoned the historical accountability of the budget at Liberty Baptist Church his spending on the church credit card was excessive and significantly undocumented now when we say undocumented and speaking we know what it was for we have no receipts there's no documentation how did we discuss the excessive spending was discovered after Tim forgy suicide and again not trying to be incestive that's obviously a sad thing but while they were out on sabbatical and grazer gone forgy's gone and there were strange charges that began to show up on the church credit card and so people

49:16were like well what's this what's this and it kind of self-discovered now again it's amazing how immediately it's discovered once he's out of the picture yeah it didn't take a year yeah it was later like oh now someone else has to just got handed all these books or lack thereof or lack there of fear we're gonna talk about systems in the future how many believe we should never had it where it couldn't be discovered away soon okay so I mean I want to you know I'm not I'm wanting to say here you know we're all learning you know through this process and so as we have all paid the tuition I believe we all need to get the education so we're gonna move this forward in a good way attorneys yeah they have all those lines I'm gonna steal all these lines but yeah but I mean it is a good point like I think that's one of the things again I'll reiterate this like when it comes to sexual abuse cases or financial one of the biggest things that bothers me is I'll cover the story the next person comes in it's all structured the exact same way and so like I had this conversation with a pastor a couple years ago and he's like yeah I just love how we operate

50:18and it was the same way that they had operated basically when the last person's there I said I get that you're a better guy and you're not gonna do this but why would you leave the system set up so when you leave the next guy can come and do the same thing it's like and I always say it's like having a king that rules everything with an iron it's like you can have a benevolent leader but it's better to have a system where that bad leader can't come into power at all that's right rather than just trying to spot a good leader because obviously from this story many others human beings are woefully in equipped at spotting good leaders like with a hundred percent precision that's kind of how it discovered itself it was not there you know some people were like oh did the defense just pop up or do people just get grumpy or this is about Starbucks no it was at that moment there was like this bizarre where are these charges coming in people started asking questions and once it was discovered it turned him to a pretty significant amount of money and so have you worked with the CPA have you worked with Kristen if we could throw up exhibit number four

51:23all right and you guys again may have a little trouble seeing it so let me just say this to you what we came up with un-budgeted expenses okay so this would be the insurance housing some of that un-budgeted ninety two thousand two hundred twenty three dollars and sixty two cents so that was out of budget non- ministry related expenses and by the way this is everybody we didn't just focus on the grades we went to staff wine ninety thousand one hundred twenty nine dollars and twenty one cents unknown expenses total cost now remember some of these could be legit song but there's no documentation we don't have a clue what it is so we're trying to figure it out two hundred and sixteen thousand three hundred twenty seven dollars and thirty cents and for those of you that are addition oriented the total three hundred and ninety nine thousand six hundred and eighty dollars and thirteen cents so the grand total is about four hundred grand

52:23okay so and I'll remind everybody that's just examining December 2023 to September and it's making the most out of the nothing they have to work off of yeah so so about very close to half a million over an eighteen to nineteen month period for again that limited time period and we you know working through all of this I mean you can see why we were doing these emergency staff stuff yeah is we were way way way over spending okay the amount of money that was being spent on each credit card issue was just kind of unbelievable you have almost four hundred thousand dollars that's completely really unaccounted for within the ministry and people are probably wondering where did some of that money go do we know where any of it went and that brings me into this next clip here this clip number eleven of sixteen by the way if you wonder how many clips are we paid for them to go visit a dying mother you know if so they would leave town

53:28and the church who pay for all the travel there was some travel that was paid for by the church that he would then you know maybe get honorariums out speaking and you know again it's just very very messy okay so the church is paying a lot of bills that should be paying the credit cards get put down whatever we want and we're spending very very heavily office TV says this was reimbursed but again it's hard to know ladies beings likes to funeral we know what funeral who what we were doing trying to read through mom's funeral in Florida and burial we paid for all the hotel all the travel all now let me say this okay just so you guys know if you're seeing your pastor as a mother die and it's a born since hey pastor we know you're going down there we know this is going to be a lot on you and your family and we the church want to give you five thousand dollars I'm making

54:28a money as extra income and we want you to spend another travel we don't want you guys you have to think about it we just want to do that and if it was authorized and it went on his taxes how many believe that would be a hundred percent legal okay but to self deterrent that I have the credit card I'm going to just spend it on the man I do what I want and you know just do whatever and then not turning receipts but you know his wife was one that was supposed to reconcile stuff yeah so I mean again it's it wouldn't be crazy for a church to say hey your mother's sick we're gonna fly you out take care of everything get whatever hotel like you know save your seats we'll reimburse you whatever that that's all normal but as again as Gibbs says you can just decide yeah my mom's sick I'm a pastor for church we happen to have a bigger bank account in the church than I have personally I'm gonna just pay for it like you can't do that the same way you know we work in business together I couldn't just grab your card and be like well I work with Travis

55:29I'm gonna go on this trip for this purpose you know he'd understand I'll just do it you know or or I'm gonna keep my expenses low enough you won't even notice you know like that's that doesn't work you can't do that and you can't as the leader be the one to decide on the like that's sort of where the the comparison to a business breaks down to some extent and and obviously depends on the size of the business and you know a lot of boards will have control over that on business as well but if you're the founder of a company and owner of a company then you might be able to do a lot of this and be the one who's deciding these things but when you are a church leader and you're raising money from the people who are sacrificing to accomplish the mission you've enrolled them in yeah you there there has to be checks and balances because of because of this even if you're even if you're not an evil person or a bad person and doing intentionally the checks and balances should exist for the purpose of making sure that you are not just negligent right or ignorant

56:31which obviously like we've talked about I just don't think that's the case here there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it's the opposite of that right yeah so yeah that's that's the big thing here is like yes the church in many ways is a business but also it's a nonprofit I worked for a nonprofit for well I've worked for a few nonprofits one I've shared the story of how that was managed very similar to this but I worked for a properly ran nonprofit for about two years everything has to be it's annoying everything has to be voted on it's incredibly hard to do anything in a nonprofit because if you want to use any funds for anything you have to have a board meeting you have to have minutes real minutes you have to vote on it you have to get someone to you know second you second the motion to vote on it even like it's it's a huge huge pain and so again to run yeah to avoid this so to run like you're an entrepreneur that's just like well you know I am going to go here and I'm going to vision it you know yeah it's it's not not not good so I'll go ahead and continue here here's some of the other things that money was spent on

57:35not gonna ask him to throw it up unless they want to and this one page I just pulled out because I think it gives you an idea you know hill and hill golf shop church expense 160 bucks yeah well I took your guest preacher golfing okay well we don't know we don't know if there was a guest preacher on that day we don't know if it was him his son his buddy we don't know what it is a mock block we bought three hundred dollars worth of mock block for those who are not familiar that's the expensive no it's an expensive designer why generally a pen so was it Gibbs senior or Gibbs Gibbs junior it's very confusing the young one is not junior his dad I feel like had a story about a guy in the church buying his dad a Montblanc pen or something I do remember a story with Montblanc now with David Gibbs junior whether the story was even true who knows who really knows but yeah Montblanc is a very expensive pen and it's not just like you go by a pack of

58:40bicks yeah but I'm not going to ask him the right I didn't know what it was till I googled it which tells you it's an expensive pen it's like the Rolex of pens now so you could buy a Casio from Walmart right or you could buy a Rolex and Montblanc is is that it's a luxury pen company we don't know if there was a guest preacher on that day we don't offer his hand his son his buddy we don't know what it is Montblanc we bought three hundred dollars worth of mock block for those who are not familiar that's the expensive pen or designer why sounds more like a ink cartridge you know in the hands of Scott and he just wanted the new pen or was it given to a guest and then here's the other issue who authorizes that I mean you have honorariums you have policies and things it should be done but he was very much in the gift giving doling out money but at the same time over here following emergency fines to be payable yeah so there there was an odd dichotomy and all that

59:42there's men's clothing again you said it was for a guest what was the brand tickners what's that is that I don't know is it tickners that way said I think so I just want to get a sense of I haven't heard of that before yeah tickners men's clothes I want to just get a sense of the price points here that's the tough part about that is that if the finances were fine then maybe some of these things might have been okay but when the finances are in disarray and you're asking staff to not have a paycheck and then you're spending money on golf pens and expensive custom suits or whatever it places all right so I'm on tickners website I'm looking at a t-shirt a c-phone green t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts how much do you think let's pick prices right how much do you think that this ensemble costs how much is the green t-shirt and how much are these khaki shorts I've got to assume it's so much more than I'm thinking so I'm going to say $350 okay so a green

1:00:47t-shirt just a green t-shirt no bells and whistles is $85 from and this is the cheapest thing here on the on the website khaki shorts $99.50 so I'm trying to think of a scenario where well for golf trips you know yeah I'm starting to piece this together for this on the case for one thing goodness gracious okay so there there was an odd dichotomy and all that tickers sorry really quick let me also pull up Montblanc because I do want to give people a sense of this too because you say like expensive pens yeah I was going to say the $300 to me sounds like again it sounds like an ink cartridge refill for a Montblanc pen he bought the pen before December 2023 and bought a real so just so people know how much is how much a pen is at Montblanc so this is the first stamp pops up on the site masters of art homage limited edition 4810 fountain pen $4,500 yeah that's what I was saying yeah 300 bucks sounds really low to me yeah they also sell and they don't just sell pens they sell bags cufflinks that probably would be in that range

1:01:50small other goods stationary you know maybe he was writing requests to borrow money on the stationary from Montblanc write me a paper check please sign it with this pen but yeah I mean it's just all the luxury that I tell people all the time to never buy run the money show that I run it's just excessive on this on the church's dime while you're asking staff to go without a page and this also raises another layer again like and I want to see it like I know I have a lot of listeners that go to churches that are above board and they they care about this thing they give to all these different causes that relate to the church but this is stuff too that like churches should think about like when your pastor goes and they speak half the year and they're going on these churches it's like are they going to churches where they're getting gifted Montblanc pens and staying in the four seasons and going golfing and also asking you to sacrifice working over time to you know give extra it's like and to make sure you're on church your church Wednesday night you've got to ask question about this stuff like it's it's it's really

1:02:53ridiculous not just for the people you know I think there's something about like honoring people giving them a special gift here and there but also like this industry of guys that just like go speak at each other's churches and conferences that's what I was going to say and get handed like hey buddy you know let's go golf thing again nothing wrong with that but then they're going and say like give it all you know here are my lord send me right and it's really just a voice you know a preacher voice club of just people you know patting each other on the back all the time yeah financially is just because just with your money exactly with the people who are putting money in the plate like the people who are there for give it all Sunday and you know will you give a month of your salary to the church like it's this should make you mad if you're in a congregation like this you know just because the pastor you just hired has a degree from a college in Bible and is a great speaker and has in this case has a dad who was a massive pastor in it and has kids that are evangelists does not mean that they should automatically have your trust right yeah it

1:03:54should be a trust but verifies his situation where it's like you're obviously bringing this person in because you trust them to some degree and went through they went through some form of a hiring process or something but just because they're in that position does not mean that they just have unbridled access to funds right don't get checks and balances yeah because that it's the unfortunate reality of any position and not just pastoral positions but any position where somebody's put into the limelight where the the spotlight is on them it will inherently attract when we talked about this before will it will inherently attract attract these types of personalities which is why it's a higher percentage in these fields and whether it's government positions or fortune 500 executive teams or churches there are people that are given this this this sense of superiority to some degree or at least this sense of unbridled authority and in any scenario like that it will inherently attract people who want to be that figurehead and won't always do it the

1:04:55right way and does that mean that there are not people who do it the right way of course not there is a lot of like plenty of great pastors and churches and plenty of great you know fortune 500 leaders and things like that but it just means that you just because they hold the position you cannot just give them all of your trust automatically overnight there there shouldn't be the trust but verify yeah yeah because I mean I've had Brian Claus in the show years ago I should have him back on he wrote a book called corruptible which is how bad people are disproportionately drawn to power disproportionately good at getting power and disproportionately good at keeping power this all goes back to systems to quote his book directly you know he says power is magnetic to the corruptible everywhere whether you're in a church you know I'll put this here whether you're in a church law enforcement you know your local HOA like power is magnetic to corruptible bad people everywhere but he says good systems attract better leaders bad systems attract rotten leaders so as much as I don't want to blame the victims sitting in the church when it comes to the system that is set

1:05:56up within the church like it is responsible for some of this too because the bad system is going to attract rotten leaders and again you can go back to his father who you know has a lot of sketchy things associated with it the gray name has baggage with it for a reason but if you just improve the system you're going to protect yourself from bad leaders it should be common sense but you know hopefully if anything I just hope that's a lesson taken away from this is like how do we improve the systems right where we can trust we can verify and we can have somebody there that's there for the right reason there was an odd dichotomy and all that a tick-nosed men's clothing again you said it was for a guest I don't know again if you guys authorized all that I don't think the members did boarded in so you know did see your pastor had unilateral spending authority on that hard to know there's a Marriott church here eight hundred dollars and he says you know that might have been an event well it wasn't there it wasn't a fan it was a weekend or you just don't know so when I'm trying to share with you this is why documentation

1:06:59really helps people's names for reputations I mean you know having a gathering here for God with something yeah it's easy to forget but especially if we go back over years but that's why there's big processes and politics and restraint okay and I do believe he thought that he pretty much had that unilateral authority to spend yeah so I mean he thought sir I mean I pretty self-explanatory yeah like it's that's the thing putting this together as I like I wrote so many notes I kept going through so many drafts of this it's why ultimately it was like there's so many bouts off of you and talk through this because there's so much of this it's just you hear what happened and the solution feels self-evident yeah because the cause of it feels so about it's like one person too much power desiring to do this stuff and it looks like that took many forms from just carelessness to potential criminal actions so yeah yeah and I think is like I just I always want to believe the best in people you know so I like you you hear

1:08:02rumblings of a story like this and you just go like oh maybe it's just negligent maybe it's a magic and that's yeah right exactly but the more you dig into it the more you start realizing like now some people just got away with it too long and that's been that's been my experience I think even a lot in the business world and I've seen this happen now honestly more times than I'd like to see it happen literally yesterday you sent me a rest yeah somebody that I knew who was turns out siphoning money raised like $65 million in a fund and then is now on try I think you might I think it was convicted I think is what that article said um but anyway you I my my initial thought is typically like most people I believe did not get into it with the intention of doing this like they they weren't you know even someone like Scott Gray probably like when he got into ministry probably was not thinking like oh perfect I'm finally in a position to abuse power you know and and make out financially and mess with the financial lives of my staff and siphon money from my church

1:09:05members probably did not think that but somewhere along the way due to ineptitude and ignorance at first over time that excuse goes away like you were at this church for a really long time and then of course you do one little thing that doesn't get noticed then you do another little thing that doesn't get noticed you do another little thing and that doesn't get noticed and then and then you just the the power starts going to your head which why I use Lord arrogance earlier the arrogance to like get double paid from your church like you obviously know that any if and if anybody ever looked at it they would be able to tell it's not like it's not like it's the same accounting line to be like oh well this one's direct deposit this one's paper check so nobody's ever going to find out like that it's just it is a high degree of arrogance that says that clearly I've been doing this pattern for quite some time and never been figured out so why would it change now lots of things like the best case scenario of that is like you're an absolute idiot right the best case scenario is like you actually are functioning on like one percent of your brain yeah being powered on

1:10:07just an unintelligent and you didn't notice two checks you know but it's like it's hard not to have a single read on this oh yeah well when you see when you see that it's not just one thing yes several different areas that there's an egregious level of spending going on including and and egregious lack of documentation including this one building projects or expenses this might be a hour episode don't give me started on building projects I don't know well let me ask you this with linkaster I feel like which was it was always very clearly planned and communicate like building projects like yeah they handled that more fourth rate yeah more like a corporation I remember they had like a master plan yeah of what the whole campus was gonna look like but I think it was before they even built the main auditorium and had it sitting outside because I talked about the vision and and all that stuff there they were very forthright about this is what we're raising forward this is what we're gonna use the money for because I feel like whenever like I look at that as a pretty rare example

1:11:12of like I would remember going to conferences because they were always like roll out all the things we're doing incredibly you know and and I feel like it was one of the few ministries where they'd say we're gonna build this building over here and then you'd show up a couple years later and it's like they're right and done and I know most ministries that I was around you know and I was all over the country for a period of time you see them like doing their vision promise giving you know or faith promise giving or vision banquet whatever the thing that they did and they would have this very nebulous like here's a drawing of what a big building would look like right and give a lot of money and then you go by years later like I'll use my childhood church for an example they were doing a building fund from the time the pastor was there before the pastor that's there now and I remember them saying every year by the time you're in this grade we'll have a gym and we'll have this and fast forward and I remember when I was about to when I was in 11th or 10th grade

1:12:16they're like by 10 year senior we'll have a gym we're gonna have all these classrooms we're gonna have this big thing they would pave I helped pave the lot when I was in fourth grade you know to like get the ground level not paved but level all the dirt and everything out there yeah and then they had to re-level it several times because like the beat go for holes because it's sat there so long and then I remember being a senior and they're like by the time you guys come back you know you come back and visit us we're gonna have a gym we're gonna have all this the next generation right now on that pad they put in a ton of modulars yeah which you know is just like those basic like you put them temporary spot don't think it's temporary have that being all their classrooms there they've got a big empty field that's like their football field that's covering go for holes and it's like how much money was raised for years where it's like oh we don't happen to that money you know and again I don't know that there's something just poorly planned I don't know if it's like their thing was always we don't want to go into debt to do the property so we're just going to have all the money sure and oh things should be more expensive

1:13:20as we think about money that sits there is that it doesn't use for something yeah well it gets used for something like you off on an episode you have the money that's sitting there it's going to be used you know like there's no version of like well we're just gonna keep saving this for the next seven years until we can afford to pay cash type of the thing it's like if it if it doesn't have a specific purpose it's just going to be used for whatever purpose people want to use it for that did happen a couple of times in Lancaster like they told us that we were going to have like a building for a high school when I was like junior high or something like that's time you get to high school will have like an actual building with indoor lockers and class as well modulars there are modulars yeah outdoor lockers and modulars but to be fair like they they would just build a different building like they just kept deprioritizing it on the list so they to this day they still don't have those they were supposed to be like an elementary school education building in a secondary education building built as a part of like the master plan that they laid out when I was a kid but those things didn't happen but they but they would build other stuff they just deferred funds to like whatever the new priority is sure sure here's Gibbs opinion on

1:14:21gray's response to all the questions and all of the conversations he had with him the limited conversations back and forth basically from my understanding Gibbs took all of the bank statements sent them to Gray and let him write in the margins here's what this was and a lot of it was just like highlighted all of it probably guessed yeah or probably this and so here's Gibbs take on that and this is an opinion um Scott Gray demonstrated the lack of candor and truthfulness to the board the staff and various church members would ask questions about his spending or his leadership and what I mean by that is the stories don't buy them so sometimes this was this way sometimes it was that way so I never took the time and actually figure out the truth of all the different stories and things but when you tell three different explanations to three different people you know two of them are correct and that's unfortunate um I wish that I had received a humble turning

1:15:28games I really messed up I'm not doing this money I lectured away our family we acted like we owned the place and helped me straight this out okay um I'm getting a little more the competitive you know a little more we did so much those bunch of engraids those do you hear I mean okay so I'm just letting you know yeah that's a little unfortunate that the spirit is not a little more up contract again contrasting that with the statement that Gray shared like yeah and again you can you can basically you know I I can't you know we have to I mean legally have to be allegedly and in my opinion but like take all the information being given in these clips yeah take that statement and do with that what you will I'm not a financial expert nothing looks particularly good for Scot Gray going through this story and I want to go ahead and share here the executive summary so this is the kind of overview of the exact you know findings of their report I'll go ahead and and play this here and then I can I can read some off as well

1:16:31because I take some notes to kind of condense all of this but here's here's a little bit of I'm going to give you the executive summary statement it's two sentences so just listen to and this is this is a five-minute and three-second clip so I'm going to just let it play out and then I'll I'll add anything I feel like I need to so I'm going to give you the executive summary state and it's two sentences so just listen to this Scot Gray mis-managed and abused his leadership all-clippery back it's church there's no question my opinion his leadership financially victimized this church okay put you through a lot of unnecessary stress along those other things but now let's talk about moving forward what is it that we as a church do how do we move forward the deep ends of pastoral staff and and I worked with them on this had the unanimously prune to going forward plan I'm going to throw it with you quickly it's 12 things but it will be fast to never let this happen again and by the way how many believe we need to learn from past

1:17:35mistakes so this is a go forward plan the deacon's and pastoral staff will refer all future employment references for reverberate to legal counsel so we can warn any future employers now do we want reverberate to get a job absolute do we want him to go forward to live his life and have a future yes we're not out to get anybody but we do not want him to victimize no church and if a church calls and says should we put him in charge as our executive pastor let him run our finances we will give a strong and fatic we would not recommend it then at that point we're not right churches do what they're going to do great that's what he's going to do but we're not going to cover this up so I want everybody to hear we're not going to pretend and you know just wake wake let another church go through a difficult moment at this time now here be honest because some of you are going to bristle some of you are going to

1:18:37be happy but let me just say in consultation with legal counsel deacons of pastoral staff have decided to not pursue civil or criminal charges against criminal now let me explain the thinking and if we start more something different we bay well want to do it let's talk about criminal okay criminal is state of North Carolina versus reverberate and crack we become the victim we end up going to court and we sit there and say this guy stole by money and he mismanaged it very public news media is there W.R.L. and others it's a very wide fit okay Scott Gray's defense you know the dead guy did it the board did it if the board didn't do it they should have done it the church members knew this for you and you just start into a being public morass of trying to prove you know a reasonable doubt that he didn't have a authority to raise his own

1:19:42okay you know him say because most guys do I had that authority I was told I could do he can approve that this chairman said yeah it just turns into a huge distraction and let me say this to you too I don't believe liberty church is going to change its doctor come here excited about that but I'm going to believe the devil is good at distraction and if we're going to spend the next two years with a prosecutor and tell Ms. Green that she's going to Christmas gonna have sit with them and get all these records and prayed I mean we're just going to put a huge amount of time effort and energy on ourselves to try to put a man in jail me and so we feel like probably at this point criminal charges are not in our interest in terms of moving forward now civilly we've got a court we could sue we could say you took our money about permission he's going to raise all the same defenses but we're going to win because it's pretty obvious what he did and he'll blame for you whatever but we'll get enough we'll get a piece of paper that says gray owes us let's

1:20:48say it's a hundred two hundred three and four hundred thousand he owes all the tips whatever is I'm going to say that piece of papers worth nothing okay all we've done is publicly disseminate our mismanagement and it's embarrassing I mean all of us should be a little embarrassed when he was who's senior got okay and we've made it all public we started all out there liberty takes a hit and you have something that's basically non-collective now gray showed up in this place reasonably broke from what I've been told way over spent while I was here over spenders generally don't invest money well they pretend they have money but they generally don't I did talk to C.T. Townsend I asked straight up do you think Gray is having money to pay back to church and he lied and for people listening C.T. Townsend is the pastor of the church that Scott Gray went to immediately after this and it's interesting to me now because Scott Gray put out a

1:21:50statement saying he's not pursuing ministries taking a beat you know all this stuff but his face would profile up until a couple days ago said Scott Gray evangelistic ministries he was at C.T. Townsend's church who's a well-known evangelist and pastor so like all the things seem to look like he was going there to try to spark a new chapter but that's why it gives mentions referencing C.T. Townsend to say hey do you think he has money to pay back to church I did talk to C.T. Townsend I asked straight up do you think Gray is having money to pay back to church and he lied there's Scott said he broke he's living in a trailer of life's cleaning buildings whenever I read there I am now again some of you all could say oh no there's some money but our assessment is that that civil judgment would put the church through stress and would ultimately be uncollectible yes so the moving forward financial plan obviously a lot here has happened and basically here's what he ended up laying out I won't play through it because it would take

1:22:50a lot of time but here's kind of the the summary here again this is the the 12-step plan basically moving forward and feel free to jump in if you have any thoughts on any of these again this is kind of a summary here but number one is to establish independent financial oversight so create a finance committee within the board that operates independently from pastoral leadership and you know that's people that prepare the budget they enforce policies they look over expenses all that sort of thing number two is implementing segregation of financial duties so no single individual should control multiple stages of financial transactions so you know if there's authorization if a pastor authorizes spending then the financial administrator would process the payments the financial administrator would sign the check independent person would you know deal with reconciliation there'd be oversight from a committee like there'd be multiple layers that is normal for a nonprofit requiring dual signatures for large payments so there's a strict

1:23:50payment authorization policy two signatures are required for checks above a certain threshold you know pastor shouldn't sign checks or have bank access you know that's probably a good thing to have number four and these are all good things to have even if the person is proven exactly yeah and he should just because he was an incompetent you know was in constant finances it's this should exist inside of the organization regardless and to your point it's fixing the system to prevent right this thing from happening again in the future regardless of the intention of the person who may or may not be in charge and someone above board isn't going to block at any of these correct in fact they should be the one to suggest this should happen hey maybe she has eyes on this because i'm about to do this big thing and i want there to be you know like i said even if you're someone who's like a gray supporter which they do have them this is something where it's like you know say he did nothing wrong in my opinion that's not the case

1:24:51say gray did nothing wrong and this is all a result of bad bookkeeping and everybody is just how to get him and all this like it's everybody else's fault somehow yeah if that's all true and the church just wanted out their pastor there's a mutiny and they made this look worse than it is if he had put all these things in place he could easily refute all of this correct and again the fact that can't refute it is also an issue that might be worthy of him not having a position as senior pastor anymore and all that sort of thing but again even if you're somebody's watching this who's like i still don't hear anything that convinces me that he did something wrong it's like he should have the literal receipts you know to prove that step four they recommended was adopting formal financial policies again this is something that's amazing that the church has been around for decades and doesn't have them they should adopt a written financial policies and procedures manual approved by the board that's done in consultation with legal counsel the fact this doesn't exist in any form is insane because like it's not like he went and planned a church and they haven't got up to this yet it's like he took over this church from his dad who was there for decades before him

1:25:55if you know his dad this probably is not surprising but spending approval limits reimbursement rules credit card use cash handling procedures conflict of interest policies benevolence fund procedures like all of the above should be implemented number five conduct regular independent financial reviews again to mazes hasn't been happening with the CPA firm and number six continue to monitor cash handling procedures church offerings are common vulnerability again this is something good to think about for churches we are carrying literal plates full of money to back rooms with multiple people you know having a couple different people two unrelated people counting offerings immediate deposit procedures counters signing count sheets number seven improve financial reporting transparency require regular financial reports to the board incredible this wasn't happening already I'm gonna say the home these reports should include budget versus actual account balances major expenditures like this is finance 101 in any organization of any and by the way this sounds extremely complicated it's not no it's not well most of this is I looked at this number do you see this number I'll sign my report you sign your report and of course you

1:26:59can have still have people that figure away through and and you know forging great if they were in that position would have both signed something but then you know these two guys signed it exactly and they're the ones that are the issue not something else implement expense documentation requirements hey guess what crazy this wasn't happening already receipts for all reimbursements explanation for expenses board approval for unusual expenditures finance 101 in any organization cash reimbursement prohibit cash reimbursements without receipts personal use of ministry credit cards number nine limit pastor financial authority this is something that should just exist everywhere yeah you know I I just covered well I can't say that specifically but there's a story in particular that I've covered in the past and a pastor was able to you know make decisions financially that enabled his abuse of a victim and it's because nobody else had eyes on the books like it was so clearly he was opening doors for himself financially with you know and I've

1:28:01seen cases where pastors are buying hotel rooms were there be like a pastor shouldn't have this ability and there should be other people checking and having eyeballs on what he's doing so the senior pastor should lead spiritually which means they should be able to say I think God's leading us this way I feel like we should do this sure but they shouldn't be the one to go swipe all of the money with offering plate for the last year just got spent and that does not make you less of a leader no by the way it makes you your job is to communicate the vision for the ministry or the business and to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses and fill your weaknesses with people who have that as a strength and if you are somebody who's had zero financial training and have no idea what a PNL looks like or what a balance sheet looks like or you've never opened a Google sheets or excel in your life then you should you should not only be willing to do it but it's it is like 100% your responsibility to find somebody who's competent and capable and can help you do that thing right and it does not make you less than if you're giving somebody else

1:29:01control over that yeah number 10 do do do diligence and all incoming senior pastor candidates I will add to this every single employee of volunteer that comes and works in your church in any capacity you know at least for the full criminal background check so when it comes to senior pastor candidates full criminal background check full credit check full reference check talk with prior churches that's the thing it concerns me about all of this is like the one step that liberty is going to be taking is informing churches who ask but I just know this world and I know a lot of churches won't bother asking this is the last name and you know yeah and and which which I'll just say this if you're somebody who's listening to this who goes Eric why are you taking upon yourself to publish this episode when the church is already you know been hurt by this they're going to inform the next church the reality is just like sexual abuse churches don't communicate with each other and so you know if a church doesn't do their due diligence doesn't want to ask the prior church doesn't do a background check like my hope is if Scott Gray pops his head up in Florida for example

1:30:04and says I'm going to pastor a church somebody that's attending the church finds this watches it goes hey that's a bad idea and it actually gets addressed so my my hope is that there's a pastor who listens to this who goes I didn't know that that was not allowed right or I know that this was man I like I should reach out to somebody and get some help with this because I have no idea what I'm right I'm out over like over my skis here exactly people that I knew in Bible college that I look at and they're like they get handed these roles with 300 people in the church yeah where it's like it's not big enough for like with something like Lancaster is like there were a lot of checks and balances by the way somebody still stole $100,000 from the church but even when they did it right my point is like at these smaller churches like they they the congregants just want a good pastor and they're so oblivious to the idea that this could potentially be something that happens that they that they don't do any sort of research into their background or they they assume because they're a charismatic leader yeah that they know what they're doing when it comes to handling finances but the two skills are so not even close to each other like most CEOs don't even know

1:31:09that that's why there's a CFO and a control or even even CDAs some rest console with other CBAs it's very complicated you know but again some of this stuff is is basic yeah so hopefully you know somebody hears this and goes like oh man I owe it to the people who are giving me their money yeah to manage this with the best to to the to the best degree that I possibly can I even if that's not my back I attended a Southern Baptist church for a little while and I just lost the independent Baptist they're listening I went to a Southern Baptist church for a while they had a person that worked in the office for years they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars you know it's like it how this is gonna happen an organization a size you guys own a small business in Vegas it's like you're gonna have people that steal money out of the tip jar that's not theirs you know you're gonna have people that you know work the register and leave it a little short you know like that stuff is gonna happen but you have to have cameras you have to have forms you have to have accountability you have to have two people closing and not what like all that sort of stuff so doing the due diligence at all incoming senior pastor candidates full criminal background check credit check reference check talk with prior churches have a written agreement with any incoming

1:32:12senior pastor clearing clearly spelling out job description and compensation details crazy didn't already have that number 11 update the church bylaws to reflect this increased financial accountability so to increase its to have the bylaws in way six like this is how we're proceeding and number 12 create a published whistleblower policy again this is not just finance but you should have this in your ministry who do you report things to to provide a confidential method for reporting financial concerns reports may go to finance committee chair board chair general legal counsel and then there should be protection guaranteed against retaliation again this pretty normal in every business this should exist I'll just say I just mentioned this is for everything not just financial stuff if it's sexual abuse the report goes to the police first not to anybody else they put in a list so even if there's a whistleblower policy crumple that up and throw it away and police first for that but for finance it makes sense to go to finance committee board chair legal counsel first and foremost and so yeah I mean ultimately I mean now we've gone through all of this

1:33:17holy smoke sitting this is a two-hour episode or something so you've heard all of this for the first time I kind of give you like a 10,000-foot view yeah do you have any big takeaways do you want me to reread Scott Gray's statement in light of this to reconsider some of the stuff he said I mean I think that'd be a good way to end it and the episode but I do there there's a couple things first yeah I think the trust but verify thing is is paramount it's crucial it's like you don't want you know if somebody if somebody is opposed to these things because they're throwing out the what you don't trust me thing it's like that is a huge red flag and the answer is yes we do trust you but in order to make an effort to ensure that there's never a reason that we have to now not trust you these things are in place so that we can move forward with the system that regardless of if you're a good leader the next leader is a bad leader a good leader this will allow us to be able to make better decisions moving forward but then the other thing to me is that this is probably this is just my own anecdotal thoughts and experience on this I don't have any data to back this up

1:34:20but I would assume that this is much more rampant than any other forms of abuse within the church because of what I mentioned at the very beginning when we first started this because of the just gross incompetence that a lot of these church leaders have not not even to their own fault so probably a lot of them are even are even ignorant of their own ignorance they just don't know what they don't know about these things so this is like obviously the sexual abuse physical abuse behind that this is probably one the probably one of the biggest issues that faces churches in general and as a percentage is much greater than any other other form of abuse because of how easy it can be because there's no checks and balances because trust is given without being earned and so if you are somebody who goes to church constantly and you're giving to that church you owe it to your like you your family your church family and to your leadership to make sure that you're doing due diligence around due diligence around these things and making sure that these other

1:35:20things are in place at the church that you go to and if they're not again it's a big red flag and there should be some questions that that are asked because you if you are going to give some of your hard earned income to the mission that you want to support which I am a big advocate of if you give your money wherever you want to give your money but make sure that the people you're giving your money to are are trustworthy and our people who are going to use the money for the thing that they're actually saying they're going to use the money for and know that this is probably one of the bigger issues that's facing the church today as a whole and there's a documentary that came out recently about this so and this is not just the IFB thing this is rampant across all forms of of non-profits even not just churches yeah well I guess I will close out this episode by reminding you if you've hung in there this long to hear all of this you know from the period of December 22nd 2023 to December 2nd 2025 there's been costs to the church of almost $400,000 $399,680 and 13 cents to be exact you know the senior past as exact as they could be

1:36:29as exactly they as it could be over that period that's 90 over 93,000 of un-budget expenses over 90,000 of non-minister related expenses and 216,327 and 30 cents of unknown expenses just money that we don't know where it went and I'll say here I mean Tim Forgey is responsible for $123,000 plus dollars of that Stephen Gray $5,436 plus dollars of that Scotty Gray over $5,000 of that Philip Gray almost $7,000 of that Karen Forgey $14,000 plus dollars of that Jennifer Gray $2,000 plus dollars of that several other staff members with varying amounts under them and then the senior pastor Scott Gray $79,887 and 25 cents of responsibility there and so when you compare and contrast that with his statement saying I want to be clear about this I did not steal from Liberty Baptist Church nor did I use church finances for personal gain

1:37:32the question he should be answering is where did the money go like who benefited from this because it definitely wasn't the church like we heard that in the beginning like the church wasn't benefiting it was bleeding it seems for a season he benefited from it but then squandered it I mean staff members were you know not getting paychecks if the church wasn't stolen from and if he didn't benefit from it you know what happened and who did I think is a question everyone should be asking but yeah I appreciate everybody listening to this episode I think there is a lot of lessons to take from this whether you're a ministry that's doing everything by the books but you want to be a little bit more airtight whether you're somebody in the congregation that's never thought to ask where your money goes once it hits the offering plate it should make you think twice before dropping the next envelope and you know the again I see this all the time but like a great way to tell if you're in a good church is to go ask questions and see how those questions are met so definitely be sure to ask questions so things like this don't happen and Charles do you have anything else before we sign off? No it's a great way to end it the truth

1:38:33does not shy away from questions so if they feel that if you're asking questions and it's met with this combative approach rather than transparency then there's probably a red flag there so I appreciate I appreciate you Eric for having me on to talk a little bit a little bit about this and then if you're listening Travis mixed money we'll catch you guys on the next episode I think we have enough here to do a series every week yeah you've been listening to the preacher boy's podcast hosted by Eric Squizinski the intro music bible belt was performed by Lou Ritley today to praise the only father feel the glory of his name anyone can worship here so long as you pay your tax and follow rules even the ones God didn't make you the bible you the bible