The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability is aiming to require the 2,700 Christian groups it oversees to demonstrate “holistic care” for their top leader in order to remain in good standing.
The new requirement is in the ECFA‘s proposed “Leadership Standard” and would direct organizations to hold at least an annual discussion about their leaders’ commitment to biblical integrity and their care for the leaders.
Each organization already should have a ministry code of conduct in place that the leader has agreed to uphold, the ECFA said.
Based in Winchester, Virginia, the ECFA creates financial standards and accredits its member nonprofit groups, which receive tax-deductible donations.
Michael Martin, the ECFA‘s president and CEO, said a key reason for the new standard is to help organizations maintain their donors’ confidence. The move is “the most revolutionary update” to ECFA‘s accreditation standards in the 45 years since its 1979 founding, the group said.
He said that 94% of senior leaders at ECFA member organizations have said “integrity failures are having a negative impact on trust” in evangelical ministries.
Even “though there was this widespread agreement of [what] the challenges and the problems are, there was really a lack in the majority of organizations of any kind of proactive practices to help support healthy leadership,” Mr. Martin said.
The new standard is “not alleviating that individual responsibility a leader does have for their own health and their integrity, but there’s this opportunity for boards [of directors] to come alongside and help support leaders,” he said.
The standard is directed toward an organization’s leader, but Mr. Martin said he hopes member groups will consider adopting “the same sort of principles [that] would be applied across the organization as well.”
Member groups would have “latitude” in applying the rule and a subset of a group’s board of directors or a care committee would be tasked with checking in with the top officer at least annually, he said. The process would be monitored through an annual accreditation process all ECFA members undergo.
Mr. Martin said the proposed standard is online at ECFA.org/LeadershipStandard for review and comment.
“It is vital that Christian ministries care for their leaders and shepherd the influence of their organizations well,” said Paul Anderson, ECFA board chair and an officer with the North Central District of the Evangelical Free Church of America. “The new standard brings shared accountability for boards to proactively engage in the holistic wellness of the organization’s senior leader.”
Though not directly linked to a specific event, the ECFA move comes after a string of scandals involving executives of member organizations whose failings may have been related to a lack of accountability or care.
The late Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist and intellectual; Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church; and James MacDonald, senior pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, are among those accused of misconduct in recent years.
Zacharias, who was accused of sexual abuse of massage therapists at a day spa he co-owned, died of cancer before officials of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries could discipline him. That group was stripped of its ECFA membership, and later ceased operations.
Mr. Hybels, also accused of sexual misconduct, stepped down over misconduct allegations, which were later found credible by an independent advisory panel. Willow Creek retained its ECFA membership.
Harvest Bible Chapel fired Mr. MacDonald over allegations of bullying, disruptiveness and financial misconduct, among other issues. The ECFA expelled the ministry, and Harvest closed the popular “Walk in the Word” broadcast arm that featured Mr. MacDonald’s sermons.