Cayman’s churches are under fire again because the Auditor General quite rightly wants to know where our public funds are going or have gone.

Most of the churches have responded to his request whilst others have not.

This has been brought about because government’s Nation Building Fund under the control of past Premier, McKeeva Bush, gave a lot of money to Cayman’s churches. What was notable was that the largest amounts went to churches Bush attended.

With shouts of corruption and Cayman’s Finance Minister Marco Archer shouting loud and clear during the 2013 general election campaign that church grants from the fund were more than questionable, all the churches have been put under the hammer.

This poses the question, should all churches be made to provide audited accounts?

Most of the monies churches receive is provided by the public. Are we really sure what we are told the money is for is actually true?

Come on, Colin, we are talking about a church. Of course it is true.

Yes, of course.

But?

We are not all Christians. And not all Christians actually practice Christ’s teachings. In fact none of us Christians actually execute 100% of Christ’s teachings.

We are human beings after all.

We are given to temptation.

So if churches had to provide audited accounts it would help stop the temptation and provide proof to the doubters out in our community the money we give is well spent.

On a website that promotes bookkeeping it naturally promotes this thinking of having audited accounts. It states:

“Churches (and leaders) who KNOW their financial reports well and do audits on a regular basis say that conducting regular church audits helps their churches in three major ways:

“Churches that know where the money is have the ability to cast vision with confidence.

“Churches that complete audits make better and more informed decisions.

“Organizations with audited financial statements have interest rates nearly three-quarters lower than organizations that do not. Source – Journal of Accounting Research.”

The CEO of the website, Bryan Miles, doesn’t say who these churches and leaders are who have made these statements.

The USA’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has now stopped auditing churches “until it can adopt rules that clarify which high-level employee has the authority to initiate them”.

Perhaps they deem the higher authority is God himself.

And there is the question of the cost of providing audited accounts. Audited accounts are not cheap and it is not only churches here that would beg our accountancy firms to provide the service, if required for free. There are hundreds of associations, societies and charities in addition to the churches who also would beg this service. If the churches were required to provide audits it would have to be extended to everyone and that is almost already a requirement.

I personally believe it should not be required as the monies would be better spent on the community. Sure, there might be a few bad apples but they are not in the same barrel.

If you have to pay Peter, in this case you have to find the same amount to pay Paul. Otherwise our community will collapse.

Trust.

Please put the fire out on our churches.