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Jerry Johnston’s former ministry faulted: Misuse of group’s finances is alleged
Employees and board members of the former Jerry Johnston Ministries said that Johnston often misused ministry money, even as his evangelistic association was in turmoil over financial accountability issues in the mid-1990s.
An assistant office manager, an accountant, another former employee, and board members with firsthand knowledge of the ministry’s finances said the Rev. Jerry Johnston and his wife, Christie, sometimes used the organization back then as their personal piggy bank.
“They didn’t know the difference between ministry money and their money,” said Kim Barr, who worked for the ministry as assistant office manager in 1994, handling mail solicitations, preparing deposits and entering donations into a computer database. “They thought whatever was coming into that place was for them to use at their discretion.”
Johnston and his wife said through their attorney and First Family Church board Chairman Robert Ulrich that such allegations were untrue. They said financial audits and a recent review by a certified public accountant found nothing wrong.
“Jerry and Christie Johnston categorically and emphatically deny each and every allegation asserted in your inquiry,” the attorney said in a letter sent to The Kansas City Star.
Johnston started the ministry in 1979, but it was dissolved after he founded First Family Church in Overland Park in 1996, which became one of the fastest-growing megachurches in America.
In March, The Star reported that hundreds of members had left First Family Church in the past few years because of concerns about financial accountability.
Complaints filed after those stories were published led the Kansas attorney general’s office to open an investigation into whether Johnston had used church funds for personal gain. The attorney general’s office would not say whether it also was investigating the former Jerry Johnston Ministries. An attorney for the Johnstons and the church would not say whether any subpoenas have been issued.
But Zoe Raymonde, a former accountant for Jerry Johnston Ministries, said investigators from the attorney general’s office contacted her last month. She said she could not disclose the details of what they talked about.
Raymonde, an accountant for the ministry in the early 1990s, said she left because she refused to sign checks over to the Johnstons for their personal use. She also said that there was a lack of documentation for how the ministry funds were spent.
Raymonde’s job included writing checks, reconciling the books, and other accounting duties that required her to review receipts and financial documents.
Key elements of her story have been independently corroborated by two other former employees and two former ministry board members. Those board members said they resigned over what they viewed as mishandling of money.
Among the actions in question involving the former ministry:
•An Overland Park home purchased by the ministry as a parsonage for the Johnstons was later sold, and the Johnstons built a new house in Hallbrook Farms, an upscale Leawood neighborhood. Property records, however, show that the new house was put in the Johnstons’ names — not the ministry’s. The Johnstons’ attorney insisted that the money from the sale of the house stayed with the ministry. But board members interviewed said they didn’t even know the old Overland Park house had been owned by the ministry, or what happened to the money from its sale.
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