Thought you might like to know what is going on in the Memphis, TN area.  Below is an e-mail which I sent out to a list of my local contacts about a great organization which is changing a Memphis neighborhood and many lives.

If you are discouraged by all the “bad” news on the air about our city, I would encourage you to tune in tonight and watch one of the “good” news stories scheduled to air on WMC TV, Channel Five during the 6:00 news.

WMC TV, Channel Five, is showcasing The Neighborhood School during its 6:00 News broadcast.  This Shelby Systems software user has developed a unique model for urban education.  In recognition of the uniqueness of the school, Channel Five has been working on a story about The Neighborhood School for the last month. They filmed activities at the school for a day and half.  While story is scheduled to run on Channel Five at 6 PM tonight (Nov. 13th)…of course it can always be bumped by a breaking news story. 

Here is a note from Lori Brown, the Channel 5 News Reporter covering this exciting story:

“A private Christian school is working to take back its neighborhood by reaching out to the poorest of the poor in the Binghampton community.”

“Now the Neighborhood School isn’t just providing a learning environment for students…it’s providing a home as well.”

Tune into Action News 5 at 6pm Thursday to see what may be one of the only schools of its kind in the nation, right here in the Mid-South.

I received a copy of ­The Preacher and the Presidents:  Billy Graham in the White House as a Christmas gift, and have just finished reading it.  What a reveling story.

This is not a book that details Graham’s public ministry, but rather pulls back the curtain and reveals the political arena in which Graham loved to work (almost to his downfall).  I found the sections that describe Billy’s association with Johnson and Nixon most interesting—especially events that seem to parallel current issues as we move towards national elections.

As announced at the annual Shelby Conference in San Antonio, Shelby Systems will be moving to their own building in July 2008. The project is on time and the walls started going up yesterday.

When I saw the headlines in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune News concerning a church treasurer that embezzled $240,000, I started remembering a number of such cases that I became aware of during my days on the road training users of Shelby’s financial modules.  While a number of church embezzlement cases make headlines, many cases are never reported to authorities.  In fact, the dozen or so situations that I stumbled across while on the road were never prosecuted.  And, in all those cases I believe that the church was somewhat responsible for making it easy for someone who is easily tempted to “borrow money from the collection plate”.  While each case was unique, I noticed three commonalities. 

1.        Not having or not requiring bookkeepers to use a financial software package that enforces accountability.  From my experience all of the cases came to light during a transition.  The majority of the dozen or thefts were discovered when the church moved from Quicken, QuickBooks, or a manual bookkeeping system to Shelby Financials.  Such systems are very easily manipulated and supervisory tracking is minimal at best.  Therefore is it very easy to either falsify or change entries after reports are generated, masking questionable activity.  The rest of the cases were discovered when training a replacement or cross training another bookkeeper.  In the later cases, most of the seasoned bookkeepers were keeping manual records or duplicate sets of books.  (One even had a bogus church checking account that was used to keep the books appearing correct.)

2.        Not having or enforcing sound internal controls.  Surprisingly, a number of churches allow the same person that counts the money to also make the bank deposit and/or make the receipt entries into the accounting system.  I vividly recall one church where I was call to train new bookkeepers twice.  The first time was the result of the pastor releasing a lady for skimming money from the collection during the counting procedure.  While training this first time I recommended that they make two changes to their procedure.  First, have more than one person count the money and verify the deposit.  Second, change their chart of accounts in such a manner that would facilitate their internal controls.  The Pastor liked both ideas.  Less than one year later I was called back to train the second new bookkeeper; same reason.  They had not changed any internal procedures and my first trainee was released for theft.  The story repeated itself again, but I was not available to train the third replacement.  However, I did have a conversation with the Pastor and reminded him that he had done nothing to remove the temptation to steal.

3.        Not conducting background checks or verifying previous employment.  It is simply amazing how many pastors trust just about everyone that they employee.  And why not?  Would there be anyone who would steal from a church?  Would it be an insult to require such a check, especially if the applicant was also a member of the congregation? 

Or, what’s wrong with using a stable OS? I do not remember the model of my first cell phone but it was a Sprint flip style device. A fragile thing with a serious design flaw that caused the connection to the earpiece to break after a year’s worth of opening and closing. I could still make calls, just could not hear the person called. So my second phone was a candy bar style to get away from that problem. It also became unusable much too quickly. I then purchased a rugged design flip phone. The downside? It refused to wear out and it got heavy use for 4 1/2 years. But for the last 18 months I have been somewhat embarrassed by that clunky phone. (Speaking about out of date—even a few years earlier I moved my trusty Palm IIIx from my shirt pocket to my computer bag. I still used it for contact information, just kept it out of sight.) Three weeks ago, I just replaced that serviceable cell phone with Sprint’s new Centro, and so far, I like it. In fact, I am using it to composing this blog while on a short flight. There are already plenty of reviews posted so I won’t add to the echoes. One interesting observation, however. A number of the reviews deride Palm for using their tried and true OS. There was very little to learn because I was already familiar with Palm’s system. I was pleasantly surprised to discover new things now available, and I understand that the developer’s SDK has been updated so that I can modify (“hack” in the Palm community) a few things.  So, what is wrong with that?  I don’t understand the criticism.

If blogs had existed over the past few decades, I suspect that I might have shared my reactions to such matters as the first funeral where I officiated.  And, perhaps shared information about each of the too many friends and family members for which I was asked to lead the memorial service.  However, blogging is somewhat new and very new to me.  So, I begin this activity by posting a few thoughts about my Father-in-law’s memorial service.

Marvin Adams died on Wednesday, October 31. I got the news while driving through downtown Denver in 5:00 pm rush hour traffic.  The news was not unexpected but the timing caught me a bit off guard.  Moreover, I was not prepared emotionally nor homiletically to officiate at his Saturday morning funeral.

After quickly rescheduling my travel plans, I arrived at my wife’s family home.  We visited, shared stories, greeted well-wishers, hugged a lot of people (I guess I was supposed to know who all of them were, but distance and ageing has a way of clouding—or perhaps, slowing—recognition), and thanked people for casseroles and assorted goodies.

Now, as I sit in an airport, waiting for a 3 hour delayed flight on my way back home, I am wondering how much I missed by not taking advantage of vacation time to visit this man more over the past 42 years.  The stories others related revealed a man who was a true leader and elder in his church for just over 31 years.  It seems that he lead by example, by visiting and helping anyone in need, by offering encouragement, and when the occasion and timing was right, by stating his opinions is such a way that was never dictatorial, but just his thinking and that approach had a calming and unifying effect during difficutlt times.

Marvin was the first of our parents to die.  Janet and I may have to bury her mother and both of my parents at some point.  I know I will not be any better prepared for those occasions and will regret passed opportunities to be with them.  Maybe I will keep a little closer contact after this weekend.