We do feel very blessed to be here with you. In fact, it's an honor to have you come and be with us. I know that you're taking your time, and I've been here before. I know what a great group of people you are. And the very fact, Jim, I think that you have asked me to come back again means that we've developed a nice relationship. So we feel like family with you, and I'm going to treat the subject this afternoon like that. I would like to, by way of introduction, just say that I want you to understand, regardless of anything that may be said or inferred, I want you to understand very clearly that I love my church.
And the church that I'm referring to is not a building on Claremont Mesa Boulevard, or Main Street, USA, or wherever your church is. Nor is it a complex of buildings on Old Columbia Pike in Silver Spring, Maryland. My church is the people of God, and I love that church. And I love the Adventist message. I was brought up, I'm a second-generation Adventist, I was brought up in this church. So regardless of anything else that may come out this afternoon, I want you to understand that I'm 100% loyal to the Seventh-day Adventist message.
I'm just wondering, how many of you have seen this little book? Okay, I've got quite a few hands there, so let me ask this question. How many of you have read this little book? Well, almost as many hands. This has quite an interesting history, this little book. In fact, I spent probably around 12 years, probably a dozen years, messing with this. Now, you have to understand that I'm not a writer. I'm not journalistic. And the further I got into this, the more I realized that. I am an accountant. I am a bean counter. And bean counters are not writers. But somehow there was an exercise that takes place when you're journaling, when you're writing things down, that I found very healthy. Because it helped me to recall events, places. You know, I hadn't really developed any vast file of information. But as I wrote, I began to find that this broke up nicely into chapters.
Initially, I probably started out to put together a little autobiography that would tell my grandchildren where their grandpa had been and what he had done. But as it grew and as it developed, I sensed that there was a potential for a book here. But when I would share this with some of my close friends, they were always very polite. And they suggested that what I had done was a good exercise. But that was about the extent of it. And you know how you can sort of tell whether people think there's really any hope for it. And I was getting a little bit discouraged.
And then one day, I was speaking by phone with my old friend, Al Coppel. And I'm so glad, Al, that you're here today. This is especially refreshing to have you in the audience. Because Al also had written a book. By this time, his book had been published. But I assumed that Al was more journalistic than I. And so I said to him, you know, Al, I'm not a writer. And then he laughed and he said, well, Dave, I'm not a writer either. And we sort of sympathized with one another because he's one of those people who gets down in your mouth. He's a dentist. And he wrote a book. And so I thought, well, man, if a dentist can write a book, a bean counter ought to be able to write a book. The only problem was that after so many years and after the experiences that I had gone through, I could sense, even though I was not objective to what I had written, I could sense that a certain bitterness maybe was coming through at times. I could sense that I was very factual. The information was like accountants provide, you know. Accountants provide a lot of information, but it's not very interesting. It doesn't make good bedtime stories. And so I knew that the book needed some help.
And Al said to me, you know, I've had a wonderful editor. Let me give you his phone number. And I won't go into all the details, but Ed Sweezo had helped Al with his book. And he agreed to help me with my book. And I was so pleased. Now I receive back nice remarks from people. And one of the most common compliments that I receive is, I've just read your book, and it was so interesting, I couldn't put it down. And I sit back and I say, thank you, Ed. Because if you had read that manuscript before Ed got hold of it, you would probably have found it a good bedtime story, because it would have put you to sleep just trying to read the thing. But Ed has taken this and has cast it, I believe, into something that is quite interesting. This little volume was first launched in September last year. So we have just under eight months that this book has been circulating. Initially, just for a test run, Adventist Today printed 600 copies. And those rather quickly sold out. So we're looking at what to do the next time around.
And this is not a second edition, but it's the second printing of the first edition. A very kind, a very generous Seventh-day Adventist put forth the money to publish 10,000 copies and to do a mailing of 1,500 complimentary to a mailing list that the Adventist Today has. And I hope you will thank that person for what they did, because suddenly this little volume got circulated, and very quickly. Inside, in that second printing, the publishers put my email address. And while I wouldn't say I've been flooded with emails, I have received many, many emails. And the preponderance of those has been very positive.
I have gotten a few that sort of burned the coils of my computer. But not too many. Not too many. And we'll get back to that. But in this second printing, again, I have Al to thank. He suggested that we add something. And here, in the very fly of the book, is a statement that was not in the first printing. This was taken from Newsweek Magazine, June 29, 2009. And this sort of sets the tone of where we're going with the book. It says, Isn't that a wonderful statement? Thank you, Al. That was a real addition. And then, over right at the end of the introductions, just before the first chapter, I thought this was very interesting.
Al had kept this in his file. And this was taken from a review article that was published following the St. Louis 2005 General Conference session, the 58th session. It was a supplement to the review. They published statements that were made by four named and voted delegates, alerting fellow colleagues to the problems the Church has with servant leaders.
I want you to listen to this. This is very interesting. It says, I have had individuals say that they are not concerned with the auditor's report because they are connected with the powers that be and will remain in office. Another word. When a group of individuals create and nurture an atmosphere of corruption, and when institutionalized corruption is accepted as a way of life, what means are left to the individual seeking change?
Another one. People are unwilling to follow incompetent leaders. And finally, I will get right to the point. Our people have lost confidence in the leadership of the Church from the top to the bottom. Now, these are challenges, my friends, that we face today. This is something that we're hoping will be addressed in this little volume. And as you read it, perhaps some creative ideas will come to mind as to how we can turn some of these things around. Because quite frankly, I don't think God is going to return to take home with him for eternity a corrupt people. Do you think so? I don't think so. And I think it becomes incumbent upon us to do something about it.
Now, this little volume is very controversial. I can say, very controversial. Now, there's probably several reasons for that. One is because it deals with the Church, the Adventist Church, at its very highest levels. There is a certain desire to circle the wagons, if you know what I mean, to protect the way things are, not to rock the boat. And that becomes controversial. Another reason the book is controversial is because in it, and this is a judgment call, this is something you can blame me for. I told my editor this is what I wanted. I use names. I use names of individuals.
There are some who said, Dave, you shouldn't do that. You should leave that anonymous. Now, I want you to understand, please, I do not use names to embarrass anyone. I do not use names as a vindictive response. I use it for documentation. Because if I said, if I made a statement like this, the president of the general conference said such and such. In the first place, you might wonder which president I'm talking about. Now, I suppose that one we could probably nail down historically. But there are many names mentioned in this book that I had to put in, at least I felt I did, so that if anyone questions the veracity of the book, you can go ask that person if this really happened. And I did it for documentation purposes, but that does create a controversy.
Now, I guess I should take it as a compliment, but this little volume is officially banned by the official church. It is banned to be circulated at the general conference session in Atlanta this coming end of June, early July. Now, to me, that seems strange, because of those two little quotations I shared with you that are now in the book. You would think the church and its authority power would want to be transparent. You would think they would want to have accountability. You would think they would covet an openness. And I guess to me, it's very shocking to learn that my book, along with the terrible trio that Jim was referring to, which are two associated books.
Now, this one was a presentation from a presentation you had given here, I think about five years ago, by my friend Al Koppel. And this is called Truth Decay. And I remember how fascinated I was when Al sent me a complimentary copy of this book, and I remembered that he was a famous dentist in Maryland. And dentists often talk about tooth decay. But this is called Truth Decay. And I thought, how fitting, because Dr. Koppel and his family were philanthropists who have given large sums of money to the church. But when Al tried to find out what had happened to this money, I think we're talking originally about his family trust that was given to the church, he tried to find out where that money had gone, how it was used, all he got was a lot of stonewalling.
Instead of people thanking him and thanking his family for what they had done, they tried to avoid even answering his questions. So Al's book, Truth Decay, has been bundled up now with fatal accounts and with the book that Doug Hackleman produced, and I believe Doug was with you back in March, and Doug's book, Who Watches, Who Cares?, a phenomenal documentation of misadventures in stewardship. All three of these volumes have been dubbed the Terrible Trio.
Now I'm not sure who gave them that name, if it was intended to be a compliment or if it was derogatory, and that really doesn't matter, but all three of these volumes are banned from the General Conference section. And I say this surprises me, in a way. I mean, I know the brethren, so I'm not that surprised. I've worked with them for many years. But it does seem surprising that the church, in their desire to create openness, in fact, Al, you sent me an article not too long ago that you had gotten out of the review where our world president was talking about how important transparency is and how he wanted accountability, and yet the very materials that call for that have been banned. They don't want to see them.
Now, I'll tell you a little secret, because I do still have some inside tracks, not many, most of them have gone now, but I have learned that the motivation for this ban is to make sure that people from other countries of the world do not become familiar with the problems that we've had here in North America. Now, you know something, friends? Overseas they have some of these same kind of problems. I don't know how the project is coming at the moment, but I had understood that this volume was largely translated into Spanish and would be coming out in Spanish. With this ban, I don't know, it may make it more popular than before, but at least there is an attempt now to get this material ready for other parts of the world to have access to, because this matter of transparency that all three of these terrible trio, the goal of this terrible trio is to bring transparency and accountability into the church, and I think we want that worldwide. We don't want it just limited to North America.
It's not a secret in North America, it shouldn't be, and so that's where this name, Terrible Trio, comes from, and all of these books have been scuttled from the general conference session. Now, I was asked by Ed when he set about to edit my book, he said, Dave, I want to know, why did you write this book? And I fumbled around for a little bit. I hadn't really stopped to think about why I wrote the book. I wrote the book, I guess, because it was of interest to me and I thought maybe somebody might benefit from it, so I said, well, I'm not sure, what do you mean? He said, well, I want you to give me some basis for why you wrote the book, and you need to understand, friends, that this book is my story, okay? This is not somebody else's story. This is not something that I cooked up, but this was sort of what happened to me, and so I began thinking, well, why did I write this book?
And then I realized that one of the reasons was that I was still trying to reap some form of justice and exposure to the experience that I had gone through, which I'm going to share with you and which many of you have read in the book itself. I was denied, after seven years and great expense, I was denied a justice by a secular court. Now, you say, well, Dave, you know, as Adventists, we aren't even supposed to go to court. Why did you do that? Not a shame. Well, I did that because I got no justice from the church.
There is a policy which says that we are entitled, any employee of the church is entitled, when he feels he's been unjustly treated, to have what is called a grievance committee. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but it's published in the policy book, and I had asked for that. I had no desire to go to court.
I knew a little bit about what courts do, and it's one of those systems in America that is definitely broken. I knew that it would be expensive. I knew that it would take a lot of time, but my feeling was, if the General Conference had so much evidence against me, if you were to pick up the phone today and call the General Conference and say, would you mind telling us about David Dennis, you would be referred to the legal officers of the General Conference who would tell you that they have all kinds of evidence against David Dennis. Now, if they have all this evidence, why wouldn't you expect them just to go to a simple jury trial and exonerate themselves? Present their evidence, and let's find out what the court's going to do. But the fact is that they spent seven years. Now, these are not prophetic years. These are literal years. They spent seven years at an expense in excess of $6 million.
Now, to them, $6 million is not very much, and I'll explain that one later. We're going to come to that. But they spent $6 million over the seven-year period, over $6 million, principally of tithe money, in order to keep the case from going to court. Not ready to fight the case in court, but to keep it from going to court. Their whole defense was this is an ecclesiastical matter, and the court, the secular court, can't deal with it.
Now, I did a little research, because conservative Adventists take a very negative position about litigation in secular courts, as you're probably aware. There is a chapter in Ellen White's book, Acts of the Apostles. I believe it's chapter 40, but it may be 42. I'm not real clear on this at the moment. But it is the experience of the Apostle Paul, who counseled the church not to go to court, not to go to secular courts. And it's the chapter about the Apostle Paul appealing his case to Caesar. You remember that experience? He appealed to Caesar.
And Ellen White says that the reason he went to Caesar was because he knew he would get no justice in the Sanhedrin. So here I'm dealing with the Sanhedrin, and the only justice that seemed available to me was in the secular court, as it was for the Apostle Paul. So I have never, I have to tell you, I've never really felt that I did anything wrong, except that I have felt bad that the church spent this kind of money because I had to bring this charge.
Anyway, that's something that somebody may want to question me more on later, so I won't spend more time on it now. But I did want you to know that even though I was put out of my job, I still felt it was important to remain an articulate voice for a change in the system. And I'll get back to a little bit of the history on that, but I didn't want to leave that. Finally, it was designed to be of help to others, other reformers, who might arise now and into the future, and who would be treated as I was by the church. And I want to get into a little bit more of the background of how I was treated and what happened.
What you probably don't know, and Jim, I haven't had a chance to talk to you much about it, I haven't been home to read Jonathan Gallagher's report from last month, but how many of you are aware that Jonathan Gallagher was treated, shall we say, shabbily, by the General Conference much as I was? Some of you knew that. I don't think Jonathan came out here to tell you about that, although Jonathan could write his own book. But his experience, I can tell you, friends, is a carbon copy of our experience.
And let me just get into that a bit. First of all, my story is simply to share the fact that I was brought up in a Midwestern family, poor family home. My parents were Adventists who believed this message with all their hearts and who sacrificed to help me get a Christian education. I had been trained, vocationally, to be a printer. Back in the old days, when we had the Linotype machines and Heidelberg presses and all of those things, the old-letter press style. And, in fact, I earned my way through college working in the college press. And my parents wanted me to go on to college.
Now, my parents weren't the pushy kind, but they dreamed of the day that their son would be a worker for the Lord in his church. So they encouraged me to go on to college. And I remember in those early years, in the early months and early years of college, my plan was that I would study in the business curriculum so that I could run the office of a printing shop because I already had the technical knowledge of a printing shop, so therefore I would learn the business end of it. And that was my goal. But as the years progressed and I was pulled away psychologically from printing, I decided that I really wanted to find my little name somewhere in the business world. Well, when my parents learned about this, they said, Look, your goal should not be to make money. Your goal should be to serve the Lord. And we believe that whatever you do, the Lord can use you.
And I remember in my junior, senior year of college, I began looking at denominational institutions. And I concluded, even while a student back in college, that the Adventist church was run by the clergy. The business part of the church was run by clergy. And I said, Well, you know, I think ministers are extremely valuable. We need them, but we need people who are trained in the skills of good management, accounting, and budgeting to run the business end of the church.
And I remember I went to my faculty advisor, and he was encouraging me to go ahead and get my CPA. And he had dreams for me that I would one day find good work, employment, leave the business world, and move on to a good position somewhere. When I told him that I wanted to work for the church, and he was a very committed gentleman. He died recently.
He encouraged me. He said, You know, if you want to work for the church, that's fine. He said, I chose to work for the church as a teacher, so I understand why you want to do that. He said, You need to be prepared that in the business area, you will always be second class. The ministers are the ones who chair the boards. The ministers are the ones who run the church. I said, Well, do you think we could maybe work together? He said, Well, you might be able to work together, but he said, you will have to understand that they are the ones in charge, and you're working under them. I was naive enough to think that would work.
So I left college. You know how college students are. We're walking high. Charlotte hadn't asked me to marry her yet. I was about to graduate. I was offered a job out in the Midwest at the Iowa conference. I was going to be their assistant treasurer, assistant auditor, in the conference office. This was very exciting to me. And so I began to dream how I'm going to be able to make changes and changes in this operation. You see, I felt naive, naively felt, that if I came in and I had some good ideas that people would listen to me.
Now that is about as dumb as you can get, because I can tell you that ain't going to happen. And, of course, I began at a very low rung on the ladder, and we had some interesting fellowship in those early months, but I did have a wonderful boss. My treasurer of the conference was a wonderful man, and he taught me an awful lot in a very short time, because it wasn't long until a mission call came. Now, I have to tell you, I've never in my life dreamed of going as a missionary. That was not my goal. When I was a student in college, we used to have a foreign mission band that met every other Friday night, and I usually absented myself from that, because that just wasn't for me. Other people could go, but not me. And also, I thought, as a business-trained person, they didn't need us overseas. Well, the call came to go to Uruguay in South America. And my next-door neighbor is here this afternoon. I think this is wonderful.
Ed Bryan, who, incidentally, speaks Spanish like a native. I don't know how Ed learned it so well, because I still struggle with my Spanish, Ed. It still has that gringo accent. But Ed and I became fast friends, and Ed taught me a lot that I learned about how things work. Now, Ed was much more knowledgeable about inner workings. To me, I was a fact-finder. I worked superficially, and I could see where things needed to be. Ed would tell me how I got there, and that was very important. The years went by, Ed. You went one way, I went another. We went to Chile after that. I was treasurer of the conference. My little book will tell you some of our experiences in Chile. Wonderful experience. Wonderful country today, I might say.
Chile is really an exemplary country in all of Latin America. And we came home on furlough, planning to return back to Chile. And there's another story there. Again, I don't have time to tell that, because that's in the book. And if you've read the book, you know the story. At any rate, we didn't go back to South America. But instead, we went across the Pacific, and we went to the Far East. And in Indonesia, I don't have anybody, I don't think, from Indonesia today, do I? Good. I can use my Indonesian then, and you won't know how bad it is. But I had to learn Indonesian.
I have to be careful with Ed. I can't practice my Spanish in front of him. But in Indonesia, we had to learn another language, we had to learn another culture. And I can tell you, Ed, the transition from Uruguay or Chile to Indonesia is much greater than going from the U.S. to South America. It's just totally different. But I did have some wonderful people to work with. And they were helpful. We went into a situation in Indonesia where the finances were very bad. God blessed us. We got things turned around. We got on a good, solid financial base.
And after a few years, they asked me to come be the division director of auditing. This is when I first got into auditing, and I began to sense just how important it is. But my feeling was that I'm here working with people who have not had the opportunities that I've had, the challenges that I've had, and so I'm here to help them. And as I look back on my experience, especially in the Far East, I get more satisfaction from the national workers who today are leading the work and who were sort of my understudies than I do from the fact that I accomplished something there. I believe, and I think history has proven this, that as missionaries our time is limited, and we're there to help train those who work under us.
And I remember feeling that I had some superior training, some advantages, and it came to me as a great surprise, a great shock, when we transferred to the General Conference in 1975 to find out that some of our financial fiascos in the United States made the problems that we had in the fields outside seem rather minuscule. We had some real problems.
Now you remember, if I were to mention Davenport, what that meant. I was caught up right in the middle of that. I saw so many large problems in the work here in North America that it was shocking to me. It was shocking to me because I saw how the system would protect people who had done wrong. There was no accountability, no punishment. Some of you may recall, and it's written up nicely in Doug Heckerman's book, that when the Davenport study was done, there were names recommended for punishment, and that was all scuttled. You don't learn if there is no punishment at the end. If your only reward is simply you goof up and we'll move you somewhere else, you don't learn a lesson from that.
Therefore, I find that my book seems to be most widely accepted and received by people who have been hurt by the church or by an institution to which they have devoted so many years of their life. So many of their fortunes have been invested in that that now they have been hurt by that and they're the ones who write to me and tell me their story. And I've learned of experiences much like mine.
Well, we came back to the general conference and we served in auditing. I was called to be one of the auditors and then a year later, the director for auditing of the World Church retired and so they asked me to take over the direction of the church. This was a position that I had held for 18 years. When I first joined the general conference staff, I was only CPA number two on the staff. When I left, everybody was a CPA except the young folk who were just being brought in fresh.
We were trying to get people who were qualified, people who could do the job. I brought in, when I first came in as director of auditing, it was a fairly chauvinistic group. Women didn't really have a place in auditing. There wasn't one single female auditor at that time. And I'm very proud to say that I got something started that is still in place to this day and that is that there are many women CPAs, many women auditors, many women who are doing an outstanding job. And if I would mention some of the names of the ladies who came into our work, you would quickly understand how they fit in so well to what we were doing.
Also, there were no people of color. And I remember how the regional affairs department at the general conference was very harsh on me and they said, we want you to go out and we have, I think it was at that time, 40% African American members of the church and we want you to have 40% of your auditors to be African American. And my response was, look, you bring me qualified African Americans, they have a job, I guarantee you. And then they got upset, some of them, because they thought that I was a racist because I wouldn't hire them even though they were not qualified. And we began then finding some highly qualified black auditors. And I'm rather proud to say that the director of auditing, the person who holds my job today, the one I used to have, is an African American. And I think we've come a long way. We have come a long way. But I got myself into some difficulty.
And I'll just tell you briefly what the story is because you need to understand it in order to understand where I'm coming from in this book. And that is that a plot was set for me in 1994, a trap was set, if you please, and a fellow by the name of Ken Mittleider. Now, one of the problems that you may have in reading my book, because I do mention names, is that you'll read a name of somebody you may be related to or somebody who is a very dear friend, and you'll say, well, Dave, I liked your book, until you called somebody by name. Again, please understand, the reason I mention their name, either here or in the book, is because I want to be able to document this story. I want you to know that what I'm telling you is true, even if it came from one of your great-uncles. I want you to understand that.
So Ken Mittleider was a vice president at the General Conference. Actually, Robert Kloosterhuis was a vice president who was responsible for auditing.
Now, one of the problems that you may have in reading my book, because I do mention names, is that you'll read a name of somebody you may be related to, or somebody who is a very dear friend, and you'll say, well, Dave, I liked your book, until you called somebody by name. Again, please understand, the reason I mention their name, either here or in the book, is because I want to be able to document this story. I want you to know that what I'm telling you is true, even if it came from one of your great-uncles. I want you to understand that. So Ken Mitleider was the Vice President at the General Conference.
Actually, Robert Kloosterhuis was the Vice President who was responsible for auditing. Mitleider was a General Vice President, and for whatever reason, I don't know, but Robert Folkenberg chose Mitleider to get rid of me. He said, whatever it takes, you get rid of him. Now this would have been in late 93 or early 94. Ken Mitleider was given that responsibility, and at one time, I would have assumed that Mitleider was my good friend, but he was doing that which he had been assigned to do, because another story that's mentioned in detail in my book, which I won't get into now, is that in the year 1990, when Folkenberg first came in to be the world president, the first act that he really did was to try to force me out of office.
Some of you may recall that I was not re-elected in Indianapolis. There was a cry from the floor, it was referred back to the nominating committee, and then I was ultimately re-elected. So I was a real problem to the new administration, and then on top of that, it was found that the president of the World Church and a key vice president, Al McClure, the late Al McClure, had their hands in the money box, they were doing hanky panky, and it fell on the auditors to report this. Now, some of you know that story, some of you don't know that story, I won't go into detail here, it is outlined in the book.
And so Folkenberg did not want me up for re-election in Utrecht in 1995. So he told Mitleider he was going to have to find a way to get rid of me, which he did. One of the General Conference employees, I'm trying to remember the name now, Ben, no, Glenn Maxson, who was the stewardship director at the General Conference, was on the West Coast. There was a girl there, she was no longer a girl, she was in her 30s, had been unfaithful to her husband. Her husband had caught her in her infidelity, and to try to save her home, she went into a counseling session in Ohio.
In Ohio, she was subjected to this memory recall, false memory treatment. Charlotte and I actually joined up with that organization to learn how it works, and while she was in therapy, she told them that I had molested her as a teenage girl, and that I had actually had an affair with her 12 years before. So Mitleider seized upon this, and it was a case that I was guilty until I could prove my innocence. I have to tell you that whether we're talking about Bill Clinton or a Catholic priest, until I hear someone admit to doing these wrongs, I have a hard time accepting that they did it, because I know how easy it is to point a finger and to be judged guilty before any trial experience.
And so almost immediately after this, I was fired. I was told that I had to resign. My answer was, I will resign, I would have resigned, if you hadn't come at me with a story. But because you have accused me falsely, I cannot resign. Now, I don't know how many of you agree with that principle, but I believe, and you tell me if I'm wrong, I believe that anyone who resigns is admitting to something wrong. Am I correct, or do you agree with that? Okay, you agree with me. I believe this with all my heart. They tried to force me to resign. I said, I will not resign because you are accusing me falsely. And then they proceeded to have me fired. And I lost my job, I lost my name, my good name.
I learned that there's a couple of things in Adventism that I didn't really know was there before. I guess I never thought about it. Did you know that Adventists are gossips? Did anybody know that? I hadn't really thought about that. Adventists are gossips.
And Adventists do something else. We have read this in a book, Charlotte had gotten a book on the Amish people of Pennsylvania called The Shunning. I don't know if any of you have ever seen that book, but it tells how the Amish people, when someone is no longer faithful to their religion, whatever the issue may be, they are excommunicated from the church. And then the whole church, everybody who ever knew them, shuns them-- will have nothing to do with them. And you know, friends, that's exactly what happened to us.
We would be in a grocery store and we would see across the way someone we had worked with at the general conference. I'm telling you, you talk about moving quickly. Those people probably had arthritis and replaced knees, but all of a sudden they would go running. Of course, with the aid of their push cart. But I mean, they were out of there. We were avoided like the people who went to Kalapapa off Molokai years ago. We were shunned. And do you know what? To this very day, there are people who shun us.
Now for that reason, because I don't want to miss the kingdom. And if there's a chance that some of those people can be my neighbors there, I've come to the point, it took me a long time now. I'm a stubborn Irishman, but I finally came to the point where I said, I want those people to be my neighbors in heaven. Now that's a little hard because these are people who organized gossip against us. I mean, it was orchestrated. I used to think that when somebody got fired for some personal reason, they would put in the file a statement that said, details are on file or something like this.
Do you realize that Phil Follett, who was the vice president of the General Conference, was given the dubious assignment of going through the entire General Conference complex? There's about 700 people that worked there at that time. And department by department, he called them together to share with them how evil Dave Dennis was and why he had been fired. So this gossip spread around the world.
And I'm telling you, friends, the number of people who came to us and said, we love you. We're sorry for what's happened or whatever. You could name on one hand.
They didn't call. They didn't write. I had one fellow, the late Jim Crest, who was in the Ministerial Association. He sent me a little short note saying that, obviously, I had some sexual and emotional problems. And because of that, they were offering to give me counseling free. Now that was the only, shall we say, friendship that was offered during this period of time. So on the basis of what they called sexual misconduct, they had me fired.
Let's see. I'm going too fast here. Anyway, that's first of all my story. Now according to my time, I'm close to that 10 minute line, I think, Larry. So let me move then. I'll save any details to the question and answer time on that. I wanted to list here some of the problems that during my stay at the General Conference we had to deal with.
I don't know if you remember the Media Center, but in my growing up days, The Voice of Prophecy, It is Written, Faith for Today, those were all nice ministries and they raised money to keep their program going. By the time we came to the General Conference, they had decided to make the Media Center. They bought a property there in Newberry Park, I believe it's called, rather large complex.
I understand they had a building that was available that had been used for some other purpose, but that wasn't good enough, so they built this huge complex. What that did then is that that meant that over these different ministries there would be another level of administration.
So now you have the cost of erecting the building, maintaining the building, and paying a whole new staff of administration to run these different ministries. And I found that The Voice of Prophecy, The Faith for Today, It is Written, Breath of Life, whatever, these were ministries that sort of stood on their own.
The Voice of Prophecy to me was Elder Richards, and now to have, of course the senior Elder Richards was retired by this time, but his son was in, and to have him depending on somebody else to raise the funds to keep The Voice of Prophecy going, no wonder it didn't go. And this was true of all of these separate ministries.
Loma Linda, in my book, some of you live close to Loma Linda so you know what I'm talking about, I have devoted two chapters to the history of Loma Linda. And Loma Linda has grown big, it's grown unwieldy, unfortunately it's not what it once was. There are many different administrative people who have come in and instead of being the right arm of the message, it really has become the right headache of the message.
Our publishing house disaster, we owe to Elder Wilson the legacy of basically destroying our publishing houses.
When I came to the General Conference we had three publishing houses, Pacific Press, Review and the Southern Pub. At that time, the only one that was financially viable and successful was Southern Pub. But Neil Wilson decided he wanted to close it, and so he did. And all of the people at Southern Pub had to move to the Review.
Well, I submit to you today that probably we shouldn't even be in the printing business. We have bought huge pieces of equipment, very expensive, and if you go to the Review today you'll find that a lot of that equipment isn't even running more than three or four hours a day. You can't pay for it doing that. You need to outsource it, that's the direction we're going.
The Davenport debacle, we've talked about that. Some of you know how the church lost one of the great assets for our young people. Loma Linda Foods was kind of the opposite story. O
One of my South American friends went in to become the chief officer at Loma Linda Foods and almost overnight he turned the place around. I don't remember, Ed, if you knew Alejo Pizarro, he's a Chilean, but he's an absolute when it comes to running a business. And when he came into Loma Linda Foods he turned it around. It was so successful, in fact, that without consulting him, Neil Wilson sold it to some businessmen in Europe and we lost Loma Linda Foods for just the very opposite reason. It was too successful.
The Blue Duck business, that's an interesting one. I don't have time to go into that because I know Larry's going to be holding up my sign. There's some other scams mentioned in the book which you'll want to read.
Now we have some current and some future challenges today and you've heard me speak on this one before when I've been here. We have a level of operation in North America especially called the unions. This happens to be one of the greatest wastes of money in the entire denomination. We are pouring just into running unions over $40 million a year. We claim that we're hard up for money, but this is what's happening to it.
We have schools that are being shut down and reorganized and a lot of people are being hurt over our school system. We have changing demographics. You see that the church membership today is mostly outside North America. The financial support is still in North America and how are we going to be able to continue financing this heavy administrative responsibility? And I've already mentioned the SDA health system.
Now to sort of summarize all of this, someone is going to say, well Dave, you know some of these problems couldn't happen again. Well I have some news for you this afternoon. I told you that the church didn't really look at $6 million spent on our lawsuit as very much money. So I'm going to tell you how I arrived at that conclusion. Recently an article appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. I don't know if any of you read it or you had this shared with you, but it gives from the form 990 a filing on the salaries paid to administrators.
First of all, Florida Hospital, Lars Zuman in 2007 received $1.1 million. Now I think most of you could live on that as a salary, am I correct? But the parent company, I guess that's called Sunbelt Southwest or South or something Florida system, a Don Jernigan is in charge of that. And his earnings listed on the form 990 in 2007 was $3.5 million, but the total package may have been $5.6 million with benefits and deferred revenue. The author of this article in the Orlando Sentinel says this is not bad for a faith-based nonprofit SDA hospital.
Jernigan's compensation package for 2007 was actually more than what was paid to the top administrators of the famed Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Health System combined. So I reckon we could do okay on that. I'm tired. I'm not going to touch on that.
I did want to share with you this little statement. Actually it's in my book and they tell me that you need to time out. Is that it? Okay. Um, shall we, shall we take our break then now? Is that okay, Larry? Okay. Why don't we take our break now? Because, um, what I would do, Jim, if it's okay with you, I will come back and just summarize. I'm in the summary phase of this and I had about five minutes and then we'll have questions after that. So look forward to it. There's so much material that you try to cover and you leave out things.
So I did want to introduce who Ed Suizo is. I think I alluded to him. He's a terrific writer, terrific editor, and a good friend. And through this experience, I've made good friends with Ed. He's given me a lot of tips and we've had a lot of shared thoughts and we have a lot in common. It happens that Ed's father, Donovan Suizo, was a physician in Bolivia when I used to work in the division office in South America. And from month to day, or every month, I would send Donovan Suizo his paycheck.
I don't know, Ed, if you remember the Suizos, but Ed was just a small boy at that time and he is- They were neighbors of mine in Sunnyside, Washington. We grew up together. Is that right? And you probably knew Ed then. Yeah. Would you spell the last name of Ed Suizo? S-C-H-W-I-S-O-W. S-C-H-W-I-S-O-W. Anyway, I wanted you to know who Ed was.
Now, the other thing I wanted to share with you is that some people have asked, how do I get the book? Well, unfortunately, this-- well, fortunately for me, but the book is published and marketed by Adventist Today. You can go on their website, which is atoday.com, and it tells you how to order books and materials. You can order Truth Decay, you can order the Who Watches Who Cares, and you can order Fatal Accounts in that way. I understand that Dr. Koppel has copies available. If you want to speak to him, he'll help you get one as well.
And I think Don Hoffman from Remnants has a few copies of Fatal Accounts that are here today. I have two copies myself, so we're happy to share them with you for those who want them.
I just looked over the questions. I'm excited about them. We've got some terrific questions, as we always do. You're a group of thinkers, you're smart people, and I guess that's why I enjoy coming so much. I just wish I lived closer so I could come more often to these presentations. I enjoy listening to them on the CD, but I wish I could be here in person and maybe write out some of those questions myself.
I wanted to sort of wrap up what we were talking about. Time is short, and I do want to get into the questions. But a number of you during the break said to me, you know, what you tell us is history, and that's true. It goes back to my own past for a number of years, but they feel like, or some people feel like, that maybe this doesn't happen anymore. We've got all those little holes in the bag plugged up, and so we don't have to worry about these things anymore. So I want to just, in closing, address some of the things that we, as lay people, can do to help change what is going on today.
Now I can tell you that this problem has not stopped. We just lost, I say we, the General Conference, just lost $6.8 million in a financial fiasco. They invested money in a start-up company with no record, not traded, under the control of the SEC, a business called LifePoint. I never heard of the company before, but there is a website where you can see the published letters, the dialogue that took place between an organization that is very friendly to us. I don't see any of their representatives here today, but some of you may have heard of Members for Church Accountability, the MCA group, and they are continually trying to hold administrators' feet to the fire and to get disclosure. So they are really the ones that we have to give credit to. They have a website, it's advmca.org, I believe I'm right on that one, and they have published the letters that went back and forth, and the General Conference has admitted to losing $6.8 million in this fiasco.
I personally think that when all the dust settles, we're going to find the loss was greater, because the General Conference actually put $10 million in it, and they're claiming they lost $6.8. I have an idea they will lose the whole thing, but time will tell. But at least they've admitted to losing $6.8. Now if you read those letters, I found them quite amazing. These come from officers of the present General Conference. And their response is that $6.8 million really is not very much. It's less than 1% of their total invested funds. So they lost 1%, well you can lose that much in the stock market.
So $6.8 million isn't really very much. That's how they justified spending over $6 million to try to keep my lawsuit from going to court. And in their minds, $6 million is really a drop in the bucket. There's been no accountability of how that money was spent, and most of it was tithe money.
These hospital administrators receive these big salaries, and people say, hold on, the hospitals are making a lot of money, they're no longer tied to the church. But does it make you feel like you are part of the missionary outreach of the church, when you find that someone in the healthcare system received a pay of over $5 million in a single year? I mean, does that sound like any form of missionary work? We call the health system the right arm of the message. So something isn't adding up.
So the question is, what can we do as members of the church, as lay people of the church? Well, in the first place, don't just sit and remain silent. There are too many people today who say, we don't like negative publicity. They are in a state of denial. This is my church, I love my church, this is the Lord's work, and so somebody goofed up somewhere, don't worry about it.
Well, I think we have a responsibility, and there are several things we can do. One of them is that we need to urge accountability. It's a word that gets kicked around a lot, but it's never really taken very seriously when these things happen. I watched the letters that went back and forth on this $6.8 million loss, and it was quite incredible because the General Conference would wait sometimes two or three months even to reply. And they would then reply and say, well, you understand the church has a lot of money invested. We still don't know who made the decision to put that money in this fly-by-night operation. There's got to be somebody held accountable. So we need to urge accountability.
Now someone mentioned to me at the break that they were re-channeling some of their tithe money. You remember I came out here and we talked about tithe at the last time I was here several years ago, and according to scripture, according to Ellen White, tithe is for the support of the ministry. It doesn't say to me the conference is the storehouse of Malachi 3. There are some people who would have you believe that.
And you know what? Anytime you re-channel your tithe into another good ministry, you are perfectly in harmony with scripture. The idea that the tithe goes into a little envelope, that's a man-made thing. So I could spend more time on that. I won't do that. But I do think it's important that we get a message sent. I know people today who are putting their tithe money into a savings account or into a CD, even though it's not earning much interest, and holding it there, rather than paying it to the conference because they're trying to get a message to the conference that we want some accountability. Also you can get involved. Everybody can be involved.
Now have you ever noticed that the conference officers don't like that? They won't think favorably of you if you speak up. But you need to be involved. You need to let them know who you are. You need to ask the right questions. Charlotte and I just by chance happened to meet an individual from the General Conference just a few weeks ago, and in fact we caught him in the act. He was in one of our large airports here in the U.S., and he was blatantly reading in the airport, waiting for his flight, the book Who Watches Who Cares? And I couldn't let it pass. He didn't know I was anywhere near. But he remembered me, you know, and I went over and I put my hand on his shoulder.
His name's Jim. I'll give you that much of a clue. And I said, by the way, Jim, if you're going to read that heresy, you'd better put it between the pages of the Review so nobody will see you. Well, this kind of bothered him, and later when we arrived together back in Baltimore, he stopped me. He said, I'm a member of a large board of the church. I won't tell you which board. And he said, I am watching this entity implode. I don't know anything about finance. I'm on that board, and I don't even know what questions to ask. And of course I offered to help him. But you know, friends, there are a lot of our church administrators today who sincerely want to know what they can do because they do know that we live in difficult times. And you know, I'm all for helping them, all for encouraging them, but I'm also all for having people on the board who will take responsibility.
We need to stay alert to conflicts of interest. Probably the most difficult problem that I had to face in all my years working for the church was conflicts of interest. You know, that's exactly how we got into Davenport. Don Davenport, the great medical doctor turned post office builder, constructor, was paying interest to the church in those days of something like 5 or 6 percent. Now the bank was maybe paying 4 percent. But if he could get a church administrator, a union president or general conference officer, to put money with him, he was paying them 15 and 16 percent.
Now, the reason he paid them this high interest was so they would recommend it to church. Put the church money with him, see? Now that's a conflict of interest.
To have your personal money and the church money all mixed up together and giving you benefits, this is exactly what creates a conflict of interest.
And we need to be alert to those because church employees, by nature, think they're very poor. I imagine if you talked to Don Jernigan down there in Florida, he would explain to you why he needs $5 million to live on. He probably has several houses he's trying to maintain or something. You know, I don't know. I don't live in his shoes. I do know this, though. There is nobody on this planet so rich that they feel like they've ever earned enough. If you ask Bill Gates, he'd probably tell you that he lost some money in the stock market that he's got to make back. So everybody thinks they need a little more money. If your income is $50,000 a year or if your income is $50 million a year, you still have trouble living within your means.
And so when somebody comes along and offers you a good deal, you know, I run this little accounting business with my son, and the people who give me the most trouble, I'll be honest with you because some of you probably have this too, are Adventist clergy who want a professional discount. And so we've fallen into the practice of bumping our fee up a little bit for them, and then we give them a nice discount, and they go away happy as clam.
Now, finally, I want you to help us distribute these books. Through the Adventist Today program, you can obtain these, if you buy quantities, at a fairly good price. And I would like for you to distribute them to your friends, to your fellow church members. Tell them why you're giving it to them. Give it to them with a little prayer on your lips. But if there are those who can help us, we want to see these volumes distributed against the ban at the general conference session.
Now don't take them into the meeting hall, or they'll call you a shepherd's rod. Many of you remember the Shepherd's Rod. When I was a kid, they used to be outside all the camp meetings. So I don't want you doing that. But I want you to get these to people who are thinkers within the church. And I'm particularly interested in seeing these in the hands of people from outside the United States. I just did a little feeler the other day, and I'm quite sure that none of these books have yet reached, at least to any extent, Australia.
And Australia and New Zealand speak the same language we do. It has a strange accent to it, but it's the very same language they read the same. They read it with a different accent, you know. But we need to see that people like that get these books. We want them to know what's going on.
'm not opposed to sending them to Africa or anywhere, but particularly to these countries that are influential, that have funds to give, and that need to know some of these things going on. Okay. Larry, you can shut this off.
That's all I have here for that. And I'm going to get into questions now. So we'll have a go at these questions. If I don't answer your question correctly or sufficiently, please raise your hand. We're going to take time with these.
“Since I read your book in February 2010, I have stopped sending 10% to the General Conference instead of 10% to my local church, and then 10% to ADRA, that I think is AFM, Amazing Facts, AWR, NCBC, Quiet Hour, and VOP, etc. Do you have better suggestions? Please advise.”
Well, I have to tell you, and this is on the record, we handle our tithe money. We've continued paying our tithe. We believe in paying tithe, but it no longer goes into that little envelope that winds up in a fund that pays lawsuits for the General Conference. And you can send your tithe money, I don't know if you knew this, overseas, but you can't put (write) tithe on the little memo. Call it donation and then write a letter overseas and say, I'm sending you some tithe money, and that's fine.
But there is a policy in place that the General Conference will not accept any tithe money from outside a local conference. So it has to go back to the local conference. I've already explained to you in my last meeting here that there's a difference between what the General Conference calls supporting ministries and independent ministries.
The General Conference loves supporting ministries. They hate independent ministries. The reason for that is that independent ministries keep the tithe and use it in their own ministry.
The supporting ministry receives tithe and then sends it to the local conference.
So if you send money, let's say, to the Quiet Hour or to the Voice of Prophecy, it's going to wind up in the coffers of, is it Southeastern, where they're located? The Southeastern Conference. They'll send that tithe money on to them. So if you send it to them, that's fine. Just don't mark it tithe. I think your heart and God know the difference.
So I support this concept. I think it's a shame. The way we have this tremendous bureaucracy and levels of administration and what's happening is that so much of our tithe dollars is actually going to help the union officers play golf. And I think it's time that we eliminate that whole layer of administration. And you can pass this on to the Pacific Union if you like.
“Is there a special reason you chose to write your book as the personal apologetic tale of an important fired employee without any references rather than a well-documented footnote at <Tome> so that your claims might be verified?”
I think this person who raised this question, it's a good question. But I think the person who raised that probably has read Doug Hackleman's book. Now Doug Hackleman, in my opinion, is a very gifted writer. And he documented in footnotes every move he makes in that book. It's fantastically documented.
Al Coppel and I have written what I would call, and I don't mean this to sound derogatory, but we've written storybooks. We're telling a story. We're telling our story. And I guess I said earlier the reason I mention people's names in the book is so that we can trace down what it is we're talking about. It's interesting that in all of the responses that I've received, no one, absolutely no one has questioned any of the facts.
They may not like it that I mention somebody's name, that that has come up. They might not like it that I'm writing something that they consider negative to the church, but they don't question the facts. And hopefully that's what this will convey.
I don't know if I've answered that question properly. It was a choice that I made. I didn't really have, well I could have used the court case and a few other things maybe to strengthen that, but my personal feeling is it would destroy a little bit of the flow of the story. And those of you who have responded tell me that the book has been very interesting reading and no one has had trouble reading the book. So that's one of the reasons.
“Since the GC fired you, have any reforms or changes been implemented so as to ensure greater accountability to the church?”
I don't think so. It's kind of strange, but I don't think so. And what I was sharing with you earlier is that Jonathan Gallagher, who was with you last month, was fired under many of the very same false accusations. Someone, it was well orchestrated, someone said that he was watching pornography on the internet. He was able, with some legal help, to totally tear the story apart. And as you know, Jonathan Gallagher is a very committed minister of the church, but he was fired. Now actually, in his case, they coerced him into resigning.
But I think I've already shared with you, and you'll agree with me, that when you resign, it is indicative that you've done something wrong. And so in answer to this question, I think the very same thing could happen to me again. It could happen to any other worker that falls out of graces with the administration of the church.
And just like with the loss of this LifePoint money, if the General Conference is going to consider six or seven million dollars as not significant, then we still don't have any control. No one has stepped forward yet saying, I'm responsible for the way that money was handled. And so I really honestly don't think anything has changed. And that's sad.
“What do you foresee might happen if foreign fields read The Terrible Trio? Might they try to take over the world church?”
What I would hope, and I don't have an exact answer to this, of course, because the General Conference doesn't want them to know about these books, but what I would hope is that the world leaders of the church in other parts of the world would take this information back with them and demand that in their part of the world, they're going to have good accountability and transparency. I wish that would be the result. I don't know, but what I would like to do is find out.
I would love to see the books get into the hands of these people. And I do have some interesting contacts that I have developed in India and in Southern Asia. They would love to get their hands on these books and share them there. So I think one of the things that all of us can do is help to disseminate this information.
“Regarding the health administrative salaries, so what? This is not tithe money, and the institutions are extremely complex, your response.”
Well, how do I answer that one? One of the things that got me into trouble, I think, Jen, you may remember this, was back in 1989. I wrote a bad boy letter to Neil Wilson, who was then the president of the church. This story is in my little book. And I was rather upset because there was a pressure put on Neil Wilson and the General Conference to lift the salaries of our health care institutions.
There was a time back in Elder Pearsons' day when basically they began to experiment and to pay higher than normal salaries to people who worked in hospitals. And then this sort of came to a head in 1989, spring meeting, and using a lot of political arm twisting, they voted to take the lid off and to pay these higher salaries.
I remember after this coming to Loma Linda, where all good things happen, and finding that a person who worked for the university, Loma Linda University in the educational area, or a person who worked in Loma Linda's foundation, were getting maybe a third the wage of a person doing exactly the same kind of work in the medical center. The medical center personnel were getting much more money.
So an accountant who was working in the medical center was getting three times as much as a person working in the same institution in the foundation or in the university. Now I don't know how that affects you folk. To me that seems unfair. I don't understand that. So I'm all in favor of saying, now that we're in this, let's give our hospital administrators more money, let's help to compensate them.
But do you think it's right that we should pay someone in our system, regardless of how much money the hospital is making, more money than the combined salaries to the top administrators of Mayo Clinic and the Johns Hopkins? Does that make sense to you? I mean, just as a matter of principle, I don't think it makes any sense. Now it's true, it's true that that isn't tithe money, I agree with that. But there was a time, believe it or not, I'm old enough to remember, when in the Adventist church we had what was called a living wage concept, and everybody was paid almost the same. Unfortunately, in those days, we paid women less than we paid men, and that was unfair. We finally got that one sorted out. But other than that, I was brought in working for the church, realizing that I was making some sacrifice to work for the church. And if you make two or three million a year, I'm not sure there's much sacrifice involved.
“During the last week, there were some reports about an article in the latest Adventist review about firing or letting certain administrators go, apparently because of some recent reports of financial losses. Are you aware of this? Did anybody hear about that?”
Some of you heard that. I need, I think I know where that question came from, so I need that good friend of mine to share with me a copy of that, if you can get it, okay? I'd love to get that. Do you, is your book, in your book, I'm sorry.
“In your book, you mentioned Laverne Tucker. What happened?”
He baptized me when I was 14 years old, so of course, it raised my interest. Thanks for your insight. Okay, briefly, here's what happened. Ken Mittleider, who was my chief prosecutor, told me that he was an expert at firing wayward ministers, and he said the reason that Laverne Tucker was fired was because he had him fired, because he had found that he was guilty of sexual misconduct.
I don't know anything about that story. I do know that Laverne Tucker, who was a dear friend of mine also, left his work at the Quiet Hour very ignominiously long before he died, and I don't know the details, but I know that Ken Mittleider boasts of having him fired, just as he would boast of having me fired, so that's all I know.
Okay, those are the questions. Anything, anything from the floor? I see it's almost 5 o'clock, but I'm happy to take open questions, if anyone has any. It looks like, Jim, I've answered every question here today. Let's find out for sure. All right. There was a question over here. I'm going to get this mic out of the way, and I'll see if I can help direct traffic here. Whoops. There we go. Okay.
“I missed most of the Q&A. I was in the kitchen, but I'm curious about the actuarial valuation of the pension system. I think Ryan Golden addressed himself to that, but is, are there any actuaries, or has the General Conference in any way exposed their pension systems and their funds of that system to actuaries that can tell about its worthiness or unworthiness?”
This is a good question, and I think you may be taking your cues from the Social Security system. There happen to be, and I'm basing my answer a little bit on my own personal history at the General Conference. There's possibly some changes since I was there, but in this area, I think I can speak to that. There are two separate retirement plans, one for the health care system and one for the church at large, church employees. So if you've worked in the health system during a tenure of your life, you will get your retirement from the health care system. That retirement plan has regular actuary studies and actuary reports.
In fact, I think they have to do an actuarial report on that one every year. So that one, I think, is pretty sound. The one for the church, we'll call that one our faith plan. And that one, at least up to the time I left, and I don't think since, has ever had an actuarial study.
I remember we raised that question, the General Conference attorneys and the auditors, trying to get the General Conference to spend the money to have an actuarial study, and the answer we got was, we don't need an actuarial study, we have a church policy that covers that.
So I think if you are receiving your retirement, as I'm getting some these days, from the church plan, it probably isn't all that sound. And if we had an actuarial study back then, I think we would have found that we were grossly underfunded. And there seems to be no control over that. I think here, again, is an area that we ought to be demanding some accountability and some responses to. Okay? Any other comments, questions? If not, we want to thank David Dennis for alluring us to a challenge. Let's thank him. Okay? Thank you.
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