Role: HR Associate
By the time of our arrival as full-time volunteers in 2006, we had already served as GFA field volunteers, and we were considered a major donor. We were blessed to be in a position to use our retirement and our funds in support of GFA. We were deeply convinced that GFA was doing the Lord’s work on the mission field in a Christ-like manner.
Coming to GFA with a legal administration background, managing law firm HR departments for 10 years, I was naturally placed in the HR Department. Each day I was amazed by both the servant hearts of the sacrificial staff whom I was serving, and GFA’s godly and Christian management approach of love and grace. Sadly, I was soon to begin learning that grace did not abound to all equally, that love extended only to those favored within GFA, and most shocking and discouraging of all was that the religious order was used to stretch the legal envelope: the protection from harmful and dangerous management decisions that the staff otherwise would have had was actually non-existent. During the course of over 6½ years I have experienced a number of questionable and defenseless decisions relative to the care of the staff, and this is a short and limited testimony:
• When a former GFA staff member requested to stay overnight in our home, a senior leader at GFA approached my husband with what we were to learn was the standard admonishment for associating with former staff and the risk of “our well being poisoned.” My husband is nothing but a servant of the Lord and biblical literalist and explained to the leader—whom he loves and admired—that while he would not overtly offer the hospitality, if asked, he would not refuse the requests of this brother or any brother in the Lord’s service.
• In my second year, I was asked to create an all ladies email group for the Ladies Ministry to use. After adding a particular staff member’s spouse to the group, I learned through a visit from a senior GFA leader that she had been banned from prayer meetings and ladies meetings and staff events, and therefore had no need of emails. And though this shunning discipline had occurred years earlier, and although I asked if the ministry would consider terminating it (and was told they would consider it), it continues today.
• In the fall of 2010, GFA took a severe and most un-Christlike step in the sudden termination of two families, without notice, due to the condition of their support accounts. Yet their accounts were in the same negative position as a number of staff. But it was the unloving, uncaring and spiritually abusive processes used in these terminations–both from a professional and spiritual perspective–that was nothing short of disgraceful. In the secular world the egregiousness of their actions, and the resulting impact on one family in particular, would have subjected the ministry to legal recourse. My husband directly approached a senior GFA leader, admonishing him that this type of action (and another issue he brought up at the time) were un-Christlike and that as committed followers of Jesus, repentance and a restoration was required to right the great offense that had been committed against the families who had been wrongfully and unjustly terminated. My husband was made to feel like he had no right to question the decisions of GFA leaders and he was quoted a scripture that twisted the meeting to turn it into an attack on my husband’s character.
• The very recent shunning, banning, and then termination of Troy and Pam—without cause or justification—has elevated the ministry’s lack of biblical accountability, recklessness, and brashness to a frightening level.
I am fearful that, notwithstanding their umbrella of religious order protection, GFA’s lack of biblically-led counsel when making their decisions, along with Bro. KP’s clear abuse of spiritual authority, are not in keeping with either the scriptural or moral or professional role of leadership. These practices are taking GFA down a very dangerous road, and will ultimately and greatly damage this ministry with deleterious effects on the field, not to mention the cost of human casualty of the many families and individuals that have been wounded by the ministry.