Wheelbarrows of money

The following quote is excerpted from pages 175-76 of Too Great A Temptation, the 1994 autobiographical account of Dr. Joel C. Gregory’s life before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of his resignation from First Baptist Dallas on Sept. 30, 1992.

“The Criswell College is a separate entity from First Baptist [Dallas] with its own charter, incorporation, trustees, and budget. For all practical purposes, however, it is an arm of First Baptist. Upon arrival I found that the college officials were simply showing up at the church financial office and asking for money to make the payroll. The college did not have the money to pay its own bills. Not only did I inherit a church that owed nine million dollars and that fell a million short the previous year, I now found that I had a college that could not pay its own professors. Sherryn Cates had simply been badgered into giving them money in order to run the school. That money was off the books; there was no line item for it in the budget. The college could just as well have been hauling it out of the church business office in wheelbarrows.

“This led to some very delicate negotiations with Paige Patterson. I had to put an immediate cap on the amount of money the church could give the college from the 1991 operating budget. We were already $750,000 in trouble the day I started work. The church could not run a slush fund for the college. Although there was some tension in the conversation, Paige and I agreed on a cap and a declining schedule of draws for the Criswell College. But that was only the beginning of troubles about Patterson and the college.”