ethical custard

Three questions for Pioneer about Gerald Coates

2025-02-06T06:45:00.000+00:00

The review into the behaviour of Gerald Coates is disturbing reading. And, it raises a number of questions for Pioneer, the organisation he founded.

1. Did the Pioneer Leaders give up stopping Coates after 2015?

2. Did they warn the Monkton Combe School about Coates?

3. Did the Pioneer Leaders warn Wildfires Festival about Coates?

The people in charge

Gerald Coates was the founder of Pioneer and led the organisation for over 20 years. As such, it's likely that safeguarding concerns about him required intervention from the leaders of the charity. Who were they?

Billy Kennedy led Pioneer from 2009. He also led New Community Church in Southampton at the same time. It was, and still is, a large church. New Community had a turnover of £1,100,000 - £1,500,000 in the 2010s. Interestingly, it was never a Pioneer church before Kennedy became leader of the movement.

He became involved in Pioneer in a consultancy capacity in the mid-2000s. Kennedy and his wife Caroline began transitioning to become leaders of the charity in 2008. The offices of Pioneer were moved to their church in Southampton that year, and in 2009 Coates resigned.

At some point this shared leadership arrangement changed. But it's unclear when that happened. Archives of the Pioneer website describe Caroline Kennedy as a joint leader until 2017:

"Billy & Caroline Kennedy, Senior Leaders of New Community, Southampton, lead the network of more than 80 partnership churches of various sizes and with varying structures, that can be found across the UK – with many more associate churches in mainland Europe, Africa, India, Asia, Australia and the USA."

However, Caroline Kennedy is never mentioned in the filings of the charity after 2014. When Billy Kennedy is mentioned in 2015 and 2016 filings, it's implied he's the sole leader of Pioneer. Here's an example:

"Billy Kennedy, leader of Pioneer, has launched a second Apostolic Learning Community in Northern Ireland"

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2015, page 4)

I'm going to assume that the filings are more reliable than the Pioneer website, as they are reported to the regulator, The Charity Commission.

In September 2019, Ness Wilson became the new 'National Director' of Pioneer. But Kennedy didn't hand over leadership of the charity. Rather, at that point he moved sideways to become International Director. Both Kennedy and Wilson are listed in the annual reports as Executive Directors. This is illustrated in a section of the 2020-2021 filings for Pioneer:

(Source: page 17)

Pioneer International has a separate website, and a separate director (Kennedy), but both areas of work are part of the same charity: Pioneer Trust. As joint Executive Directors they are both responsible for the operation of Pioneer, with the trustees holding them accountable.

Ness Wilson was, and still is, leader of Open Heaven Church in Loughborough. Open Heaven was a smaller church than Kennedy's church in the 2010s, with a turnover between £250,000 and £450,000.

1. Did the Pioneer leaders give up stopping Coates after 2015?

Let's turn our attention to the Independent Review that Pioneer commissioned Christian Safeguarding Services (CSS) to do. Note that 'independent' doesn't necessarily mean balanced.

The authors of the review give an account of Billy Kennedy, and other Pioneer staff, grappling with the behaviour of Gerald Coates in the 2010s. They began to take formal steps in 2014:

"By 2014, there was a growing concern amongst PT leaders that some of GC’s ministry practices fell short of the standards that they expected. The leaders began to address these concerns with him. Throughout the process of addressing these concerns, which extended over a number of years, PT leaders sought, and followed, advice from Thirtyone:eight (formerly CCPAS) who are their external independent safeguarding advisors."

(Source: CSS Pioneer Trust Review, page 9)

Something seems to have happened at the 2014 Pioneer Leaders' Conference, because in 2015 we read that:

"The security team’s understanding was that there were concerns about some of GC’s ministry practices. The team were aware of concerns from the 2014 conference. "

(Source: CSS Pioneer Trust Review, page 26)

In 2015 it sounds like Gerald Coates may have been ejected from the conference! If so, that would have been memorable for everyone there.

It seems from the report that there was some confusion about the situation, and a lack of following a formal process. Coates earned an apology afterwards, albeit with a restatement of acceptable behaviours from the Pioneer leader at that time: Billy Kennedy.

There are no mentions in the report of complaints in 2016 or 2017. Then, in 2018:

"Following the Pioneer Leaders Conference, a concern was raised with PT that GC had approached a young man, shared a prophetic word with him, followed this up with Facebook messages and a subsequent phone call. This call quickly and predominantly turned to unsolicited questions about pornography and masturbation. This was reported to PT and was dealt with as a complaint. "

(Source: CSS Pioneer Trust Review, page 27)

There are no details about what action was taken as part of that complaint. Was there any?

In 2019 he was at the conference again, and Coates says in a Facebook post that he was asked to pray and prophesy for the incoming National Leader, Ness Wilson:

A photo on the Pioneer Twitter account captures the moment (I believe he's on the right with his back to us):

The report doesn't mention any complaints from that year. Were there any?

In 2020 Coates says he attended the conference:

(He calls it 'Pioneer International Leaders' Conference'. From the dates, I believe he's talking about the usual Pioneer Leaders' Conference.)

And again, a complaint was made about him:

"Pioneer Leaders Conference: GC shares a word with a young man (20yrs), hugged him and tried to maintain contact. The young man felt GC was gaining some form of sexual benefit from the contact. A Safeguarding report raised the concern about GCs conduct at the conference in March 2020. The complainant shared their concerns with the Safeguarding Lead, both in relation to their own experience and more generally regarding GC’s relationships with young men and his use of the holy kiss. There is also a record of GC approaching another young man at the same conference."

(Source: CSS Pioneer Trust Review, page 29)

What did the Pioneer Leaders do about this complaint? It was from the National Conference, but given it involved the founder of the charity, surely it was the responsibility of both Executive Directors to handle.

Did they do anything? Nothing is recorded in the report to suggest they acted. In fact, after 2015 no interventions are recorded. Did the leaders give up stopping Coates?

2. Did they warn the Monkton Combe School about Coates?

Throughout this period Coates talked about having a relationship with Monkton Combe School, a private school near Bath with a 'Christian ethos'. Coates described himself as a 'patron/ambassador' of the school in Library of Lives (the Pioneer magazine he edited):

"Some people have asked, ‘When you hand over to Billy and Caroline, what are you going to do?’ Well, I continue with my ministry in speaking, writing and mentoring. I am pulling a team together to lead a local church in Leatherhead, Surrey. And I will be at major things like Pioneer’s National Churches Forum, the annual conference, the Round Table, OFCOM/CRAC, patron/ambassador of Monkton Combe School and so on."

(Source: Issue 14, page 9)

He also made Facebook posts about a number of visits. In 2016:

In 2017:

In 2018, on two separate occasions:

In 2019 he posted a photo of him speaking somewhere:

In the comments he states the photo is from Monkton Combe School:

There may have been more visits that he didn't post about.

Coates even mentions Monkton Combe in the Acknowledgements section of his second biography, Pioneer:

"I should also record those who opened significant doors and provided platforms for me, some recorded in this book and others not already mentioned. Clive Calver and Peter Meadows, Spring Harvest; Roger and Faith Forster, Ichthus/Revive/MFJ; Barney Coombs, Basingstoke Baptist Church/Salt and Light; Dave Tomlinson, Festival; Stuart Bell, Grapevine/One/Ground Level Network; Mike Pusey, Farnborough Baptist Church; Don Double, Good News Crusade; Danny Smith, Jubilee Campaign; Alan Kirbey, Monkton Combe School; Andrew Owen, Destiny; Stuart Brunton, The Gate; Sandy Millar, HTB/Focus; John Coles, New Wine."

(Source: page 240)

Given the behaviour reported about Coates at the time, these visits should have raised concerns for Kennedy, then leader of Pioneer. How would he behave towards male teenagers at the school?

Kennedy had previously been chair of governors of an Oasis academy from 2008-2013. In 2016 he got involved in setting up Hope Community School, a free school with values 'underpinned by a Christian ethos' in Southampton. The school met in his church building for a number of years.

I imagine both of these roles would have involved exposure to the practicalities of safeguarding in the school context. He was more likely than most to know the appropriate routes to handle the risks posed by Gerald Coates.

Did Kennedy warn the Monkton Combe School about Coates? Perhaps he did.

It's possible he didn't see these Facebook posts, and missed the mention in Library of Lives, and that no one brought them to his attention.

3. Did the Pioneer Leaders warn Wildfires Festival about Coates?

The CSS report gives multiple accounts of Coates approaching young men at the Pioneer Leaders' Conference. With that in mind, Facebook posts like this one from 2018 raise concerns:

Why? Well, Wildfires was a new all-age Christian festival that began in 2018. At the time it described itself like this:

"Wildfires is a three day festival at the Wiston Estate, West Sussex, UK. It was launched in 2018 as a joint adventure between 24-7 Prayer, Worship Central, Pioneer, Fusion, Big Church Day Out and Tearfund.
Over the course of 3 days, thousands gather from different church expressions and communities to unite in prayer and worship, to deepen friendships and community, to learn, to party and to encounter God."

I can't find numbers for the scale of the 2018 Wildfires. Subsequent events attracted about 3,000 attendees. It's likely there would have been more young men at this event than the Pioneer Leaders' Conference.

Did Coates approach young men, and invade their personal boundaries, at Wildfires?

In a video update six months before the festival, Kennedy described Pioneer's role in Wildfires:

"Now we are going to be partnering together with 24/7 Prayer, Fusion, Worship Central, Gas Street Church and many others to put on an event on the Wiston estate in West Sussex from the 28th to the 30th of May. It's called Wildfires. An opportunity for us to be together, partying together, praying together, worshiping together and building community together. Details are on our website, Facebook pages and Twitter, but we are so excited by what the Wildfires could do as we come together as friends to see what the Holy Spirit will do among us. So check out the website and look forward to seeing you there."

It seems like there was a village concept to the physical layout of Wildfires. A tweet from Pioneer at the time said:

"Join us at Wildfires! We have our own Pioneer Village where we camp as a network together. Join us as we seek God and fan into flame the next Great Awakening with friends from different streams, churches and communities."

By the 2018 Wildfires, there had been at least 4 years of concerns about Coates' behaviour. Did Kennedy warn his fellow partners about the safeguarding issues connected with Coates?

As it happened Kennedy would have probably known the lead event organiser. That person was Mike Andrea, CEO of 24-7 Prayer and leader of Global Generation Church in Kent. Wildfires posted a tweet with him talking about the festival:

Side note: Mike Andrea has since been since resigned from both roles after allegations about his behaviour.

An archive of the Pioneer website from 2012 shows Global Generation Church as a pin on their map. As a Pioneer church at that stage, it's likely that Kennedy would have met Andrea at one of the Pioneer Leader's Conferences.

Alternatively, did Billy Kennedy report the risks posed by Coates to the person responsible for safeguarding at Wildfires 2018?

I should say, it's possible the Coates booked without Kennedy's knowledge. The post above makes it sound like he may have attended for a day rather than the whole event.

Did Coates also attend Wildfires in 2019 or 2021? Similar questions would apply if so.

If he attended in 2021, these questions could be asked of Wilson as well, as she became National Director of Pioneer in September 2019.

In conclusion

Let's hope that the Pioneer Leaders acted appropriately in all of these circumstances and protected the children and young men involved. It is possible they did.

However, it's valid to ask these questions; the CSS review may have missed these elements. Or, the authors of the review may have considered them out of scope, as they did with Pioneer Engage Church, because several of them relate to connections with other charities.

Did the Pioneer Leaders do enough to protect young people?

More Gerald Coates blogs

The Gerald Coates report is only half the story

The troubling behaviour of Gerald Coates… did it also happen at Waverley Abbey?

The Watford priest who couldn’t stay away from Australia

2024-10-07T06:18:00.002+01:00

The independent investigation into Soul Survivor was released last week. It's a difficult read.

One aspect that the authors discuss is the strange relationships Mike Pilavachi formed with young men:

"A consistent theme of complaints about Mr Pilavachi from the 1980s to the present day was the befriending of young men at Christian events (whether through the Festivals or at other speaking events, both in the UK but also internationally, or through the work at the Soul Survivor Church), developing very intimate and close relationships..."

(Source: page 28)

But later on:

"Mr Pilavachi’s behaviour towards the young person would change, usually very quickly. The invitations and one-on-one time would dry up. Many people told us that Mr Pilavachi would not speak to them at all for long periods or even acknowledge them in meetings. Some told us about ministry trips which they went on with Mr Pilavachi in which Mr Pilavachi would not say anything to them save to answer “yes” or “no” to essential questions."

(Source: page 29)

In the report Pilavachi is given the opportunity to respond. And he offers explanations that I find unconvincing. One of these is:

"He also explained that, as a result of his ministry commitments, he was sometimes too busy to maintain intense relationships with people for long periods of time and would have to move on."

(Source: page 28)

What could he do, eh? He was joint-leader of an events charity with a £3m turnover, and also leading a church of 500 in Watford.

Well, quite a lot actually. Because his 'ministry commitments' weren't typical for an ordained priest.

Let's begin with travel. Looking at 2014 as an example, I've found evidence of trips to these countries:

Australia
South Africa (a large group trip with many volunteers)
Australia (again)
Australia (again, again)
USA
USA (again)
Singapore
Malaysia

Some of these trips were 3 weeks long, which makes for quite a lot of Sunday-morning-absences.

I can evidence each of these destinations from several sources. I'm not going to share the evidence here, because it would also identify the interns that year, some of whom may be survivors.

The breakdown above is from just one year. This pattern occurred every year, with Canada, New Zealand and South Africa joining the list above. I'm surprised he didn't find a way to visit Florida.

Pilavachi was quite clever about this. He was public about this travel and sometimes made jokes about it. I imagine this reassured people - "if Pilavachi is open about this, then it must all be fine" "The trustees would object otherwise". What an astute way to play it. Meanwhile, was he exerting control behind the scenes to stifle any complaints?

Leaving aside the obvious cost questions, especially with interns joining him, what about all of the time spent on this? That was time he didn't spend leading Soul Survivor Watford or Soul Survivor Ministries. That was time he was too busy for the young men he'd cultivated friendships with.

In the UK he also spoke far and wide. I can't quite believe how much he was platformed by HTB, the Anglican church network behind the Alpha Course. In 2014 alone, he spoke at their conference, their leadership conference and both their carol services. Was this important ministry work?

There are more questions we could ask about Pilavachi's ventures:

If he was too busy for people, why did he keep writing books?

If he was too busy for people, why did he sign up for trusteeships at the Evangelical Alliance, Hope 08 and XLP, with all the responsibility that entailed?

If he was too busy for people, why did he take on a TV show?

If he was too busy for people, why did he start down the path of forming a church network?

It seems like Mike Pilavachi could find time for the things that suited him.

More Soul Survivor Blogs

Soul Survivor donated £53,000 to a charity led by one of their trustees

Following the money part 3: concerns about the collection, a mystery money move and who took home more than £90,000?

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

Gerald Coates and 'fire' in Westminster

2024-09-06T23:35:00.000+01:00

Imagine yourself at the Houses of Parliament, where MPs vote on issues concerning the UK. With the building behind you, ziz-zag south-east through the Borough of Westminster. You'll pass historic buildings, like Church House, and Government departments. You'll see a sprinkling of think-tanks and private members' clubs. Soon you'll come to Marsham Street, a road with particular significance in the life of Gerald Coates.

Halfway down Marsham Street, opposite the Home Office, is a church: Emmanuel Evangelical Church. Behind the wrought-iron security gates, and the imposing brick façade, I'm told one finds an impressive interior.

I've found two important connections between Coates and this church. The first occurred in 1997, the year that Princess Diana died.

Coates seems to have spent a lot of his ministry talking about 'revival'. It's a term used in Christian circles to describe an upsurge of fervour for God in a given location. Revival is marked by people becoming Christians in large numbers and by miraculous events such as healings. Spurred by the Toronto Blessing and Brownsville Revival, Coates' talk of revival reached a crescendo in the 1990s.

For many years Pioneer published a quarterly magazine called Compass. Gerald Coates was always listed as the senior figure and often penned articles. In the mid-90s he changed the subtitle of the magazine to "Pointing the way to revival". And it did: every subsequent issue had articles about revival.

It's in this context that Coates began his 'Sowing the Seeds of Revival' meetings in that church on Marsham Street.

1997 - Sowing the Seeds of Revival events

I should say, it's hard to find information from this era. Few churches had websites in 1997, and the media organisations that cover the UK church weren't online.

For a number of years Coates had contact with an American preacher called Dale Gentry. In Only One Life, Gentry's biography, he describes the genesis of the Sowing the Seeds of Revival meetings:

"In 1997, I received a phone call from Gerald Coates, the leader of Pioneer People in England, saying that he had just met with over a hundred leaders. He told me they wanted me to lead a revival in the heart of London, near Parliament. Jean and I accepted the invitation, and we started the revival in June."

(Source: page 155)

He continued:

"We ministered for a month at the Emmanuel Centre on Marsham Street, with Gerald Coates leading the services. Tony and Carol Gemmel were a blessing, hosting Jean and I during that time. Every night, I concluded the service by laying hands on everyone and giving prophetic words. We experienced the glory of God. One night prior to the service, I was praying in [sic] small room, when the word of the Lord came to me saying, “there is a revival on Marsham Street.” We soon had people coming from all over the U.K., Europe, and America."

We should note that these words were written 26 years after the events. They were recalled by the main speaker of the meetings. As such, they may contain inaccuracies and they're likely to have some positive bias.

The Compass issue from the winter of 1997 had an article by Andy Read about the meetings that sheds more light on the involvement of Emmanuel Evangelical Church:

"Coates had met Pastor Chua Wee-Hian, leader of Emmanuel Evangelical Church who actually owns the building - previously the 9th Church of Christ Scientist. 'But to use the centre seemed impossible,' Coates recalled.
'For one thing, the church had only recently bought it. And it wasn't due to be opened for over a month! However, as I discussed the idea - meeting five nights a week in the heart of the capital, to seek God, get right with him and pray for revival in our land - with my advisors and others - the vision began to grow.
Through the trust and faith of Pastor Chua Wee-Hian and his leaders, we were in a position to make the vision a reality. So that's what we did!'"

The nature of the meetings changed after a month:

"Dale Gentry left England for Texas at the beginning of July, publicly passing on the mantle of revival to Gerald Coates,"

According to Read, Emmanuel Church were invested in the meetings:

"It was Emmanuel Church's Pastor Chua Wee-Hian who, towards the end of July, told Pioneer People, 'You've started something now, you can't go, you must not go!' That's added a new aspect to the meetings. The Emmanuel Church is mainly ethnic Chinese and has contacts with other minority ethnic congregations. Many have attended from those communities, bringing a richness and diversity to the gatherings."

(Source for all excerpts: page 15)

According to the Compass article the meetings ran for 4 nights a week. That's a significant investment of time from Coates, who was also leading the Pioneer Network, the Pioneer People church, co-leading March for Jesus and a trustee of Challenge 2000 / Together in Mission at the same time.

Long-time associates of Coates led some of the worship: Dave Bilborough, Sue Rinaldi and Noel Richards. In fact, it was significant enough to inspire music: an album from Bilborough and a song from Rinaldi. Dave Bilborough talked about the events in an interview 12 years later:

"Gerald Coates has [sic] successfully convened Sowing The Seeds Of Revival meetings in London's Marsham Street. They ran for many nights during the week and over a period of many months. Along with my fellow members of the Pioneer team (Noel Richards, Sue Rinaldi, etc) I was regularly invited to lead worship. These were significant times, not only for the congregation but for me personally."

How big were these meetings? The first Compass article claims the meetings were attended by 40,000 in total. An article in the following issue, 3 months later, claims 55,000 by that point.

Is that an inflated figure? There isn't an independent source available for the numbers. There's also no indication that they tracked people who attended multiple times, so it's probably a figure that double-counts many people.

In a 1999 interview extract posted on his website, Bilborough says the meetings lasted for 18 months.

Sadly, some editions of Compass are missing from the Coates Archive:

Autumn 1998
Winter 1998/1999
Spring 1999

Those may have contained articles about the meetings that provided more information.

The last mention we have in Compass is from an article in the Spring 1998 edition. Looking forward, it says:

"Sowing the Seeds of Revival continues in the last week of March with Marc Dupont, Guy Chevreau, Gerald Coates and Martin Scott."

(Source: page 22)

It sounds like in 1998 Coates reduced his involvement, doesn't it? He was no longer speaking at every meeting. It's likely he was still present.

In recent months we've heard disturbing accounts of Gerald Coates' behaviour. And these accounts date back to the 1990s. According to the timeline provided by the investigation:

"Late 1990s - at Cobham Christian Fellowship (CCF) GC became increasingly focused on preaching about homosexuality, pornography, and sex addiction. GC was seen using the ‘holy kiss’ with young men."

(Source: Pioneer Trust Review, page 62)

Was Coates also behaving like this at the Sowing the Seeds of Revival meetings? It was a long-run of events with him as the most powerful figure. He would have had ample opportunity.

Were complaints made about him, and not dealt with properly?

2008 - Fire on Marsham Street events

11 years later, following his stint at Waverley Abbey, the closure of Pioneer People, and the opening of Church in the Theatre, Coates embarked on another series of meetings. He seems to have been inspired by news of the Lakeland Revival in Florida.

In a blog post announcing the venture, he said:

"Then through a further series of “accidents”, the pastor of Emmanuel Evangelical Church in Marsham Street and I met up, and after prayer and discussion sensed that on Thursday July 24th at 7.30pm we should open the doors of the Emmanuel Centre and invite the public in for worship, getting right with God, impartation, fresh anointings and “re-dig the wells” and that’s what we plan to do, by God’s grace, every Thursday until people stop coming or the Holy Spirit moves on."

This time around the meetings were weekly. Do you notice how this sounds like a joint venture?

That approach is evident elsewhere. On the Wayback Machine's archive of the Emmanuel Church website from 2008 we can see a plug for the event:

In a similar archive the church listed the meetings on their own events page:

In this period Pioneer had a new magazine: Library of Lives. As before, Coates held the senior role in the editorial team. And, as before, his archive is missing a number of issues.

An article titled 'Revisiting Revival' in Issue 12 of Library of Lives provided information about the meetings:

"In partnership with Emmanuel Centre pastor Wee Hian Chua, he is staging weekly meetings for ‘worship, prayer, healing and getting right with God’."

(Source: page 4)

Notice the phrase 'in partnership'.

Coates and Chua set up a website for the event: www.fireonmarshamstreet.com . It's no longer online, but can be viewed via the Wayback Machine. In the December 2008 archive we learn about another partner: Premier Radio.

That's interesting. Premier Christianity didn't mention the involvement of their sister company with Coates in their coverage of the investigation. Perhaps the current staff were unaware of the involvement?

The following year, an article from Church Times about the leader of the Lakeland Revival gave an overview of the events at Emmanuel Evangelical Church:

"Gerald Coates, of Pioneer, said: “Something went terribly wrong at Lakeland.” His own revival meetings at the Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, London, flourished for 18 weeks, and ended on 27 November 2008. For the first nine weeks, they were attracting between 700 and 900 people a night, and, initially, what happened at Lakeland did not appear to affect attendance. But a later fall in numbers, which may simply indicate that the Fire had run its course, could be attributable to the repercussions, he acknowledges."

The Fire on Marsham Street events happened in 2008. Let's turn back to the investigation into Coates. According to the timeline in the independent investigation there are some reports from this period:

"Aug 2003 – a young man is picked out by GC at a non-Pioneer Christian festival or conference. Ongoing contact is maintained culminating in the man moving in next door to GC."

and

"2005 – GC reaches out to a teenage boy via Facebook (FB)"

(Source for both: Pioneer Trust Review, page 64)

Was Coates behaving in the same way towards attendees of the Fire on Marsham Street meetings? 18 weeks of meetings would have provided ample opportunities for him to do so.

Looking at the comments below the blog posts about the meetings, Coates seemed strangely concerned with the ages of the commenters:

Will Emmanuel Evangelical Church investigate their involvement with Coates? Did they receive complaints about his behaviour at the time? Did staff observe any of the behaviours referenced in the Pioneer report?

One would feel more reassured if the Church had signposted the investigation into Coates. Or if they had issued a statement about the findings. Neither of those things has happened.

More Gerald Coates Blogs

The Gerald Coates report is only half the story

The troubling behaviour of Gerald Coates… did it also happen at Waverley Abbey?

2024-07-17T06:56:00.001+01:00

Did you know about Gerald Coates' relationship with Waverley Abbey? There's no mention of it in the recent safeguarding report.

Back in the 1990s, Waverley Abbey was the headquarters for a Christian charity called CWR (the Crusade for World Revival). They were well known in Christian circles for the publishing output of their leader, Selywn Hughes.

(Image: Tim Sheerman-Chase*)

During that era, CWR used Waverley Abbey as a conference centre, an office space for their publishing wing and as the base for their further education courses.

In 2023 CWR was renamed Waverley Abbey Trust. If we look at their accounts at Companies House, we see that in the 1990s the organisation was struggling. Each year they made significant losses:

1996 - loss of £199,880

1997 - loss of £105,586

1998 - loss of £175,888

At that time of financial troubles, the charity turned to a well-known figure in UK Christian circles: Gerald Coates. Their annual report for 1998 gave details:

"in July 1998, the board invited Gerald Coates to establish a non-denominational ministry organisation at Waverley to focus on revival and reaching both Christian and political leaders with this message. It is anticipated that this alliance will both increase the ministry output of Waverley Abbey House and also improve our financial position in 1999 and beyond, by virtue of another organisation taking on the responsibility of running the house and sharing the overhead costs."

(Source: Full accounts made up to 31 December 1998, Waverley Abbey Trust filings at Companies House, page 3)

The following year they formalised the relationship:

"KLM Limited, a company owned by Pioneer People Trust entered a lease agreement with CWR with effect from 1 January 1999. This agreement appointed KLM Limited as operators of Waverley Abbey House and is designed to increase the ministry output of the facility and to also share the overhead costs of the property. After a slow start, KLM are developing a growing number of teaching and training events based in the House and encouraging a prayer and revival ministry to emerge."

(Source: Full accounts made up to 31 December 1999, Waverley Abbey Trust filings at Companies House, page 4)

The agreement was accompanied by funds; later in the 1999 annual report we find that KLM Limited paid CWR £67,257 that year. There are further payments in the following years.

Actually, we should talk about KLM Limited. Despite being described as a company, I can find no record of them at Companies House. I have spent a long time searching.

The biography of Anona Coates, Gerald's wife, mentions them:

"Eventually it was decided that we would form a new board called KLM (Kingdom Life Ministries) to run the house. A new manager was appointed and I was asked to oversee presentation, marketing and run the front of house office"

(Source: I Wish I was by Anona Coates, page 120)

In Gerald Coates' biography, Pioneer, we find another reference:

"They take over part of the upper floor as their accommodation, and Anona gets to work as Front of House Manager. Gerald’s influence is seen with regard to direction and networking. With the help of his business friend Paul Williams, a new trust is set up for the house, with the publishing arm being run by others at CWR."

(Source: Pioneer by Ralph Turner, page 194)

The CWR annual report mentions Coates 'developing a growing number of teaching and training events' at Waverley Abbey House. Pioneer's Compass magazine gives details of one event:

"CHILEAN revivalist Miguel Escobar is guest preacher at the new weekend event 'Revival Camp - Awake UK!' to be held in the grounds of Waverley Abbey House, Farnham, this summer.
Gerald Coates is leading the event, and Sue Rinaldi will also be taking part in the programme, which will centre on a 1,000-seater marquee.
'It will be a mixture of worship, revival teaching and preaching, personal ministry and the prophetic,' said Gerald Coates, 'plus a few surprises!'
The entire weekend is free. People can attend for an evening, the whole day or visit the site on all three days. Camping and caravanning in the grounds is also free, and for those who dislike camping, a limited amount of accommodation is available at Waverley Abbey House."

(Source: Summer 1999 Issue, Compass magazine, page 5)

That issue of Compass also mentions some events to come later in 1999:

"Other events are also planned for the Waverley marquee: ladies day with Wendy Virgo, Elaine Storkey, Caroline Bonnett and Sue Rinaldi on 30th June; leaders day on 1st July with Selwyn Hughes, David Powe and Gerald Coates; youth night on 10th July with Pete Greig."

But....

The thing is that CWR still used the house as a venue in this period:

"CWR continues to use the house for a variety of its own courses, including marriage, counselling and life issues. The joint venture with London Bible College has resulted in a good number of students enrolling on the Theology and Counselling degree course and other counselling related courses"

(Source: Full accounts made up to 31 December 1999, Waverley Abbey Trust filings at Companies House, page 4)

The Christian Safeguarding Services (CSS) report into Coates paints a picture of a leader who targeted and built relationships with young adult men. It sounds like he would then overstep personal boundaries in his interactions with them. Some examples:

"2009 – Pioneer Leaders Conference, GC highlights a young man and gives him a ‘holy kiss’ then follows up using FB Messenger."

"Feb 2010 - at a Pioneer Leaders Conference - GC highlights a young man, shared a ‘word’, and gave him a ‘holy kiss’. Future meetings with the young man always involved the ‘holy kiss’."

(Source: Pioneer Trust Safeguarding Learning Review, page 65)

Was Coates behaving the same way at Waverley Abbey in the early 2000s? I'm sure young men would have been present at the events held there, whether they were held by CWR or by Pioneer.

One caveat - Gerald and Anona Coates purchased a flat in London during this period.

"Because we had sold our own house and were renting at Waverley, Gerald and I felt we should buy some property ready for when we would need our own home again. He was spending a lot of time in London with church leaders and MPs, so it seemed sensible to look for a home there. We found the perfect flat in Regency Street, Westminster – very small with two bedrooms, just modernised and in a small gated block complete with communal garden and porter."

(Source: I Wish I was by Anona Coates, page 122)

It's unclear the portion of time Gerald spent in London versus Waverley Abbey. He moved the Pioneer and March For Jesus offices to Waverley, which may be an indicator.

Even a small amount of time at Waverley Abbey may be significant. Look at the accounts of his behaviour at the Pioneer Leaders' conference - an event that only occurred once a year.

At the end of 2001, CWR decided to end their arrangement with Coates:

"With less emphasis on ministry events overseas and our increasing use once again of Waverley Abbey House, it was decided to terminate the lease agreement with KLM Ltd. (a subsidiary of Pioneer People Trust) in December 2001 and for CWR to take back the day to day operation of the House."

(Source: Full accounts made up to 31 December 2001 at Companies House, Page 5)

So, for 3 years, Gerald and his wife were involved at Waverley and lived on site.

I think the current leaders of Waverley Abbey should commission an investigation into Gerald Coates' involvement there. Were complaints made during his tenure? Perhaps they weren't dealt with appropriately.

The CSS safeguarding report says:

"It is important to note that the scope of this review does not include: GC's activities outside of what it now know as the Pioneer Trust."

(Source: Pioneer Trust Safeguarding Learning Review, page 5)

This means it's possible that significant information hasn't been uncovered because it is connected with the home of a separate charity: Waverley Abbey Trust.

I notice that the organisation made no mention of the investigation on their social media channels or website. Have past attendees heard that there has been an investigation into Gerald Coates?

Over to you Waverley Abbey.

More Gerald Coates blogs

The Gerald Coates report is only half the story

*Image converted to black and white and used under a Creative Commons license

The Gerald Coates report is only half the story

2024-06-12T07:05:00.001+01:00

The investigation into Gerald Coates contains some alarming accounts. But, when you look more closely, some information is absent.

Coates wrote 11 books, founded the Pioneer network of churches, and was involved in Spring Harvest. He was given platforms across the Christian world in the 80s and 90s. He died in 2022.

In 2023 a complaint was made about his behaviour, sparking Pioneer Network to commission an 'independent' review. The report, by Christian Safeguarding Services, makes for quite a read.

Some of the most troubling accounts concern his interactions with children. The report gives these details:

"2005 – GC reaches out to a teenage boy via Facebook (FB)"

(Source: page 64)

"March 2015 – Pioneer Leaders Conference. GC [Gerald Coates] approaches and interacts with a lone 16-year-old non-Christian undertaking work experience at the event, prophesying over him and praying for him."

(Source: page 67)

"May 2015 – a local charity reported that they communicated with PT [Pioneer Trust], expressing concerns that GC had directly contacted a 12 to 13-year-old boy from a family known to them using Facebook. The young person was not known to him. GC had allegedly sent the boy a message along the lines of; ‘I believe you need a father figure in your life, and I feel God is calling me to get in touch with you.’"

(Source: page 68)

"January 2019 – GC reaches out via Facebook to a 17-year-old male and initiates an inappropriate phone call which includes an invitation to stay at his house. GC asked the male about his masturbation habits, sexual desires, and use of pornography. The male felt GC had purposefully misled him about the nature and purpose of the call. The male
shared with GC that he did watch porn. GC explained to him that a part of his ministry was helping young men/teenagers work through porn addictions and sexual desires. GC shared he had coached other young men with porn addiction before. GC invited him to come and stay at his family home (just the male, not his family) at any time and for as long as he wanted, and he would be welcomed as part of their family and GC would support him in the area of sexual healing. The respondent’s assessment was that the tone was less an invitation to stay at his house, and it was more an assumption that he would do so, and that Gerald would help him to sort this problem out’."

(Source: page 71)

According to the report, it is unclear how many of these accounts were known by Pioneer Network before the publication of the review.

In terms of the veracity of there complaints, the report says:

"CSS were unable to raise these matters with GC, and so they are recorded from the contributions made without further investigation. As stated previously, it is important to remember that Gerald’s voice could not be heard. This is not to question the integrity of [sic] truthfulness of the accounts; however, it is only right to keep clear that GC has not been able to participate or respond. It is also important to recognise that common themes exist between contributors."

(Source: page 25)

The problem is, this investigation is only half the story. You see, in the 2010s Coates was more than just a founder and former leader of Pioneer.

Gerald Coates was a leader of a Pioneer Network church.

The church concerned is called Pioneer Engage Church in Leatherhead, Surrey.

The Wayback Machine lets us view old versions of the church website. Here Coates is, listed as co-leader (with his wife) in 2017:

The Wayback Machine also reveals he was listed with the same role in 2010 and in 2021.

I'm sure you can imagine the regular contact a church leader typically has with children.

So, why does this review make little mention of it? There are several mentions of launching a church, like this one:

"Pioneer People closed around 2003/4 and between 2005 to 2007 GC launched a new fellowship called, ‘Engage Church’."

(Source: page 17)

Sure, launching implies leadership, but nowhere in the 76-page full report do they use the term 'leader' in relation to Coates' involvement in Engage.

I also find this phrase striking:

"He continued to attend Pioneer Trust events and continued to minister within the local church context and beyond but did so in an independent capacity."

(Source: page 9)

'Local church context' doesn't quite do justice to a church that is called Pioneer Engage.

It doesn't do justice to their listing on the Pioneer Network website in the Pioneer South region.

You know what I find interesting? When the review mention the church he attends, they call it 'Engage'. Which is funny, because the church calls themselves 'Pioneer Engage Church', and the Pioneer Network website calls them 'Pioneer Engage Church Leatherhead'.

Is that an editorial decision to distance this church from the Pioneer Network?

We should note that Pioneer Network would have no control over the wording of a truly independent review. So this may be nothing to do with them.

I have a very important question: has anyone investigated Coates' behaviour when leading that church?

If Coates was behaving in a troubling manner at Pioneer Network's events, he may have demonstrated the same sort of behaviour in his church leadership role.

This is illustrated by a news story on Surrey Live from 2007. It's a strange story, which focuses on Coates leading his church to engage in prayer around a motorway junction. One could say a lot about the piece, but there's a stand-out line for me:

"Mr Coates and [name removed], a 17-year-old member of his church who lives with him, organised a vigil on the Kingston Road bridge over the carriageway on Saturday (September 18) to pray for the safety of those driving below."

(Name removed for privacy reasons, as this person was not an adult.)

A 17-year-old from church was living with him? That's a troubling sentence, given that the Pioneer Network Report details a number of times he is said to overstepped boundaries with children and young adults.

Sadly, the report says that Pioneer Network churches are independent charities. They seem to rule the church as out-of-scope of their investigation for this reason.

I notice that there is no mention of the review on the current website of the church. Their Facebook and Twitter accounts seem dormant, but they don't mention it.

There has been no local news coverage of the investigation into Coates. So there may be residents of Leatherhead with information to share about him who didn't have the opportunity.

How did Coates treat the children who came to his church events? Did he ever try to contact them privately via social media? Did he ask intrusive questions about their experiences of pornography as in the examples above?

Will Pioneer Engage Church commission an investigation into the behaviour of their leader, Gerald Coates?

Does the home of the UCCF Director break Charity Commission rules?

2024-03-04T06:53:00.000+00:00

I have some new discoveries about UCCF and The Areopagus Trust.

Let's start with the question of whether UCCF's director, Richard Cunningham, lived in the building of The Areopagus Trust. And then I have surprising news to share about the owner of that building.

Cunningham was a governor of Kingham Hill School. It's no ordinary school: it's a school founded by a Christian philanthropist, and the governing charity also oversees Oak Hill Theological College.

The school helpfully provides a biography of their governors. And it's from the 2013 version of that page that we learn about Cunningham's career:

"Rev Richard Cunningham - lives close by the school in [redacted] that Kingham Hill owned [redacted]. Studied at London University- trained and worked as a teacher, followed by a stint on the staff of St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate. Trained for ordination in Oxford and after clergy roles locally and in Oxford works as the Director of UCCF: The Christian Unions."

I've redacted some details because I don't want to give away what may be Cunningham's home address. I'll refer to it as the 'Churchill Building' from this point forward.

Do you notice the connection to St Helen's Bishopsgate? It won't be the last time you hear that name.

Actually, the bio above seems to be missing one role. In an interview for Pantheos Cunningham talks about an earlier stint at UCCF in the 90s:

"Following a stint on staff as Evangelism trainer in the 90s I remained hugely interested in the ministry of UCCF and continued leading student missions. But I never imagined I would ever go back to work for UCCF- so was as surprised as anyone when I was made Director in 2004."

So, his career has gone something like this:

Teacher
Staff at St Helen's Bishopsgate
UCCF
Ordination training
Curacy? (normally part of ordination training)
UCCF

The first role at UCCF may have come before St Helen's Bishopsgate in this timeline.

Elsewhere, in 1993, the The Areopagus Trust was founded. That is the date of the founding document referenced on the Charity Commission website.

Sadly the Charity Commission website only gives us the last 5 years of charity filings. So we have no available records about The Areopagus Trust from 1993-2018. We don't know who the trustees and staff were in the 90s, and details of the nature of the UCCF relationship. However, the founding document remains visible, with its focus on UCCF.

Let's focus on the Churchill Building. We don't know who owned it in these earlier years. It may have been used by the charity all along, or it may have been purchased/leased at some point.

In 1997, the year Tony Blair became Prime Minister, we find the first evidence that Cunningham lived in that building. The source? Planning permission. In 1997 planning permission was requested for the Churchill building:

If we look at the details we find the contact for the application is 'Mr Richard Cunningham':

Maybe that means Cunningham owned the Churchill Building in 1997. Or maybe he had a significant role at the charity and they owned the building.

Three years later Cunningham got involved in a different charity called Christian Heritage as a director (They later renamed to The Foundations Trust). In the paperwork he completed on 10th May 2000, he listed his address as the Churchill Building:

The 'Annual return for 2000' for Christian Heritage, filed on 6th March, confirms the same details.

Each year, until 2008, these forms for Christian Heritage list the Churchill Building as his address. No return was filed for 2008. Maybe the rules changed for charity reporting from that year.

In 2003, Cunningham became a trustee of the Proclamation Trust. They are a charity founded by Dick Lucas when he was Rector of St Helen's Bishopsgate. They seem to have had a close relationship with that church; they are linked from the 2008 St Helens website with a handful of other organisations.

The address he gave for his trustee details? The Churchill Building.

The current UCCF website tells us:

"Richard has been Director of UCCF: the Christian Unions since early 2004. Immediately prior to that he was Executive Director of the Areopagus Trust, developing initiatives in confronting secular thought in universities across Britain and Europe and, at the same time, was Director of Evangelism at St Andrew’s Church, Oxford."

So, in 2003 he led the Areopagus Trust. I wonder when he began that role. The way this is phrased indicates he left that job when he became UCCF director.

In 2007 Cunningham joined forces with three other Anglican priests Nigel Beynon (then curate of St Helen's Bishopsgate), Jason Clarke (UCCF) and Hugh Palmer (Rector of All Souls, Langham Place) to found the Christian Events charity. This is the charity that underpins the Word Alive conference. He filled in the paperwork for director, and listed his address as... the Churchill Building.

The names of these founders rather struck me. So I dug some more and discovered something interesting: 3 of these 4 are former staff members of St Helen's Bishopsgate. The exception is Jason Clarke.

The 2008 Christian Events annual return lists the address again. In the following years the annual returns don't mention trustee/director addresses.

I've seen Twitter posts from a member of Cunningham's family in 2007 and 2016. They refer to the Churchill Building like a home. I'm not going to link to those for privacy reasons.

In 2013, the biography from the start of this post was displayed on the Kingham School website, stating that Cunningham lives in a type of property that matches that of the Churchill Building.

Helpfully, in 2016, the Proclamation Trust filed an annual return. That paperwork lists the UCCF director's address as the Churchill Building.

In 2017 there was more building work planned - for sleeping accommodation this time:

And the contact name? You guessed it: Mr R Cunningham.

That planning application is the most recent evidence I have. Cunningham may still live at the Churchill Building, or he may have moved on since 2017.

In summary, there is evidence the UCCF Director lived in this building from 1997 to 2017.

The surprising owners of the Churchill Building

At this point I had a brainwave. Who actually owns this building now?

These days anyone can get that data from the Land Registry, for a small fee of £3. So I did.

And I found something surprising. In 2010 the Churchill Building changed ownership. It was bought by David Douglas Monteath and someone called Michael Stahel Farmer:

You may recall that Monteath is the Settlor of the Areopagus Trust - the person whose funds drive the charity. I'm not familiar with that particular charity set up. He provides the funds, but control may be at arm's-length, in the hands of the charity trustees. Or Monteath may have considerable influence.

Research reveals that in 2002 someone called David Monteath was on staff at St Helen's Bishopsgate.

This seems likely to be the same person, given the other connections we've seen, although we can't be certain. He was in charge of 'Tape Ministry'.

The Proclamation Trust also employed someone called David Monteath in a similar role in 2004. Their website that year says:

"On the audio front, we continue to develop in the area of digital media and website development. David Monteath has been working very hard on your behalf, and very soon there will be full online ordering facilities available via the web which will unleash many new opportunities."

That prompts an interesting question - when Cunningham was a trustee of the Proclamation Trust, from 2003-2018, was he living at accommodation funded by a staff member? If so, that would be a conflict of interest: how could Cunningham be effective in holding the leaders of the charity accountable when they managed someone who was his landlord or benefactor.

Michael Stahel Farmer is a new name for me. I should call him by his official title: Baron Farmer of Bishopsgate.

According to his website Farmer is a Christian who spent his career working in metals trading in the City of London. He is a former treasurer of the Conservative Party, and since 2014 has been a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords.

If we look at Companies House records, we find he has been a director of some interesting organisations. I think two of these are noteworthy:

Gospel Support and Homes Trust Limited sounds fairly anonymous. They say their purpose is to "encourage Biblically faithful gospel ministry across London". When you look at their filings you find that a significant chunk of this ministry is based out of St Helen's Bishopsgate. In fact, the charity was originally named Great St Helen’s Trust.

Kingham Hill School Trust is the charity that underpins the school and theological college I talked about at the start of the post. Farmer was a trustee there from 2002-2014. That will cross over the time when Cunningham was a governor. Perhaps they knew each other.

What does this mean?

We don't know the arrangement Cunningham had with regard to the Churchill Building. He may pay rent. He may be granted use for free. There would be no concerns about that, except that for some, or all, of this period The Areopagus Trust likely had a commercial relationship with UCCF.

That would create a conflict of interest. Imagine you're the person in charge of training at UCCF. Say you're offered a very good deal for residential training accommodation. You may want to take it, but are conflicted - what if that decision jeopardises Cunningham's accommodation arrangement with the current provider, The Areopagus Trust?

Are decisions like that made in the best interest of UCCF and their donors, or in the best interests of Richard Cunningham? There is no declaration of such a conflict of interests in the filings, or of any 'Related party transactions' with The Areopagus Trust. You can find details of what the Charity Commission required regarding these on page 89 of The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP).

Also, this arrangement may be an undeclared remuneration for the director. Is the accommodation a perk that every director gets? There is no mention of this in the UCCF filings at Companies House at any point in the last 20 years.

Charity Commission rules say charities must disclose:

"the number of employees whose total employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs) for the reporting period fell within each band of £10,000 (€10,000) from £60,000 (€70,000) upwards"

(Source: page 81 of the The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) )

If this was part of the renumeration package for the Director, then shouldn't it have been disclosed according to those rules? In the most recent report UCCF say:

(Source: page 22, Full accounts made up to 30 April 2023, UCCF Filings at Companies House)

The water is muddied here by the fact that the accommodation is coming from a charity separate from UCCF. However, The Areopagus Trust has a core mission to serve UCCF, and is likely to receive payments from UCCF.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of all of this is that it wasn't out in the open. It was very, very hard to uncover any of this information. Why would it be so opaque?

I wonder which trustees knew about The Areopagus Trust.

I wonder who on the UCCF Leadership Team knew about The Areopagus Trust.

More UCCF blogs

The puzzling connection between UCCF and The Areopagus Trust

What's strange about the UCCF Leadership Networks?

2024-02-08T07:21:00.006+00:00

I've been looking at UCCF's Leadership Networks. Guess what? There are strange things going on there.

According to UCCF, the purpose of the Leadership Networks is to:

"equip students who face unique challenges in their field of study, and who will be entering areas of strategic and cultural significance"

At the time of writing these fields of study are:

Arts
Law (which seems like a joint effort with the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship)
Music
Politics
Science
Teaching
Theology

The Networks produce resources, they run events, they provide mentoring, etc.

There are staff with responsibility for each network. According to UCCF's About the Team page, 10 staff members currently work full, or part-time, on one of these networks.

Someone, somewhere is donating money specifically for this work on a regular basis. I know this because from 2014 onward their annual filings list a 'Leadership Network Restricted Fund'. See the bottom line of this list:

(Source: Page 19, Full accounts made up to 30 April 2014, UCCF filings at Companies House)

A restricted fund is a ring-fenced pot of money. It exists because a donor (or many donors) has said "I want to give this money for x purpose". It's an administrative hassle, but it's common because donors are often inspired by a particular element of a charity's work.

It would be unethical to use this money for a different area of work, without the permission of the donor. The Fundraising Regulator has rules about this:

"A donation must be used for the purpose for which it was given. If you want to change that purpose you should get advice from legal advisers or the relevant national statutory regulator before changing the purpose, even if the person making the donation has given you permission to do this."

The ring-fenced money that always adds up

The thing with restricted funds is that there's normally some money left. Because it's rare you exactly match the amount you spend to the amount you're given.

Imagine you're given £20,000 to produce an information pack for university freshers. You'd get quotes for each element: writing, design, printing, delivery costs. When the work is done aspects may go under or over budget. So you'd end up spending £17,658 or £19,110, say. It's unlikely you'd spend exactly £20,000.

And sometimes there are delays in spending the money, for example a key staff member may get a new job and recruitment stalls a project. So this money may take more than a year to spend. That would be fine: the money is ring-fenced, it's not going anywhere.

What's strange about UCCF's Leadership Networks is that for 4 years in a row this ring-fenced money was entirely used up each year.

In the 2014-2015 financial year (the year after the screengrab above), the Leadership Network Restricted Fund started with £186,108 in it. In the course of the year another £52,253 was donated. That may have come from a single donor, or from many donors. £49,336 was spent from the fund. And then something interesting happens: £189,026 was transferred out into general UCCF funds. The explanation for this was:

"£189,026 of costs were transferred from General Funds to the Leadership Network for the salaries and associated costs of both field and office staff"

(Source: Page 19, Full accounts made up to 30 April 2015, UCCF filings at Companies House)

Notice it's costs that were transferred, rather than money. I find it hard to follow that wording.

At the end of that financial year £1 was left, ring-fenced for the Leadership Networks.

The following financial year followed a similar pattern. Donated funds came in, some was spent, some was transferred to UCCF General Funds. Nothing was left in the restricted fund at the close of the year.

That same thing happened again in the 2016-2017 financial year.

And, in the 2018-2019 financial year? You guessed it.

It seems odd to me. I find it too perfect. One year where spending exactly matched funds would be possible. But four years in a row?

It makes me wonder if they were following the Fundraising Regulator rules. It makes me wonder if they were respecting their donor's wishes.

Maybe they were. I've worked in three charities in the course of my career. That said, I've never been a fundraiser, so I may be showing my inexperience here. Contact details are on the top right if you think I've missed something here.

The network that's hidden from view

There's something even stranger going on with the Leadership Networks.

These operations get a decent amount of publicity: on the website, in emails for supporters, in posts on the UCCF social media accounts. That makes sense, right? Students need to hear about them so they can join them.

But there's a network that's never mentioned in any of those places.

Let me introduce the Apologetics Network.

We can learn about it in the UCCF filings for 2020-2021:

"The Leadership Network is pioneering a brand new stream 'Teaching Network' which (alongside all the other networks Arts, Apologetics, Music, Politics, Science, Theology and Law) will provide first-class digital resources across the disciplines and will form a stronger partnership with the Internship (Relay) programme enabling us to mentor and train a new generation of thought leaders within a blended format of physical and virtual meetings"

(Source: Page 4, Full accounts made up to 30 April 2021, UCCF filings at Companies House)

Similar mentions occurred in the UCCF filings for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023.

Can you see how it was spoken of in the same way as the other networks? Like it had already existed for a few years, or more before that point.

This network is strange, because it has no publicity anywhere. There's not been a single Twitter post from UCCF. There is not a one mention on the 1000+ pages of the current website. How do students learn about it?

It's strange because there are no staff members associated with it. I looked through the About the Team page again to check.

It's strange because Apologetics isn't a subject one normally studies at University, not like Law or Theology.

Why is this network so hidden?

Does it actually exist?

More UCCF blogs

The puzzling connection between UCCF and The Areopagus Trust

Who are UCCF?

The puzzling connection between UCCF and The Areopagus Trust

2023-12-27T06:32:00.001+00:00

I've been looking at the annual filings of UCCF. The most interesting thing? What's missing from the reports.

(If UCCF are unfamiliar, I've written an introduction: Who are UCCF?)

Like Soul Survivor, UCCF has a number of connections to other charities and churches. And yet their filings rarely show any transactions with those charities.

Is that plausible?

Well, let me tell you about The Areopagus Trust.

The Areopagus Trust has no website and uses no social media channels. The only information available about them comes from the filings they're required to make with the Charity Commission.

I tell a lie. They are mentioned in one other place on the Internet: on the biography page of the UCCF CEO, Richard Cunningham:

"Richard has been Director of UCCF: the Christian Unions since early 2004. Immediately prior to that he was Executive Director of the Areopagus Trust, developing initiatives in confronting secular thought in universities across Britain and Europe and, at the same time, was Director of Evangelism at St Andrew’s Church, Oxford."

If we look at the Charity Commission website, we find a statement about the purpose of The Areopagus Trust:

"(a)for or towards such charitable purposes and to make donations to such charitable institution or institutions at such time or times and in such manner as the trustees may in their absolute discretion think fit (b)without prejudice to the generality of sub-clause (a) the trustees shall apply the trust fund in particular towards the provision of facilities and accommodation for the use of students who are members of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) and who are attending a course of study given by the charity in order to train and educate them in apologetics and biblical exegesis with the object that they embrace the christian faith more intelligently and to enable them to relate that faith in a skilful and convincing manner to the secular society."

I find it hard to follow, but it does seem to centre UCCF in its mission.

The annual filings of The Areopagus Trust give some more info about this relationship:

"During the year the Trust continued to provide accommodation and facilities to enable courses of study to be run for students at its principal place of operation. The Trust received fees for the provision of the facilities from the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF), who took responsibility for all expenses arising in connection with the courses."

(Source: Page 2, Accounts and TAR 2019, Charities Commission website)

I've worked in charities, but I know little about trusts. The gov.uk website has some useful information about trusts. They use this definition;

"A trust is a way of managing assets (money, investments, land or buildings) for people. There are different types of trusts and they are taxed differently.
Trusts involve:
-the ‘settlor’ - the person who puts assets into a trust

-the ‘trustee’ - the person who manages the trust
-the ‘beneficiary’ - the person who benefits from the trust"

In the case of The Areopagus Trust, the settlor is identified as someone called David Douglas Monteath.

Each year the income of the trust is composed of donations (made, perhaps, by Monteath), fees and investment income. I think that the fees here are from UCCF, because no other charity gets mentioned in any of the available reports, and UCCF is central to the purpose statement of the charity. That is an assumption on my part.

If that assumption is correct, UCCF made these payments to The Areopagus Trust over the last 6 years:

£16,000
£17,500
£20,000
£21,000
£17,500
£21,000

In total the trust says they received fees of £113,000 in that time period.

So what? UCCF probably pay all sorts of organisations in fulfilling their mission, right?

There are two reasons I bring this up.

Firstly, I find it strange that UCCF makes no other mention of this charity. I went through their last 15 years of filings, and there's not a single mention of The Areopagus Trust.

Secondly, the UCCF CEO, Richard Cunningham, had a significant connection to the Trust from 2003 until at least 2018.

You see, the contact address he gave for some of his trusteeships:

Matches the contact address given for the main premises of The Areopagus Trust:

So what was Cunningham's relationship with The Areopagus Trust? He's not listed in any of the available filings for the charity.

Some possibilities...

Maybe he is close friends with the staff member (1 is listed), or the trustees, and they let him use their building as a contact address for 15 years.
Maybe he is the single staff member, drawing a salary from The Areopagus Trust as well as UCCF.
Maybe he lives at the building, in some sort of unpaid-caretaker-role.

This matters because these possibilities would each present a conflict of interest. Is paying the Areopagus Trust for training facilities in the best interest of Richard Cunningham or in the best interest of UCCF?

Maybe there's another explanation. Do let me know if you can see one - my contact details are at the top-right.

Long-time readers will remember that Charity Commission rules say

"disclosure must be made of transactions involving trustees, related parties, staff renumeration and ex-gratia payments"

(Source: The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), page 86 )

If Cunningham lives at that location, or works there, my understanding is that it must be disclosed in the UCCF annual filling.

In the last 15 years of filings... there is no mention of such a disclosure.

So, what is Cunningham's relationship with the Areopagus Trust? And if it's significant, why have the UCCF trustees not disclosed it in the annual filings?

Who are UCCF?

2023-12-27T06:27:00.003+00:00

UCCF have been in the news. Who are they, and why do I care?

University and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) are a 95-year-old charity with over 100 staff and a turnover that hovers around the £4 million mark. They also have the biggest gap year programme I've ever heard of.

UCCF supports Christian Unions (CUs) in universities. A CU is a student society of Christians from a variety of backgrounds. CUs vary in size and scale. Some have 300 members, others have 8.

CUs are run by students. But CU leaders seem to have a fair amount of interaction with UCCF. There's training, support, and resources for missions and events. So they are involved, but you might not appreciate how much unless you were on the leadership team of a CU.

I joined a CU at university. It was a gathering for Christians of all denominations. We had weekly services and regular small group meetings. The CU was a big, positive part of my life. I'm aware that the positive experience may have been shaped by my spiritual journey and the fact that I was a straight white man.

That was 20 years ago now, so things will have changed a bit. And how a CU works may vary from one to another.

At CU I barely heard of UCCF. But I now realise that they will have been having a lot of interaction with the leaders of my CU, and will have had an influence on the formal rules that were in place. For example, the leader of my CU was always male.

Remember, the leaders of CUs are students. So each year some will graduate and the leaders will change. In that context I can imagine the support of UCCF may shift into influence, as new leaders look for guidance. For example, did the male-only-leaders thing come from UCCF's influence?

(Update - 7/2/14 - I've heard from some credible sources that some CUs had/have female leaders. Seems like this varied from CU to CU. Maybe this has shifted since my time in the late-90s.)

UCCF have been in the news. There has been an investigation, and while this happened the CEO and one of the directors stood down.

And? Well, it's unclear what has happened. We've had some press stories, and publicity from tweeters like Jonathan Severus and Old Boundaries. UCCF have put out a fairly strange statement. And at the same time half of their trustees have resigned, which hints of problems behind the scenes.

There's a line in the statement that grabbed me:

"The investigation found a small number of instances where the termination of CUSWs’ contracts had been badly handled and conducted in ways that caused them considerable upset and were potentially unlawful."

So I thought I'd take a look. Because our actions reveal our character. Which, ironically, is the kind of thing we heard at CU talks. If one aspect was 'potentially unlawful', according to the lawyer hired by the trustees, then other aspects may also be.

A few more things about UCCF:

Christian Unions are all over the country. So many of their staff are regionally based, and a fair amount of travel must feature.
I mentioned their gap-year programme. It's called Relay. It's pretty big: about 70 people each year.
They run an annual conference for CU leaders called Forum.
They jointly organise a spring-time festival for Christians called Word Alive. This used to be part of Spring Harvest until the 2000s.
They're based in Oxford, having relocated from Leicester in the early 2000s.

Was there a hidden motive behind Mike Pilavachi's choice of interns?

2023-12-21T07:01:00.003+00:00

Back in May, I tried to count Soul61's spend on each of the Mike Pilavachi interns. And in doing so, I noticed something strange: all the interns I came across were male. That bothered me, as I've heard before that Soul Survivor are supportive of women leaders, a position that is controversial in some UK churches.

As I investigated, things took a strange turn; a picture began to emerge. It's taken 7 months and hundreds of hours, and now I'm ready to share it, in this final Soul Survivor post.

You may remember that according to Soul61:

"Interns are generally those that Mike Pilavachi meets (through his role as Executive Director for Soul Survivor or as Pastor of Soul Survivor Watford Church), whom he feels demonstrate strong leadership potential."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, Soul61 Companies House filings, page 3)

I have news: the evidence suggests that this isn't true.

Or that the word 'generally' is having its meaning rather stretched.

Or that Pilavachi has some serious tunnel-vision when it comes to leadership potential.

I've found 10 of the 25 Mike Pilavachi interns from the 2010s. Obviously that's not comprehensive. However one would expect to see some variety in that sort of sample, right? It's 40% of all the interns from the period.

Here are my findings:

First off, these 10 interns are all male.

That's a problem.

More than half the UK population are female. We see examples in the bible of a number of female leaders. And Soul Survivor Watford is part of the Church of England, where women hold significant leadership roles.

Soul Survivor say they value female leaders. They ran seminars about female leadership at the festival. And they allow women to join The Leadership Course, charging them £3,000, £5,000 or £7,000 to do so (the cost changed over the decade).

So why didn't I find any female interns?

Maybe I got unlucky in those I identified.

Secondly, these 10 interns all look white, like me.

That's a problem.

Jesus wasn't white, like most of the people in the Bible. One of the earliest converts to Christianity was Ethiopian. Like many organisations Soul Survivor Watford pledged public support to racial justice during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

White folks, like me, have gained in the past from some racial bias in the UK. Soul Survivor would add to that inequality if they were providing free leadership training disproportionately to white men.

Maybe I got unlucky in those I identified. Or maybe some of these men were biracial, which can be hard to identify visually.

Soul Survivor Watford, and Soul Survivor Ministries, have done admirable work on justice over the years. For example, they made social action a key thread of their events. But if this free training opportunity was inaccessible to women, or inaccessible to people of colour, that would be unjust.

This also raises the question: was their selection of interns illegal?

I ask because at least £350,000 of charitable funds was spent on this programme in the 2010s. And UK law has important things to say about discrimination based on gender and race. There's an exception that applies to charities, but I can't see that it applies to this context.

There's more.

Thirdly, 7 interns are sons of Christian leaders.

Say what?

Of these 10 interns, 7 are sons of Christian leaders.

Wow. I didn't see that coming.

Of the remainder, 2 interns have parents without a church leadership connection. I have been unable to identify the parents of one of the 10 interns I found.

If we look at the Bible, we see that a fisherman can make a good leader. We see a tentmaker can make a good leader. But Soul61 seems to have decided that your father's job determines your leadership potential.

What about the biblical passages about all of us having gifts? What about the talented leaders whose parents aren't Christians? What about the gifted young adults who don't know their father?

This doesn't mean that the interns chosen lacked gifts or talent. But it does pose the question - were more talented people disregarded for the development opportunity because they weren't sons of Christian leaders?

To rub salt in the wound, some of these interns were brothers of other interns of Mike Pilavachi.

This seems a long way from the objective use of charity funds. Did the people who donated to 'young leaders' realise that these funds were being spent on only certain types of young leaders?

Maybe the 15 interns I couldn't identify are mostly women, contain a fair amount of people from a BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) background, and no sons of church leaders. Maybe.

Why might Pilavachi have favoured children of other Christian leaders? It's hard, often impossible, to evidence someone's motive. Here are some ideas:

One theory: these internships, with their extensive global travel, were used as rewards for friends. Who wouldn't want their kids to get a chance to travel for free around the world? That would clearly be wrong. Remember that charity funds paid for this, not Pilavachi's money or the profits of a business.

Another theory: these internships were used to curry favour with people who might be valuable in the future.

These were influential Christian leaders: leaders of large churches, or leaders of many churches, or leaders of Christian charities. At the time their sons were interns, the organisations they led had incomes between £1,400,000 and £3,000,000. They were each large enough to employ the equivalent 16-20 full-time staff.

I also notice that the church leaders are from a range of church movements: Anglican, New Frontiers and Vineyard. You'll have noticed from earlier posts that Pilavachi had a rare ability to gain speaking engagements from churches of all denominations. Maybe that connects with this?

Favouring people with family connections would be quite a departure from the actions of Jesus. Didn't he elevate outcasts and outsiders? Some authors of scripture share similar viewpoints:

'My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?'

(Source: James 2:1-4, NIV Bible)

There's no evidence the interns or leaders concerned knew about this bias. However, in those cases where two siblings were interns, wouldn't that make things obvious to the parents concerned?

Fundamentally, though, this was the responsibility of the person running the programme (Mike Pilavachi), the leader of Soul61 (Andy Croft) and the other trustees of Soul61 in the period:

Ali Martin
David Saunderson
Liz Biddulph

(We should note that conflicts of interest may have hindered these people in holding Pilavachi accountable)

Now, it could be that both of these theories were in play at different times. Or both might be false. As I said, it's very hard to evidence a motive.

I appreciate that interns-for-influence may seem far-fetched. But I can also see the concept cropping up before 2010 in the previous generation of interns.

For example, in 2004 Mike Pilavachi selected an intern whose father was the head of a theological college in the Anglican Church. Five years on the father had been promoted to the role of bishop. It can't hurt your ministry to be on good terms with another bishop, can it? Perhaps Pilavachi learned from that experience.

The intern concerned? That was Andy Croft, leader of Soul61.

The final post

I've finished my Soul Survivor posts. I've covered all the significant discoveries, and fulfilled my aim: supporting victims of Pilavachi's actions.

This was all an accident, born of disgust with the Christian world's tendency to look the other way when things go wrong. I have no training, or business plan, or message to spread.

It's cost a lot. That toll is small compared to the spiritual abuse that has occurred at Soul Survivor. Nevertheless, I need to recognise it and take some time to rebalance in 2024.

Thanks and praise go to the others who also spoke up. You know who you are. And especially to those who were victims. Is there anyone braver than a survivor who takes a stand?

What is the evidence for this?

As with my previous post, I can evidence what I've said, but I can't share that information without identifying the interns. And the stories that have appeared in the media say that at least one of these interns is a victim. With that in mind, I won’t be identifying these interns either publicly or privately.

I've made an exception in the case of Andy Croft, because Soul Survivor Watford disclosed this on their website many years ago, and he again disclosed this himself in a recent statement.

If you have doubts I can evidence what I've said, look at my posts – you’ll see I’m careful to have sources for any factual statements I make.

The Soul61 charity flew one intern to six countries in six months to shadow Mike Pilavachi

2023-12-11T06:21:00.001+00:00

Let's talk about interns.

When this all began in April, I discovered Soul Survivor Watford had removed lots of mentions of interns from their website. Which made me think, do they have something to hide here?

Yes, I think they do.

Since 2011 the intern programme has been run by Mike Pilavachi through the Soul61 charity. Each year, 2-4 interns were selected by him. Their mission was to:

“shadow him on his speaking engagements for a year”

(Source: 2016-2017 Trustees report, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 3)

Which is unusual, for two reasons.

Firstly, Pilavachi, “travels the world telling people about Jesus”. As such, shadowing him costs quite a lot of money. For example, in 2015-2016, Soul61 spent £55,799 on 'international travel and subsistence' for 4 interns.

Secondly, I’ve never heard of shadowing someone for this long. Sure, you might do that for a few days, or weeks. But for 8, 10, 15 months?

I've been wondering, was this a reasonable use of charitable funds? Let me give an example.

This is intern 9 (my randomly generated number). In a 6-month period, 9's travel included these countries:

Malaysia
Norway
Singapore
USA (3 times)

I can see there’s some useful learning in observing how a leader travels and ministers abroad.

I can also see how you might argue the case for having an intern travel to a different cultural context. Perhaps one approaches Christian ministry in Malaysia differently from the USA.

But at least 6 countries in 6 months? How much learning is gained from the 3rd trip to the USA?

When people gave money to the Soul Survivor festival collection, did they realise a sizeable chunk was going on long-haul airfares so shadowing could happen?

Intern 9's experience wasn't unusual. Through a mountain of research, I've managed to identify 10 of the 25 interns from the 2010-2019 period. All of them travelled the globe with Pilavachi. Destinations included Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, as well as those listed above.

None of this is the interns’ fault. They were the people with the least power in this organisation. This is the responsibility of the programme leader (Pilavachi), the leader of Soul61 (Andy Croft) and the Soul61 trustees. They are the people who agreed how Soul61 could spend its charitable funds.

I'm aware that the number 25 is based on who Soul61 declare is an intern in their filings. That may differ from whom people referred to verbally as an intern.

“But it’s where Pilavachi travelled” you might say. "They had to go where he went."

Sure. So isn’t a better way to use charity funds for Pilavachi to only take interns on one or two of these trips?

Or if developing young leaders is important to Pilavachi, why doesn’t he reduce costs by only accepting speaking engagements in Europe?

This approach costs the charity quite a lot of money, doesn’t it?

I did some calculations in a previous post about spending on the intern programme. I've revisited them to check the travel cost. Here is the spend on intern travel each year:

Year	Spending on intern travel
2011/2012	£3,671
2012/2013	£8,650
2013/2014	£30,702
2014/2015	£29,176
2015/2016	£55,799
2016/2017	£22,122
2017/2018	£53,571
2018/2019	£25,253
2019/2020	£40,691

In total, for the 2011-2020 period, Soul61 spent £269,635 on flying interns around the world to shadow Mike Pilavachi.

(Sources: the expenditure section of the documents labelled 'Total exemption full accounts', Soul61 filings at Companies House)

Is that a reasonable way to spend money from donors to the church and to the festival collection? When those givers were told 'Soul61' or 'young leaders' were they aware they were paying for extensive long-haul travel?

How do I know all of this?

I can evidence what I've said, but I can't share that information without identifying the interns. And the stories that have appeared in the media say that at least one of these interns is a victim. With that in mind, I won’t be identifying these interns either publicly or privately.

If you have doubts, look at my posts – you’ll see I’m careful to have sources for any factual statements I make.

More Soul Survivor Blogs

Who paid for the Mike Pilavachi interns?

Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern

Soul Survivor donated £53,000 to a charity led by one of their trustees

2023-11-15T06:56:00.003+00:00

In the last post I looked at how Soul Survivor worked with Tearfund on a project called Soul Action. And, I asked questions about David Westlake's role as a Soul Survivor trustee.

But there's more to say about both Soul Action and Westlake.

Tearfund ended their involvement in Soul Action in 2016. But the project continued. In this era Soul Survivor funded campaigns like Slum Survivor themselves. In these latter years the mechanism for decisions about the grants also changed:

"Having now ended the partnership with Tearfund in respect of the Soul Action project, the allocation of funds now rests with the Soul Survivor leadership team and trustees"

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2017, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 51)

The trustees of Soul Survivor were:

Ali Martin
Andy Croft
Christopher Lane
David Westlake
Graham Cray
Jessica Jones
Keith Johnson
Tim Hughes (until January 2018)

And the Executive Directors were:

Duncan Layzell
Mike Pilavachi (until September 2019)

The Soul Action restricted fund still existed as before: ring-fenced funds with money going in and out each year.

Grants go out. They're larger amounts, to fewer organisations, than in the Tearfund years.

And there's one particular grant that caught my eye. In 2019 Soul Action made a grant of £53,366 to an organisation called the International Justice Mission:

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2019, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 39)

That's a new name; I've not seen it before anywhere in the filings of the Soul Survivor charity. Which is unusual, as normally one sees organisations feature multiple times in these reports.

In another unusual move, no explanation is given of their work. Remember how in the previous post, I said that most recipients got a paragraph explaining what they do? That's absent here.

Fortunately I happened upon that name some months ago. So, I know that that International Justice Mission are a:

"global organisation working to protect those living in poverty from violence, slavery. trafficking and other forms of abuse"

And, guess what? Their CEO is none other than David Westlake.

Yes, David Westlake the Soul Survivor trustee.

In 2019 Soul Survivor leaders and trustees donated £53,366 to a charity led by one of them.

Westlake joined International Justice Mission UK (IJMUK) in November 2016, as recorded in the filings at Companies House for that year:

"after a lengthy search, we were delighted to secure David Westlake as our new CEO from November 2016"

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 October 2016, IJMUK Filings at Companies House, page 7)

This is a conflict of interest. Was this donation in the best interests of Soul Survivor? Or was it in the best interests of International Justice Mission?

Westlake would have had a responsibility to declare such a conflict. Did he?

The leaders and trustees of Soul Survivor will have had a responsibility to spot and deal with such conflicts of interest. Did they?

The signs don't look good. Unlike with the Tearfund relationship, IJMUK isn't listed in the related party transactions section of the Soul Survivor 2019 filing. And the scant details of this transaction point to a report author who doesn't want to shout about the grant.

In fact, I think the lack of listing of this relationship breaks charity commission rules. Those rules say:

"disclosure must be made of transactions involving trustees, related parties, staff renumeration and ex-gratia payments"

(Source: The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), page 86 )

This payment happened in 2019, a year when all sorts of unexplained things happened with the finances of Soul Survivor.

Which of the Soul Survivor leaders and trustees suggested this payment?

Which of the leaders and trustees approved this payment?

This discovery made my look again at the work of Soul Action. The project had its own brand, presumably created by Soul Survivor. And this brand was used on social media channels for Soul Action.

When you look closely at the posts on the Twitter channel, it seems like David Westlake was making many of the posts:

And I can't help but notice that, after his move to IJMUK, the Soul Action Twitter feed advertised job opportunities at that charity:

And also plugged IJMUK events:

And promoted IJMUK campaigns:

Now, it's okay for a charity to promote the work of another charity with similar aims. The problem here is a trustee driving the cross-promotion when they are the paid CEO of the other charity. Don't they gain when their charity receives more promotion?

It's possible another person made these posts. But it's hard to imagine Westlake didn't see them. He could have asked for them to be taken down.

Seems like another conflict of interest.

More Soul Survivor blogs

Questions about the relationship between Soul Survivor and Tearfund

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

Questions about the relationship between Soul Survivor and Tearfund

2023-11-02T06:59:00.001+00:00

If you ever went to a Soul Survivor festival, I'm sure you heard the name 'Tearfund'. And yet little has been said this year about the connection between the charities. I've looked closely at the annual reports, and I have questions... questions that centre around Soul Action.

Soul Action was a partnership between Soul Survivor and Tearfund. It was run from within the Soul Survivor charity. There are mentions of it in the annual filings, beginning in 2005 with this:

"In the summer of 2005 the charity started Soul Action, an initiative with a social action emphasis to serve the last, the least and the lost. During the year over 700 people and 90 groups joined as Soul Action partners. The first project for Soul Action is Soul in the City 2009 and funds raised to date have been utilised establishing Soul Action, providing educational resources for partners and starting to establish projects and a network in Durban itself. Amounts remaining in restricted funds (note 16) will be used for projects in Durban. In 2006 that charity has partnered Soul Action with Tear Fund and in the summer 50 people will be going to Durban to help with projects."

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2005, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 1)

A 'restricted fund' is a familiar term in the charity world. It's a ring-fenced pot of money that can only be used for a particular purpose. It's an administrative hassle, so it's normally only used where a donor has attached conditions to a gift.

We find details of spending on Soul Action later in the same 2005 report (see the penultimate line):

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2005, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 12)

Side note: I'm confused by the money listed in the 2004 column for Soul Action, because there's no mention of Soul Action in the 2004 filing. Maybe it was renamed for this year.

In the restricted funds section of the 2005 report we can see another entry for the same money going out (it's the figure listed in brackets):

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2005, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 16)

That page is giving us details of ring-fenced funds. It shows us there was no money in the Soul Action pot at the beginning of 2005, some money came in, some money went out, and there was £51,009 in the pot at the end of the year.

Where did the money come from? What did that money get spent on? No details are given. I don't think it goes to Tearfund - I think they'd have to explicitly label that.

The setup evolves slightly over the years. In the 2006 report the connection with Tearfund seems to have become more permanent. The connection is now listed in the 'Relationships with other organisations' section of the report (see page 2):

The connection remains listed in this way for the next 10 years of filings of Soul Survivor.

Later in the 2006 Soul Survivor report we find mention of the first grant made (on page 3):

"During the year a grant of £10,000 was made to the Father's Heart Foundation, a charity in Durban that supports orphans by paying for health checks, school feeds, food packages and extended family support. Amounts remaining in restricted funds (note 18) will be used for projects in Durban."

This is impressive work to support. It seems to echo the issues that Jesus preaches about in the gospel books. So why am I talking about Soul Action?

David Westlake. That's why.

Misplaced loyalty?

Westlake had a long association with Soul Survivor. As he explained in a festival talk in 2019 (at the 0:44 point), he was involved in setting up the first Soul Survivor in the early 90s.

Westlake was also one of the first group of trustees when the Soul Survivor charity was founded in 2000. His details are on page 4 of the incorporation document of that charity.

He remained a trustee for 20 years, making him almost the longest-serving trustee; Graham Cray served for one month longer. Here is his listing from the officers page of the Companies House entry for Soul Survivor.

Regular readers will know about trustees. But for those who are new, the Charity Commission says:

"Trustees have independent control over, and legal responsibility for, a charity’s management and administration."

Trustees have a legal duty to act in a charity's best interests.

So, David Westlake had a legal duty to act in Soul Survivor's best interests.

Which is complicated, because in 2005 David Westlake was also a staff member of Tearfund.

Here he is listed on the Leadership Team of Tearfund in the 2004-2005 filing:

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 March 2005, Tearfund filings at Companies House, page 27)

Let's unpack that a little.

The filings of Soul Survivor tell us that Mike Pilavachi and Liz Biddulph were Chief Executive Officers of Soul Survivor in 2006:

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2006, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 2)

How does David Westlake hold Mike Pilavachi accountable... when Soul Survivor is working with his employer Tearfund?

And, are Tearfund the best organisation for Soul Survivor to work with, compared to a charity like Worldvision or Toybox, or has that decision been swayed by the fact that a Tearfund staff member is a trustee?

I think this is what the Charity Commission call a 'conflict of loyalties'. They define this as:

"a particular type of conflict of interest, in which a trustee’s loyalty or duty to another person or organisation could, or could be seen to, prevent the trustee from making a decision only in the best interests of the charity"

(Source: Conflicts of interest: a guide for charity trustees)

Some important questions arise in this situation:

Was the conflict recognised?
Was the conflict dealt with appropriately?

That's not just Westlake's responsibility, that's the responsibility of all of the trustees at that time:

Graham Cray (chair)
Christopher Lane
David Poultney
Joyce Willis
Kevin Johnson
Peter Maskrey

One way to deal with the conflict of loyalty would be to distance the work from Westlake. Did they do that? It appears not. In the 2007 Soul Survivor filings we are told:

"Tearfund and Soul Survivor work together to raise awareness and funds, discussing collectively how funds should be spent. D Westlake is integral mission director of Tearfund and a trustee of Soul Survivor. He is involved in managing Soul Action."

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2007, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 12)

I find it hard to understand how accountability works here.

I should point out that I've worked for some charities, but not in a leadership capacity. Maybe this is my inexperience talking. If you think I've got things wrong, do get in touch. Contact details are at the top of the page.

And... I see other conflicts of interest connected with David Westlake.

Westlake has been a prominent figure in the history of Soul Survivor. I recall him writing articles in the Soul Survivor magazine in the late 90s. I imagine he became quite well-known with the Soul Survivor audience.

But did the gain from platforming him, and so his employer, get in the way of holding the Soul Survivor CEOs accountable?

He co-authored books under the Soul Survivor banner in 2000 and 2001. How did Westlake hold Mike Pilavachi and Liz Biddulph accountable when they played a role in furthering his publishing career?

This is reminiscent of the conflicts of interest I found around the Soul61 operation.

Do Tearfund have a justice problem?

Let's get back to Soul Action. In the 2007 filing we learn some details about how the programme operates:

"In the summer of 2007 eighty people went to Durban to serve on short-term projects and eleven people served on four-month projects. During the year Soul Action launched Slum Survivor and AOK day. Slum Survivor is an opportunity for groups to spend a few days like a billion spend a lifetime. Over 200 groups of young people carried out the Slum Survivor fundraising initiative, raising over £43,000.
AOK is Acts Of Kindness day - every Friday going out of our way to make someone else's day. During the year funds were used for staff who are establishing projects and a network in Durban, creating the Slum Survivor resource and continuing to provide educational resources."

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2007, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 3)

That answers the question about where the money came from: in part Soul Action was about fundraising.

There was also a Soul Action café at the Soul Survivor festivals. This also played host to seminars on social-justice topics.

In 2008 the grants given by the operation multiply: £63,158 split between 10 organisations.

In the ensuing years the number, and amount, of gifts fluctuates. The largest total spend is £153,378 in 2009. The smallest is £25,244 in 2011. The mean spend on grants in the 2005-2016 period is £68,486 per year.

A change occurred in 2009: in the Soul Survivor report from that year we find mention of a Tearfund partner:

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2009, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 15)

So, one thing Tearfund get out of Soul Action is funds for the projects of their partners. In this case it's only one grant, but the amount is £112,237. That's 72% of the money given out by Soul Action in 2009.

They make similar grants to other Tearfund partners, albeit for smaller amounts, in 2010, 2012 and 2013.

Another process change happened in 2012. In the filing for that year we find that one grant went to 'Tearfund projects'. This was described as follows:

"This is the transfer of funds due to Tearfund under the terms of the Soul Action partnership agreement (£54,511), and to two Tearfund partners (Soul Action South Africa £28,607 and CHO £5,251)"

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2012, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 14)

This is the earliest mention of a partnership agreement in the Soul Survivor filings. Maybe that was established in 2012, or maybe it was in place all along, but not mentioned in the previous reports.

(Confusingly, there is also Soul Action South Africa. They are a South African charity (or non-profit). Soul Action donated to Soul Action South Africa some years.)

In the 2016 report we find some more information about how Soul Survivor and Tearfund worked together:

"The basis of the arrangement was Soul Survivor co-ordinating a fundraising and awareness campaign each year, for which the operating costs were born by Tearfund. Each party would then agree a distribution of funds to shared interest projects or to projects/organisations they knew individually."

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2016, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 12)

It's not clear whether this was always the arrangement, or whether the work evolved over the years.

Also, in 2016, the Soul Action partnership came to an end. In the report we read:

"Both parties have agreed to end this arrangement at the end of 2016. Soul Survivor has been pleased to work alongside Tearfund for so many years, and looks forward to further shared activities in future"

Soul Action continued without Tearfund, but that's another story.

So, in that 11-year period Tearfund's partners received £207,555. And Tearfund themselves received £146,011. In total Soul Action generated £353,566 for them.

That money is on top of the promotional boost Tearfund received from being visible to hundreds of thousands of young people at the festivals.

Is it fair to say that Tearfund were quite involved with Soul Survivor?

And yet, since the investigation was announced in April 2023, they have said nothing publicly.

Not even after the Church of England found Pilavachi guilty of multiple instances of spiritual abuse and abuse of power. It's possible that some of those abuses occurred during this 11-year period.

It's depressing to see an organisation I once believed-in show cowardice. Tearfund were happy to trade off the Pilavachi connection when he was lauded, but were unwilling to acknowledge their relationship when the truth came out.

They have the nerve to issue advice about working with survivors, while showing nothing but silence towards the survivors of Pilavachi's actions.

Is that how justice works, Tearfund?

Following the money - part 4: a £200,000 transfer of staff and a mystery £20,000

2023-10-15T07:19:00.001+01:00

This is the fourth part of an effort to follow the Soul Survivor money flows. You may wish to start with part 1.

We begin 2020 focusing on the church, specifically the charity it's underpinned by: K & J M Morgan Trust.

Why? Because as 2020 began, and news spread of an unknown virus in China, the church took on 6 extra employees. Yes, 6.

In their 2018-2019 annual report they declared 18 employees. In the 2019-2020 follow-up they declared 24 employees - growth of 33%.

We find their explanation in the 2019-2020 report:

"Soul 61 Salary Bursary: In September 2019 staff were transferred from Soul Survivor Ministries to K J [sic] Morgan Trust due to the dissolution of Soul Survivor Ministries. Funds were donated from Soul Survivor Ministries to meet the cost of the staff transferred for as long as funds are available"

(Source: Charity Commission filings of K & JM Morgan Trust 2019-2020, page 30)

The bursary that's not a bursary

I don't know quite where to start with this. Firstly, why is it called the 'Soul61 Salary Bursary'? These are Soul Survivor staff, moved from that charity to the church.

The word 'bursary' is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as:

"an amount of money given to a person by an organization, such as a university, to pay for them to study"

Now, you could have a Soul61 Bursary, which was based in the Soul61 charity for young leaders. It could be used for gap year delegates who can't afford the costs. That would be in keeping with the definition of the word.

But finding this concept in the church, and adding the word 'salary', and using it to pay for employees moved across from the Soul Survivor charity? That's misleading.

33% more staff

And what about transferring staff? How does that work?

One situation where staff growth can happen: a charity expanding an area of work as part of a strategic plan. For example, they might significantly change their approach to fundraising and hire more staff to do so. In this case they can justify the extra spend by saying, "in the medium-term these staff will pay for themselves as donations increase".

For a major expansion in headcount, I'd expect to see some details in the annual report. What was the reason for the expansion? How would they fund the new posts in the future?

Are those details here? No. And yet the report is detailed enough to mention their marriage preparation course and the two Alpha courses they ran in the course of 2020.

I'm not an HR professional, or a charity leader. I'm sure there are other reasons one might expand the number of staff. If you know any, let me know (contact details are on the right of this post).

And then there's that strange phrase: "as long as the funds are available"?

Really?

Surely they knew what these people were paid, and could work out the end date and set up appropriate contracts. That would give the employees stability, and motivation to move organisation rather than look for other work.

The funds that accompany the staff are listed: £220,882. According to this report, £98,442 of this money is spent before year-end in March 2020. It doesn't look like funds were going to be available for long.

If we look to Soul61 we find the answer in the 2019-2020 report:

"The Charity made grants of £250,000 to Soul Survivor Watford in support of extensions to the church building [sic]£50,000) and to fund additional staff salaries (£200,000). The grants were made from a donation that was given to Soul61 on an unrestricted basis and with the donor's permission to fund projects outside of Soul61's core leadership course."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 4)

There's that money from YTL Utilities again. So that's why it's called the "Soul61 staff bursary".

Can you see what they did here? The donor didn't specify how the money should be spent. But by paying the donation through Soul61, an unrestricted (flexible) donation goes in:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 13)

It then becomes a restricted donation going out to K & J M Morgan Trust:

(Source: K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2019-2020, page 30)

The purpose of restricted donations is to honour donor wishes. At best, this is against the spirit of that. At worst, it's possible that this approach breaks Charity Commission rules.

There is another important dimension to this. As I've previously mentioned, the unclear terms that accompanied this donation say in one place:

"Soul Survivor received [sic] further donation of £500,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 14)

With that in mind, we should ask: did Pilavachi use part of the YTL donation to justify an expanded salary from the church?

Funding these 6 posts could provide a pretext for the church to increase his salary, as the organisation had 6 more people who needed leading.

By making the money restricted, the church would be forced to use the money that way by Charity Commission rules.

But the restriction didn't come from the donor. It either came from Mike Pilavachi or from his fellow Soul61 trustees.

In part 3 of this series, we saw funds moving through Soul61 losing their restriction (the collection money). And now we have funds moving through Soul61 to apply a restriction the donor never specified.

The Soul61 charity is pretty useful for this sort of thing, isn't it? Hmmmm.

At this point, can I remind you that Pilavachi was an accountant until the age of 29? His biography on this Soul Survivor page tells us:

"Mike studied at Birmingham University before working as an accountant at Harvey Nichols until the age of twenty nine,... "

You'll also notice that the money doesn't quite add up. Another £20,882 arrives from somewhere to join this money in the 'Soul61 Salary Bursary'. Maybe that's the destination for that mysterious money move we looked at in part 3?

By the end of the Soul61 financial year on the 31st of August, we can see the following picture:

Donations from YTL Utilities: £700,000

Expenditure from these donations:

£75,000 filming festival sessions

£3,000 filming festival sessions

£40,000 church building fund

£3,538 supporting potential leaders' travel to events

£110,000 church building fund

£50,000 building works

£200,000 additional staff salaries

Total expenditure so far is [drumroll]: £481,539

You know where I'm going next, don't you?

If £3,538 was spent on young leaders, that would by 0.7% of the gifts spent that way.

And yet the money from YTL Utilities was paid into Soul61 - the charity focussed on young leaders. I'm going to ask the usual question: why?

Post-festival life

While the church was taking on the extra staff, Soul Survivor Ministries was entering a new phase. As their report says:

"Soul Survivor stopped operating conferences in 2019; during 2020 the Executive Director and its trustees achieved its objects [sic] by making grants to similar charities with similar objects [sic]."

Where did these grants go? To very familiar names:

£100,000 for Soul61? That's a lot of money. And there's no stated plan for its use. There's no mention of an expansion of the gap year programme, for example.

I think we've found where that extra unrestricted money came from that we noticed in the previous post.

By the way, remember that these numbers are from annual reports of charity activity. This £100,000 may have been one payment, or a number of small payments between January and September.

The report this year was different. With a smaller income they were no longer required to have an audit. Instead they chose the cheaper independent examiner option, as Soul61 did. Do they pick the new independent examiner they found in Leeds in the autumn of 2019? No, they do not.

There's a big governance change for the charity this year:

"Following the decision to stop operating national conferences, those trustees who served the charity faithfully for a number of years resigned; the trustees appointed this year were all trustees of Soul Survivor Watford (formerly the K J M Morgan Trust)."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2020, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 2)

One result of these changes: after 20 years as Executive Director of this charity, and 9 months after his resignation from that role, Mike Pilavachi had formal power again. This time he was a trustee.

Question - why didn't they close the charity? It seems pretty clear they have stopped its work. That's why all the staff have moved on.

In 2020 the total income of the Soul Survivor charity was £24,956 - a world away from the previous years. Expenditure was £231,356 (mostly from the grants mentioned above). The balance sheet gives an equity of £24,374, of which £6,674 was 'cash at bank or in hand'.

In their 2020 report they list a single employee - Executive director Duncan Layzell. But, the salary bill this year is unusual. Costs are listed as follows:

"Wages and salaries: £42,419
Social security costs: £5,799
Other pension costs: £6,249"

Strangely these aren't totalled up in this report. We can do that ourselves, and get a figure of £54,467.

Side note: do you see how this is less than £60,000? Does that mean Duncan Layzell wasn't one of the two staff members who earned £60,000-£70,000 in 2018? Even though he was the joint leader of the charity?

Anyhow, the report lists those 3 figures. And then it says:

Costs recharged: £45,210

This is strange. It reads like Layzell was paid by Soul Survivor, but then Soul Survivor charged someone else for this time.

The difference is paid by Soul Survivor: £9,257

I've checked the reports of Soul61 and the church. I can find no record of this cross-charge.

This year less detail is given about the performance of Soul Survivor Trading, only this paragraph:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2020, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 14)

Neither this report, nor the Soul Survivor Trading filings give any details of the profit or less of the business.

My question from the previous post remains: without events to sell products at, how will Soul Survivor Trading get out of this financial hole?

Why not use some of the charity's funds for that instead of moving them to the church and Soul61? Maybe there is some sort of charity commission rule that prevents this.

The annual report for Soul Survivor Watford features Covid extensively. Lockdown rules forced the church to halt their Sunday services and stream via YouTube. That's a familiar story for many of us. They bought new equipment to aid this streaming, which cost £65,000.

The building project was also disrupted by Covid. Work halted in March, and then restarted in November with new plans to expand the number 7 building.

As you can imagine Mike Pilavachi's travel plans were disrupted by the pandemic:

"Our senior pastor Mike Pilavachi had to postpone and cancel many of his overseas travelling engagements this year. Instead he has carried out many speaking engagements via Zoom this year."

(Source: Accounts Reporting Year 31st March 2021, Soul Survivor Watford filings at the Charity Commission, page 10)

He continued to speak in the UK, albeit in a remote capacity:

A new charity

The governance for the church went through a significant change in 2020. After 19 years operating through a charity in the name of two members (K & J M Morgan Trust) they set up a charity that matched the name of the church.

The new charity was called 'Soul Survivor Watford'. Its nature means that filings are only found via the Charity Commission website, there are no listings at Companies House.

In the first report of the charity we read that "all assets, liabilities and operations" were transferred from the old charity to the new one on 31st October 2020.

For the year from 1st April 2000 to 31st March 2021, the church lists 1 employee with a salary in the £60,000-£70,000 range. This might be one of the transferred staff, or it may be an existing staff member who received a pay rise. 20 employees are listed - 4 down from the peak we talked about earlier in the post. The total salary bill is £773,111.

There's a strange line in the report here:

'Staff costs capitalised'? This reduces the total salary bill. Maybe this is about money from the building fund paying some staff costs?

This must have been a strange year for the young adults on the two Soul61 programmes, as the UK Covid lockdowns will have fundamentally changed the nature of those courses. They would have been quite different anyway for many of them: no final hectic month at the summer festivals.

There's something strange in the Soul61 annual report for September 2019-August 2020:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 3)

Can you see how the numbers don't add up here? If there were 18 gap year students, and 4 interns, why were opportunities not provided for 22 people? Is that an error, or something hidden there?

In the year that closed in August 2000, Soul61 had 2 staff members with a total salary bill of £29,676.

The money flow from Soul Survivor Ministries to Soul61 has a number of confusing aspects. I've tried to track the money moving across, and I've been beaten by the challenge.

Part of the complexity is that the financial years of both charities were different. The Soul Survivor financial year ran from January to December. The Soul61 financial year ran from September to August. And then, to add further complexity, the banking of the collection money varied. Sometimes it happened in August - the end of one Soul61 financial year. Other times it happened in September: the beginning of another Soul61 financial year. Sometimes part of the collection money even stayed in Soul Survivor until the following year.

It's impossible to track the money moving across from the annual filings alone. Trust me, I've tried.

£20,000 with an unknown purpose

The 2019-2020 Soul61 filings list an incoming £20,000 restricted gift from Soul Survivor:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 12)

The amount doesn't match any outgoing chunks of money, whether restricted or unrestricted, from Soul Survivor in 2019 or 2020.

When the new Soul61 financial year started in September it was a much quieter affair. The gap year programme didn't run this year. Three Mike Pilavachi interns did take part.

Soul61 made another donation from the YTL Utilities this autumn: £65,000 to Soul Survivor Watford. . It's labelled "Grant to Soul Survivor Watford for building works" in the report.

Recognise that amount? The amount matches the money for streaming equipment that we saw arrive in the Soul Survivor Watford filing. Maybe it was the same money, albeit labelled differently. Or it could be a coincidence.

We'll pick up the rest of the Soul61 events in the next post.

The year ends with a moment of hope: in December the first UK patients start to receive a Covid vaccine.

Sources

This blog draws extensively from the annual reports of the charities. There are too many references to footnote, but you can find the whole reports here:

Soul61 filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor Trading Limited filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor Watford filings at the Charity Commission

Charity Commission filings of K & JM Morgan Trust 2019-2020

Charity Commission filings of K & JM Morgan Trust 2018-2019

Uncovered: conflicts of interest in Soul Survivor's £100,000 in donations to XLP

2023-10-02T06:57:00.000+01:00

There's a charity called XLP. It's an ambiguous name, but as you peruse their website it's hard not to be impressed by their work.

Their mission statement is:

"To engage in long-term relationships that empower young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to complete their education, avoid anti-social behaviour, and ultimately become independent and confident contributors within their communities"

Soul Survivor made a number of donations to XLP in the 2000s and 2010s.

The first one I can find is £14,928 in 2004.

It's followed by £11,000 in 2005 and £15,457 in 2006.

These are all listed in Soul Survivor's annual filings at Companies House.

In total, they donated £99,548 over 12 years.

So what?

Well, the problem is that Liz Biddulph became a trustee of XLP in November 2004:

(Source: XLP pages at Companies House)

What's a trustee? According to the Charity Commission,

"Trustees have independent control over, and legal responsibility for, a charity’s management and administration."

Trustees have a legal duty to act in a charity's best interests.

I believe Liz Biddulph was already co-leader of Soul Survivor at this point. Chris Bullivant, a former employee, mentioned this in a recent tweet. And certainly the first time the Chief Executive Offices are noted in the annual filings, in 2006, her name appears next to Pilavachi's name:

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2006, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 1)

When you lead a charity you're expected to act in the best interests of the charity, and the people they exist to help, right?

That means donations after 2004 create a conflict of interest. Are these in the best interests of Soul Survivor and in the best interests of XLP?

We can see an example of this the very next year.

Soul Survivor finished 2004 with only £49,284 in the bank. That's very low for a charity with a turnover of more than £3,000,000 that employed 38 staff.

And yet, in 2005 Soul Survivor donated £11,000 to XLP.

The charity she lead donated £11,000 to a charity she has legal responsibility for.

That year it looks like Soul Survivor made a number of staff redundant: the 2005 report only lists 25 employees. In that context was the XLP donation in the best interests of Soul Survivor?

The Charity Commission has rules about this:

(Source: The Essential Trustee)

Charities are expected to establish a process that deals with conflicts of interest. Did Soul Survivor do this?

There would be no complications if Biddulph was donating her own money. The challenge here is that charity funds were being donated.

And that challenge grew.

Because, in 2007 Mike Pilavachi also became a trustee of XLP:

(Source: XLP pages at Companies House)

At that point, both executive directors of the Soul Survivor charity are also both trustees of XLP. And Soul Survivor continues to give to XLP.

The next donation to XLP is £1,477 in 2008. And then £26,486 in 2011.

If both Soul Survivor's leaders have conflicts of interest, it's quite a challenge to have a process that counteracts them. However, it is possible that another trustee took on the decisions about grants in this period.

The donations keep on going.

From 2011 these gifts were listed in the Soul Action section of the report. Soul Action is a partnership with Tear Fund. The 2016 filings provide some insight into how this worked:

No details are given about who 'the team' were.

In 2013, it looks like Soul Survivor had another tricky year, spending more than they received in funds. They end the year with £95,499 in the bank, and their filing in 2014 has two fewer staff, which may be connected. And yet they still donate £5,400 to XLP in 2014.

I'm not saying anything bad about XLP and the work they do. I am saying there were conflicts of interest here for Soul Survivor. And did the leaders follow Charity Commission rules regarding them?

As you'd expect from trustees, the support extended to other aspects. Here is Mike Pilavachi speaking to young adults on their gap year programme:

And here he is platforming the charity at one of the summer festivals:

In 2014 Liz Biddulph stepped down as co-leader of Soul Survivor. However, as discussed in the previous post she remained a staff member. A conflict of interest may still remain in her regard, albeit of a different nature.

In 2017 Pilavachi stepped down as a trustee of XLP.

Biddulph remained a trustee until 2020.

Since 2000 there were £99,548 in donations from Soul Survivor to XLP. All of these were made when one, or both, of the Soul Survivor leaders were trustees of XLP.

More Soul Survivor blogs

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

Following the money part 3: concerns about the collection, a mystery money move and who took home more than £90,000?

2023-09-04T19:42:00.002+01:00

It's 2019. This was the year that Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the UK after the resignation of Theresa May.

This post continues the series following the large gifts than Soul Survivor received. For a better sense of the narrative, start with part 1.

Where were we? Yes, that's it: the £500,000 donation.

Let's begin by focusing on the location for that gift: the Soul61 charity.

Here we find the donation listed amongst the other gifts for their 2018-2019 financial year:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 11)

Later in the report we find details of the spending:

"Soul61 received a further donation of £500,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi. The funds were paid into Soul61. During the year, £110,000 was paid to Soul Survivor Watford to be used towards the reconstruction of the Watford church"

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 14)

Can we see that money arrive at the church? No. As explained in the last post, the donations to D & J M Morgan Trust (the charity behind the church) aren't itemised, even those from other organisations.

All we know is that the payments were made by the end of the Soul 61 financial year: 31st August 2019.

By that point we've seen the following gifts from YTL Utilities:

£100,000

£500,000

A total of: £700,000

And we've seen the following money spent:

£75,000 filming festival session

£3,000 filming festival sessions

£40,000 church building fund

£3,538 supporting potential leaders' travel to events

£110,000 church building fund

That means the total expenditure from those donations to Soul61 by September 2019 was: £231,539

And what amount was spent on young leaders? £3,538

That's it.

2% of the money spent so far has gone on young leaders.

It's looking more and more like there are other reasons that gift was paid to the Soul61 charity.

Why didn't they pay this third gift to K & J M Morgan Trust? They'd already began the building project by the time the gift had arrived, so they knew about that need. It was unrestricted, so they wouldn't lose flexibility if they subsequently changed that decision.

The leader who never left

In the 2018-2019 Soul61 report I notice something I missed in previous reports: Liz Biddulph gets a mention. In the 'Related parties' section, the report says:

"Andrew Croft and Ali Martin are also trustees of Soul Survivor Ltd, and Mike Pilavachi and Elizabeth Biddulph are employees of Soul Survivor."

Now, back in 2014, the Soul Survivor report told us this:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2014, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 2)

Since only Mike Pilavachi and Duncan Layzell have been listed as executive directors, she must have left her old role. I mistakenly assumed she had left Soul Survivor entirely.

The final summer festivals

Let's backtrack to the start of 2019, and turn our attention to the Soul Survivor charity.

What a ride this year must have been for them. The structure of the year matched the previous couple. But clearly it must have been emotional to close things down, and the act of closure brought some unusual situations.

This year, the charity took an exceptional approach to budgeting:

"The trustees decided that 2019 would be the last year of events and approved a deficit budget for 2019 support by the reserves brought forward."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2019, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 12)

Along with their typical annual costs, they also had to spend money on closing down. Their report for 2019 lists 'Exceptional closure costs' of £113,374.

This year, total income was £3,792,663. Total expenditure was £4,036,410. Whoa! Can the reserves take that much overspend?

Yes, it appears they can. They finished the year with 'General funds' of £231,784.

In 2019 Soul Survivor continued their considerable support of Soul61. More on that in a minute.

Unusually, the charity also gave a gift to Youthscape of £50,000. Who? Youthscape are a Luton-based charity with many Soul Survivor connections. Luton and Watford are 20 miles apart, a fact that I imagine also helped relationship building between the two organisations. Youthscape were planning to start a summer festival at the time of the closure announcement, and it seems Soul Survivor decided to support them in this.

Who got paid over £90,000?

This year Soul Survivor listed a reduced headcount: 16 staff. I think that's because these totals are a yearly average of employee numbers, and because the charity had a phased close-down during the year.

They spent £561,799 on staff costs in 2019.

Mike Pilavachi resigned from his role as joint Executive Director on 30th September, Duncan Layzell remained in post throughout the financial year.

One staff member was paid a salary, including redundancy, between £60,000 and £70,000. Sounds familiar. But another staff member was paid a salary, including redundancy, between £90,000 and £100,000.

Wow.

I'd assume that the two co-leaders of the charity get paid the most of all the employees: Pilavachi and Layzell. That normally happens, as they have the most responsibility. Pilavachi is also an employee of Soul Survivor Watford church. Maybe he's only part time here, and so one of his full-time colleagues has a larger salary from this charity. So, maybe these salaries are Layzell and someone else.

Compared to the year before, one of these salaries rose significantly into the £90,000-£100,000 pay bracket. I imagine this was a severance package - it would be rare for a charity employee to get a 20-40% pay rise. That would rule out Layzell, who is still listed as an employee of Soul Survivor into 2020.

So who got paid over £90,000 in 2019?

If it was Pilavachi, then we should be concerned, because in that case the deal would have been approved by the trustees. And some of them have conflicts of interest. There are the trustees of Soul Survivor in 2019:

Graham Cray
Andy Croft
Ali Martin
Christopher Lane
David Westlake
Jessica Jones
Keith Johnson

As detailed in a previous post, Croft has many conflicts of interest. The largest of these seems to be his writing partnership with Pilavachi. I've also talked about Ali Martin's conflicts of interest previously. The most significant seems to be that in the church, in 2019, Ali Martin reports to Pilavachi. The prospect of an employee approving their boss's redundancy? Seems questionable.

So it's important to ask the question, was who was paid over £90,000 in 2019?

A mysterious money move

While we're talking about staffing I'd like to bring up another unusual detail. Remember how each year some Soul Survivor staff do work for Soul61? Soul61 are charged for the staff time that entails. Normally that finger is around the £10,000 mark.

Which Soul Survivor employees is this for? The 2018-2019 Soul61 report tells us:

"Mike Pilavachi, Ali Martin and Andrew Croft also provided some of the teaching to the students and interns. The charity also employed two course assistants to manage the course, arrange further teaching and provide pastoral care for the students."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, Soul61 filings, page 2)

Martin and Croft are employees of the church in 2019, so recharges for them would be listed separately. As such, the Soul Survivor charges look like Pilavachi time working for Soul61.

This may be a slight simplification. Maybe this charge covered a little time from one or two other Soul Survivor staff as well.

Anyhow, several strange things happen with these recharges in 2019.

Firstly, there's a contradiction.

In the 2018-2019 Soul61 filings, the financial year that ends 31st August, we are told:

"Certain members of Soul Survivor perform services for Soul61, which are recharged at cost. The amount of recharges for services provided in 2019 was £11,360..."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, Soul61 filings, page 14)

But, in the 2019-2020 Soul61 filings the authors say:

"Certain members of staff of Soul Survivor perform services for Soul61, which are recharged at cost. The total amount of recharges for services provided in 2019 was £29,676 (2019: £43,652)"

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings, page 18)

So in the Soul 61 2018-2019 financial year how much money moved that charity to Soul Survivor for staff time? £11,360 or £43,652?

That's weird.

Let's assume the former number is correct, as it's more consistent with the previous reports. If we look further at the 2019-2020 Soul61 reports, the amount charged for staff time jumps. In 2019-2020 the charge is £29,676, 260% of the year before.

That's also weird.

And then, the timing is strange: as we've seen Pilavachi resigned on the 30th September. The start of the 2019-2020 Soul61 financial year is 1st September. He's only in post for 30 days, and yet the charge for the whole year goes up by 260%.

That's also weird.

And then, the purpose is strange: I've heard that Soul61 gap year attendees arrive in November each year. So Pilavachi wouldn't be around for any of the gap year lectures. Who would be listening?

That's also weird.

And then, as Steve Lewis spotted previously, for the 2019/2020 financial year Soul61 changed the person who was their independent examiner.

That's also weird.

For 8 years Soul61 had hired FB Hay Associates Ltd of St Albans to be their independent examiner. Charity Commission rules require them to do this. Their guidance says:

"The role of the independent examiner is to provide an independent scrutiny of accounts. The examiner plays a role in maintaining public trust and confidence in charities"

(Source: Independent examination of charity accounts: Directions and guidance for examiners (CC32))

You see the name FB Hay Associates Ltd on every Soul61 report from 2011-2012 to 2018-2019. And a corresponding charge for their services: £1,200 in 2018-2019.

And then in 2019-2020 Soul61 change the provider. The independent examiner for that year is listed as Wyatt & Co Chartered Accountants of Leeds. Their charge for this service? £1,200.

Maybe they changed to get improved service. Or maybe FB Hay Associates were putting their prices up.

But, all these weird things, they add up. What are the chances of all of them happening at the same moment? Also do you notice that the discrepancy in the new report makes the new recharge look like a 32% drop rather than a 160% increase?

It is possible someone was trying to move £15,000 from Soul61 without others noticing, and this was how they achieved that.

Problems with Soul Survivor Trading

This year Soul Survivor Trading generated sales of £484,144. They had costs of £514,273. They made a loss of £30,129 (These figures are taken from page 24 of the 2019 Soul Survivor report)

Now, this presents a problem. Because, if I look at the Companies House records for this year, I discover that this company had an equity of £-65,810.

The company generated most of its sales at the summer festivals. If those sales no longer happened, where would the money come from to dig them out of this hole?

At this point I start thinking... those large gifts, couldn't you use them to pay off the debts here? It's hard to see a prospect of the company breaking even: they had made a loss 4 of the previous 5 years.

Over at the Church, the building programme talked about in previous years hit a snag: where would the church meet while the building work was happening? Eventually they found a solution, phasing the work in a clever way, and building was planned to begin the following year: in spring 2020.

In 2019-2020, the income of the church was £1,503,395. Of this money £469,532 was restricted, donations for a specific purpose - maybe for the building programme. They spent £1,030,924.

This financial year the church gave £12,000 to Soul61. No surprises there.

They also give £4,915 to Soul Survivor Ministries. This is the first gift I've seen going from the church to the charity. We can't verify whether that arrives at the charity in 2019 or in 2020 as they don't itemise unrestricted gifts. I imagine it does.

I also notice a gift to 'New Frontiers' of £2,487. That's a different church movement outside of the Church of England. There are many social media posts of Pilavachi speaking at their conferences. This gift may be connected with that, or it may be a donation to a particular church in the movement.

At this point I'd normally talk about staffing levels at the church. However, they go through abrupt change two thirds of the way through their financial year at the start of 2020. More on that next time.

Soul61 begin a new financial year in September 2019. As we discussed earlier, one early event in that year was the resignation of Mike Pilavachi from the Soul Survivor charity. Will that event change the Soul61 year? After all, he leads the work with his interns.

It appears not. Four interns join the programme this year. Seems like business as usual. We also had 18 gap year participants, paying the usual amount: £6,500 each.

And Pilavachi continues speaking at festivals. In October of 2019 he spoke at the Multiply Conference Festival, run by Catalyst, one of the New Frontiers movements. Here is one of the promotional tweets from Catalyst earlier in the year:

Concerns about the summer festivals collection

I'm a little confused about Soul61 income this year.

We're used to seeing money from the Soul Survivor collections arrive in Soul61. The collection happens at the summer events, which are held in August.

The Soul61 financial year ends on 31st August. Looking back, the money seems to arrive at Soul61 after August, meaning the next Soul61 financial year.

The 2019 Soul Survivor report mentions this collection on page 10:

"Total collection of £122,033 contributing £40,678 to each of Soul Action, Central Asia and Soul61"

Later on in that same report, we see this £40,678 joining some other funds set aside for Soul61:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2019, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 43)

So the total amount of these restricted funds leaving Soul Survivor for Soul61 is £67,704. Do you follow?

If we flip back earlier in the report we see this amount combined with the a £12,000 gift from the charity, and £5,900 from the Central Asia fund:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2019, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 43)

So, in total Soul Survivor moved £85,604 to Soul61.

But.

But, when I look at the Soul61 report the numbers don't match. Take a look at this extract:

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2020, Soul61 filings, page 12)

Firstly, the amount listed for 'Allocation of collection' is 0. That's not right, and is inconsistent with the presentation of figures from previous years.

This may be a mistake.

This could be deliberate, to distance the collection money from the restriction that it be given to 'young leaders' so it can be used for other things. As far as the Soul61 filings are concerned, these are now general funds with lots of flexibility.

That's a problem, because the Charity Commission is strict about gifts being used in the correct way. In the Fundraising Code of Practice they say:

"You must make sure that donations are used to support the cause in line with any conditions attached to the donation. This [sic] may be conditions the donor sets when making the donation or representations you make (either verbally or in fundraising materials) about how the money will be used."

This discrepancy also happens to occur at the moment when Soul61 changed their independent examiner.

I'm assuming that the money didn't vanish, that it became part of the £128,732 from Soul Survivor Ministries labelled 'Unrestricted funds'. It's unclear where the rest of that money came from. Perhaps there is another donation in 2020, before the 31st August year-end?

Wherever it came from, that is a huge amount. Most years Soul61 are given an unrestricted donation of £12,000-£15,000. In 2019-2020, the amount is ten-fold: £128,732.

Why is that much money being moved into Soul61? Should it be paying off the debts of Soul Survivor Trading Ltd? Why does Soul61 need any more money?

In their 2019-2020 financial year, Soul61 listed two employees with a combined salary bill of £29,676.

There were no more large gifts from YTL Utilities.

Soul61 moved some large sums of money out. Let's look at them in the next post, as they tie in with other events in 2020.

Liz Biddulph resigned as a Soul61 trustee on the 1st November, after 8 years.

Speaking of Liz Biddulph, she signed off the 2019 trustee report for Soul Survivor International. It listed no income or expenditure, and £3,351 of reserves. No change there from the previous years.

What a year, eh? It took me a lot of time to line up everything that was going on.

In the next post we turn our attention to 2020, and the biggest single spend of the YTL gifts so far:

Following the money - part 4: a £200,000 transfer of staff and a mystery £20,000

Sources

This blog draws extensively from the annual reports of the charities. There are too many references to footnote, but you can find the whole reports here:

Soul61 filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor Trading Limited filings at Companies House

K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2018-2019

K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2019-2020

Following the money - part 2: the decision to stop the festivals and Mike Pilavachi's two jobs

2023-08-25T06:27:00.001+01:00

This post continues my effort to follow the large gifts received by Soul61 in 2016-2019. It's best if you read the posts in order. The first post is here: Following the money - part 1: the TV connection and questions of control

It's 2018. This is the year when the new GDPR rules about data arrived. And, in fact, costs related to GDPR show up in the annual report of the Soul Survivor charity. I do not miss the work that year entailed.

One of the trustees resigned in January 2018 after four years: the well-known worship leader Tim Hughes.

A few months later Soul Survivor took part in Hope Bristol, an event:

"serving the local communities in Bristol on social action projects and sharing the good news of Jesus"

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2018 from Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 7)

It was a collective effort between Soul Survivor, the Hope organisation and local churches such as the Woodlands group. Soul Survivor took 473 young people along.

Aside from that, the programme of events that ran this year echoes previous years. Naturally Supernatural was now well established in the summer sequence.

But this was also a momentous year for the charity. In May, they announced they were going to cease their summer festivals, after 27 years in their current form. The now-deleted message [raises eyebrow] said things like:

"We know this will come as a shock to many but we believe that God has spoken and that this is the right time for us to step aside and make space for others to rise up. This is not a decision we have taken lightly but something we have been wrestling with for a substantial amount of time.
Our leadership team and board of trustees came to this decision unanimously and believe that, after 27 years of events, 2019 is the right time for Soul Survivor to end."

I wonder if Tim Hughes, who resigned in January, agreed with this decision?

A decision of the magnitude of closing the festival would have taken several trustees meetings to decide. Given they say they meet 3-4 times a year, I think they'll have started talking about this late in 2017 at the latest.

They go on to say:

"Soul Survivor isn’t growing as fast as it once was, and it’s hard to balance budgets whilst running a quality event, but we are in a secure financial position. This really is a decision based on what we believe God is saying"

I wonder when they started discussing this action? And when the final decision was made? It's hard to imagine going through the effort of switching locations in 2017, if you knew the festivals would stop soon.

Equally, 27 years isn't a particularly significant number. Wouldn't you stop at 25 or 30? Maybe Pilavachi's age played a part - he was 60 in 2018.

However the move came about, it was big news. The summer events represented the bulk of the work of the charity, the bulk of the income, and the bulk of the staffing needed.

Transition work began in 2018. The speakers at the summer 2018 events included people who lead other summer festivals: DTI (Dreaming The Impossible) , Limitless and the still-being-developed Satellites. I think that shows an impressive degree of organisation by Soul Survivor.

They say that bookings for Naturally Supernatural were particularly strong this year: up 19% on the year before to 3,251 delegates.

Soul Survivor reported a total income of £2,817,192. They spent £3,151,271. This loss affected their funds: at the end of the year they had £475,531 total funds, compared to £809,701 at the end of 2017. This was the third successive year making a loss.

I can't find an explicit statement about reserves in the 2018 report, but this seems low to me - less than two months' running costs for the charity.

They list 23 staff on payroll (up from 19 in 2017) this year, with a total cost of £730,622. It seems like an odd time to grow their staff, in light of the decision to end the festivals. Wouldn't one freeze recruitment?

Who were the staff ? Were they then eligible for redundancy payments the following year? Filling these extra posts was an 18% increase in staffing costs.

Two staff members had salaries in the £60,000-£70,000 bracket. I assume this was Pilavachi and Layzell, the joint Executive Directors. That is an assumption though.

Let's pause here for a minute here and ask a question I should have asked a lot earlier: how does Pilavachi lead both this charity and the church, and travel as a speaker? That seems an incredible amount of work.

Here he is, speaking at the Vineyard's DTI youth event in June of 2018, one of many speaking trips he took that year:

So, was he part-time at the church, or at the charity? There's no mention of that in the reports of either organisation.

And if he is part-time at Soul Survivor, is £60,000-£70,000 an appropriate salary?

This year the charity made gifts to Soul61 of £15,000 and £27,026.

Soul Survivor Trading made sales of £332,136 in 2018. They incurred costs of £307,543, giving a profit of £25,593. As before these figures are included in the figures quoted for income and expenditure of the charity.

Meanwhile there was a big moment for the church in June. They had a 'giving day' for the Making Room For More building project. It seems to have gone well: they received £1,900,000 in gifts and pledges.

I'm wondering about one aspect of this. Did the leaders tell the church members about the £200,000 in donations they had received in the last 2 years from YTL Utilities?

And did they know the £500,000 gift was coming at that stage? In the charity world you often have advanced warning of major gifts arriving. I wonder what they said on that 'giving day'.

Also, remember the £40,000 that was paid from Soul61 to D & J M Morgan Trust for building work? I can't see that money arrive at the church. I've checked the 2017-2018 report that covers until 31st March, and the 2018-2019 report that covers the rest of the year.

I have 5 years of reports for K & J M Morgan Trust. I notice that none of them detail incoming funds from other organisations. I presume they're rolled into the 'Donations' line, joining the gifts from church members.

I find this weak. It creates the situation where they itemise gifts to other organisations, but not gifts from other organisations. It's also inconsistent with the approach taken by the Soul61 and Soul Survivor charities.

In the 2018-2019 financial year, the church reported 18 employees, as with the year before. The total salary bill was: £477,120.

This year Bob Wallington's post is not listed as being paid for by Soul61.

As in previous years, no employees of the church were paid more than £60,000.

The total income of the church was £2,022,768, which includes the money raised on the giving day. If we remove the restricted gifts (presumably that's where the building project gifts are noted) then the total income for 2018/2019 is £963,411. Expenditure was £839,578.

And now to Soul61. In the first half of the year, the 2017-2018 cohort of Soul61 gap year students are hard at work. Their year finishes in August after the summer festivals, matching the end of the Soul61 financial year.

At this point the amount left of the first two YTL Utilities gifts is £78,461.

Can we take a moment to appreciate something? Out of just under £122,000 spent so far from the Soul61 large gifts, only about £4,000 has been spent on young leaders, which is the focus of Soul61.

A new Soul61 financial year begins in September and in November 2018 a new cohort of 18 join, having paid £6,500 in fees for the year. Two interns also join for some, or all, or the financial year.

The Soul61 filings for the 2018-2019 financial year list two employees and a salary bill of £43,652.

Soul61 were charged £10,866 by the other charities for use of their staff time. Actually, this year they provide a breakdown. That charge was all for Soul Survivor staff time. They made no use of staff time from the church.

And then, sometime before the end of 2018, or early in 2019, the third and largest gift arrives in Soul61.

£500,000

It's an out-sized gift for Soul61 - whose other income for the year is £170,609.

Will any of it be spent on young leaders? We'll see in the next post that unpacks the events of 2019:

Following the money part 3: concerns about the collection, a mystery money move and who took home more than £90,000?

Sources

This blog draws extensively from the annual reports of the charities. There are too many references to footnote, but you can find the whole reports here:

Following the money - part 1: the TV connection and questions of control

2023-08-20T11:28:00.002+01:00

So, those big gifts. The ones with the contradictions in the Soul61 annual reports. What did the money get used for?

I've been hunting through the annual reports, and have some things to share.

Some caveats...

This is imperfect. The reports are based on what the trustees decided to share. They may have played up some things and played down other things. But some of these filings have been audited, which should give us some level of confidence in some of the information.

My purpose here is to follow the money. I'm aware this means I give little space to many worthwhile activities these organisations do such as worshipping Jesus, caring for each other and serving the wider community.

2016

It's 2016. There are four connected charities in the Soul Survivor world:

K & J M Morgan Trust
Soul Survivor
Soul 61
Soul Survivor International

And one company:

Soul Survivor Trading Ltd

There are a couple of new entries since I last made a list like this. Let me explain.

K & J M Morgan Trust - This is the charity that was used to found Soul Survivor Watford Church. It's where they bank their regular giving. It's where most of the money for salaries comes from. Yes, it has a weird name.

Soul Survivor Trading Ltd - This is the company that makes money from sales of coffee, books, merchandise, etc. It's owned by the Soul Survivor charity.

There's a strange thing about these five organisations: they use different financial years:

Soul Survivor and Soul Survivor Trading Ltd: January to December

D & J M Morgan Trust and Soul Survivor International: April to March

Soul61: September to August

When I first came across this, I thought this arrangement was a way to spread the work of the financial year-end. Or to handle the differing cash flows in these different orgs. Others have pointed out that this could be designed to make it harder for trustees, or others, to see what's happening.

Anyway, it's 2016. In the wider world, this was the year the UK voted to leave the European Union.

Mike Pilavachi is joint Executive Director of Soul Survivor with Duncan Layzell.

Graham Cray, also a trustee of Soul Survivor, is listed as director of Soul Survivor Trading Ltd.

Pilavachi and Andy Croft are both Senior Pastors of the Watford church.

Soul61 is led by Andy Croft, at least on paper.

Soul Survivor International is led by Mike Pilavachi, Liz Biddulph, Lambert Dekkers and Matthew Gelding.

Let's begin with the Soul Survivor charity. They ran 5 major events in 2016: Momentum (aimed at 20s and 30s), Soul Survivor weeks A, B, C and Soul Survivor Scotland (with Scripture Union Scotland).

The annual report this year contains a disturbing phrase I've never seen in a charity report:

"There is ongoing two-way communication, whereby the trustees listen to and take feedback from the executive directors"

(Source: 'Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2016', Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 3)

This seems like an attempt to remove power from trustees. Thankfully, Soul Survivor don't make the laws of the UK, but it's a striking indicator of the way this charity operates. I would not be a trustee of a charity that said this in their filings.

There were also a number of smaller events they ran such as the Loud and Clear Conference and the Naturally Supernatural event in the winter. Interestingly, that event is jointly run by the church and by the Soul Survivor charity.

A shift is underway in 2016. Croft and Pilavachi had their book Everyday Supernatural published. I imagine that will have been several years in the planning.

Attendance of Soul Survivor Scotland jumped significantly: 23% to 914. Attendance of Weeks B & C of the summer festival declined slightly: 3% and 8% down. Momentum had a big drop: 41% down to 2,252 full-time attendees. The report speaks of interest within the charity in doing something around Naturally Supernatural in the summer, in future.

Soul Survivor's total income in 2016 was £3,020,669. Their total expenditure was £3,207,759. So, the charity lost £187,090 this year.

Their 2016 report lists 18 employees, with a salary bill of £618,415 One of these staff is listed as having a salary between £60,000 and £70,000. I assume this is Pilavachi, due to the length of his tenure and his public prominence, but I could be wrong.

Soul Survivor Trading had sales of £360,174 in 2016. Their expenditure was £305,690. So they made a profit of £53,484. These figures are included in the total income figure I mentioned for Soul Survivor earlier.

We should note that Soul Survivor said this about their trading entity:

"Profitability is not the primary objective, although the subsidiary is operated with the aim of at least breakeven, after allowing a fair allocation of overheads. If the subsidiary does make a profit, this may then be gifted to the parent charity to contribute to the overall work of the group subject to the restrictions in force as the time"

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2016, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 8)

Meanwhile, in the April 2016-March 2017 filings for K & J M Morgan Trust, we see the church doing activities that are typical for churches in the UK. They run Sunday services, and small groups, and youth work, and social justice initiatives.

Some differences exist. This church runs regular Saturday celebrations that draw people from a wider area. They say over 1,000 go to those. They also host some conferences, such as the 3-day Naturally Supernatural event in early 2017, which had over 500 attendees.

These aspects might be common in large churches. Most of my experience is with smaller churches: those in the 50-200 size.

Mike Pilavachi travelled regularly overseas to speak at events in 2016, accompanied by his interns. Other people sometimes travel with them.

The church gives grants to other organisations. Some of these I applaud, for example a gift to Charis.

Others raise an eyebrow: their donations to Soul61 are listed here. Sure, that's a separate charity, but Soul61 is run by the same group of people, using the same premises, often serving the other related charities.

In April 2016-March 2017 the church had an income of £986,232. They spent £832,227.

They employed 21 staff (at least 7 were part-time). The cost for these employees was £443,891.

None were paid more than £60,000. However, we should note that Pilavachi also had a salary from the Soul Survivor charity during this time. I don't see other income sources for Croft.

An interesting discovery: Bob Wallington held a dual role, described in this way:

"Assistant pastor, (Youth 50% / Soul61 Leadership 50%, funded by Soul61 Trust)"

This entry underlines how labelling the funds given to Soul61 'grants' is misleading.

Speaking of Soul61, in November 2016, they took on a new cohort of 26 gap year students. Between then and the following August two interns also joined Pilavachi as he travelled.

In their Sept 2016- August 2017 financial year Soul61 recorded one employee, and a salary bill of £18,046.

Staff of the other charities also did work for Soul61, and their employers charged Soul61 for this time. This seems like a sensible way to handle a small charity that can't afford multiple posts. In this financial year the amount they charged Soul61 was: £26,398. There isn't a breakdown of the amount each charity received.

As normal, both Soul Survivor and Soul Survivor Watford donated to Soul61, and money also came from collections taken at both places.

Soul Survivor International had a much quieter year. The annual report was filed, but there is no incoming or outgoing money listed. That state of affairs continues for the next few years.

2017

And then, in January 2017, the first big gift arrived: £100,000.

In a detail that nods towards the weird way they handled this gift, I found this date from the Soul Survivor annual report, rather than the Soul61 annual report. As discussed before, this seems a strange destination for a gift like this. And there are contradictions in the Soul61 report regarding this donation.

By cross-referencing the reports from Soul Survivor and Soul61, we find that sometime before the end of August they spend most of the donated money:

They move £75,000 to the Soul Survivor charity for 'filming '.

This is followed by a further £3,000 in the autumn.

If we look at the Soul Survivor report we learn more:

"A second notable donation received in the year was a £78,000 donation from Soul61, to be used to create broadcast quality footage of NSN and Soul Survivor B. This is in pursuit of our goal of making Christian resources freely available and encouraging young people in their spiritual lives."

(Source: Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2017, Soul Survivor filings at Companies House, page 27)

Later in the same report we read this:

"Funds of £78,000 were allocated to Soul Survivor during 2017 to be used to record content at Naturally Supernatural and Week B and edit them into broadcast quality programming. Since the year-end the programmes have been broadcast on TBN, and subsequently made available on our YouTube channel. The main purpose is to provide teaching and worship resources for people unable to attend the events. Side benefits include documenting what happens at the event, and providing content for marketing the events."

(Source: page 42)

If we jump across to the Soul61 annual report we learn a little more:

"This project created a large quantity of media resources, in the format of teaching during worship meetings and 'edited programmes"

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 14)

I can't find a record of how, specifically, this money was spent. It could have been some, or all, of the following:

Camera equipment
Sound recording equipment
Editing equipment
Freelance camera operators
Freelance sound mixers
Freelance video editors

I find the TBN connection strange. They don't seem to have a particular affinity with the teenage audience Soul Survivor has typically targeted. But then I guess, Momentum in the last decade was a departure from that, and the Naturally Supernatural event was a further move towards an all-age audience.

It's a lot of money to invest in broadcast quality that you don't need for YouTube or website use. What did they gain from that investment? There's no information given about the TBN audience and the benefits in reaching them this way.

You know who does gain? The speakers on these videos. They get to add 'TV presenting' to their CV. Their fame grows, to some degree.

Sadly there's no record of what actually went out on TBN. It could have been one video or 20 videos.

On the Soul Survivor website we find a section of filmed material that dates after this time. Perhaps these assets are the result of the investment?

Can we note that one of the events they chose to film was brand-new this year: Naturally Supernatural. That event replaced Momentum, and ran for 6 days. It was pitched at "the whole church family".

I'm surprised. Wouldn't you pick an event you had a lot of experience running? Perhaps there were other considerations in play.

And now we get to something rather strange.

If you look up the quoted section above in the report, you'll find this money listed in the 'Restricted funds' section.

Say what?

A restricted gift is when a donor gives money to a specific part of your mission. For example, you might donate to the Breast Cancer research that Cancer Research UK do. Your gift is specifically for Breast Cancer, you're less interested in funding Lung Cancer research.

So, how was this money restricted?

I have two ideas. Let me know if you can see any others and I may add them to this post.

Idea 1

The restriction was that the gift was to be used for whatever Mike Pilavachi decided. This condition was noted in some places in the Soul61 report, and contradicted in others. If this it the case then it raises questions like:

What happens if he retires before the money is used?
Why put the money into the Soul61 charity, as it's the organisation Pilavachi has least formal power over?

Idea 2

The restriction was that the gift was for the purpose of filming. This was a restriction that the original donor never specified. Adding such a restriction may break Charity Commission rules.

This is an intriguing idea. Why would they do that?

Control.

Maybe the donation was routed via Soul61 to gain control of the funds for this group of Soul61 people:

Andy Croft (Director)
Mike Pilavachi
Ali Martin
David Saunderson
Liz Biddulph

and remove control of the funds from this group of Soul Survivor people:

Mike Pilavachi (Executive director)
Duncan Layzell (Executive director)
Graham Cray
David Westlake
Keith Johnson
Christopher Lane
Jessica Jones
Tim Hughes

The latter group would be obliged by Charity Commission rules to spend the money in line with the restriction in these circumstances.

I'm not sure which idea is more credible. Soul Survivor staff or trustees would know the truth here.

How did the Soul Survivor charity fare this year? They had a lot of bookings for Week B of their festival. So many that they decided to run two main venues on the site and use a video link between them. This year they also moved location from Somerset to Cambridgeshire which must have added to the work in running the event.

Total income was £3,210,997. Some of that will be the funding for the filming project. Total expenditure was £3,270,137. Another year of making a loss for Soul Survivor.

They list 19 staff in 2017, with a total salary bill of £615,825.

The salary of two staff members fell in the £60,000-£70,000 bracket. I assume this is Pilavachi and Layzell.

Meanwhile, Soul Survivor Trading took £425,801 from sales in 2017. Their costs were £496,091. So they lost £71,290. These figures are included in the total income and expenditure of Soul Survivor listed above.

Let's move focus and talk about the buildings of Soul Survivor Watford. They have two on an industrial estate: Number 5 and Number 7. Number 5 is the large space they use for the services. Number 7 is composed of smaller spaces that are also used by other local charities.

Space seems to preoccupy the church during the financial year that starts in April 2017. They say they're seeing 15% growth in their Sunday service. Sometime in this period they engage an architect to draw up plans for how this would work. The effort is titled 'Making room for more'.

The income of K & J M Morgan Trust was £933,764 this year. They spent £840,315.

They reported 18 employees in this period, 3 less than the previous year. Again, none earned over £60,000.

In September the Soul61 financial year begins. In November, 23 young adults come on board to learn and serve on the gap-year programme. Between now and the following August we have 4 interns listed who shadowed Mike Pilavachi.

And then, of course, the second large gift arrives.

£100,000

At this point we have £25,000 left from the original gift to Soul61. So £125,00 in total.

£3,000 goes to the Soul Survivor charity to finish the filming project. We can see from their filings that this is all spent before the end of 2017.

£40,000 goes to the church to be 'used towards the reconstruction of the Watford church'.

Perhaps this gets used to pay for the architect's work to develop plans. Or, to begin project managing the building work?

Lastly, £3,539 goes to "support potential leaders' travel to Soul Survivor events"

To be continued

There's a lot going on here, I'm sure you'll agree. And we're just getting started.

Next in the series: Following the money - part 2: the decision to stop the festivals and Mike Pilavachi's two jobs

Sources

This blog draws extensively from the annual reports of the charities. There are too many references to footnote, but you can find the whole reports here:

Soul61 filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor International filings at Companies House

Soul Survivor Trading Limited filings at Companies House

K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2015-2016

K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2016-2017

K & J M Morgan Trust report from 2017-2018

Who paid for the Mike Pilavachi interns?

2023-08-11T06:28:00.006+01:00

Remember Mike Pilavachi's interns? You may recall that they don't pay for the internship.

So, where does the funding come from for them?

Let me remind you of some other aspects of the operation:

Each year 2-4 interns shadowed Pilavachi as he travelled and spoke at events
The programme was part of the work of the Soul61 charity
Pilavachi selected the interns. There was no advertised way to apply
Soul61 was led by Andy Croft, but there seem to be many conflicts of interest that muddy his role

Looking back over the last decade, I see the Soul61 charity receiving money from two main sources.

The festival connection

Firstly, every year a sizeable chunk of money comes from the Soul Survivor charity. This is the charity, led by Mike Pilavachi and Liz Biddulph (until 2014 ), or Mike Pilavachi and Duncan Layzell (from 2014 to 2019), that runs the festivals and other Soul Survivor events such as the Loud and Clear conference.

There are two parts to this money: donations from the charity, and donations from a collection taken at the events the charity runs.

When I say 'donations from the charity', this is Pilavachi and/or Biddulph or Layzell, granting charity funds to Soul61, to fund work that Pilavachi runs.

Pilavachi and Biddulph were also trustees of Soul61 (the latter stepped down in 2019).

To fund work that Pilavachi runs? Yep, most of the donations to Soul61 go on Mike Pilavachi's interns, not on the gap year programme they make lots of noise about.

You can see this in the details of many of the filings for the charity. There is normally a page like this:

(Taken from 'Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017', page 12)

This example lists the costs of the 'Soul61 course' as £146,794. And the fees paid by participants of that course as £168,682. This year only £1,071 of donations went on the course. Almost all of the donations that came in funded the Mike Pilavachi interns.

The payments from Soul Survivor vary between £12,000 and £15,000. There is a much larger amount the year after the festival stops: £128,732. (I know, I know. I'll come back to that in a future post.)

I wonder if all the trustees knew this money was paying for the interns? The separation of these charities reduces accountability from those people.

We should also note that Soul Survivor gets audited in a different way, by a different company, from Soul61.

That's permitted, given their income differences. It also means that the auditors may not have been aware how these funds ended up being spent - in some cases on flights to New Zealand for interns.

And then we have the collection that is taken at the festivals and other events.

And this bothers me, to be honest.

Here's how it works.

Each year there's a moment where they take a collection at the festivals.

Jo Alden, who did the gap year programme one year, remembers the collection as happening:

"towards the end of each week, either the last or penultimate session."

Jeremy Skinner remembers the operation this way:

"The buckets themselves were held by staff/soul61 in pairs, and the delegates would come up to put money in. The pairs weren’t allowed to let the bucket out of their sight. Buckets were loaded into a van and then delivered to collection room. Delivery overseen by finance team"

Now, a collection in a service doesn't ring alarm bells. What bothers me is how this was pitched to the attendees.

In a previous post I talked about how the Charity Commission is strict that donations must be used for the purpose they're given.

So what were the words said from the stage before this collection?

I hunted around to check, but I can't find any recordings of this part of the event. The wording may have varied slightly, as this collection happened a number of times each year.

Helpfully, they give information in the annual filings of Soul Survivor. In the 2017 we read of the plan to:

"Take a collection at each of the summer events to be used towards activities that work for social justice"

(Source: page 21 of Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2017 from the Soul Survivor filings at Companies House.)

In 2016 the same phrase appears.

(Source: page 17 of Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2016 from the Soul Survivor filings at Companies House.)

That's good, right? These sort of causes seems to chime with Jesus' exhortations to serve the poor.

Excellent.

But...

But, then the money gets split up.

In the 2018 report, this division is described as:

"Total collection of £81,078 contributing £27,026 to each of Soul Action, Central Asia, and Soul61."

Soul61? That feels like a stretch.

You see, the Soul61 describes its purpose as:

"Young people are trained to serve and to lead others in the UK and around the world"

(Source: page 2 of 'Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018' from Soul61 filings at Companies House)

This isn't the same as social justice. The young leaders may have no intention to work in social justice in the future. And even if they did, the money isn't going directly on social justice. Perhaps if they were training existing leaders of social justice programmes Soul Survivor could claim that.

The 2016 filings are quite interesting. The trustees give a paragraph to explaining each division of the collection. But not Soul61. No explanation there.

Is this approach fair to the people making gifts?

Actually, given the audience of Soul Survivor, we should ask ourselves: is this approach fair to the children making gifts? (A sizeable chunk of the donors will have been under 18.)

And, as we've just seen most of this money was spent on Mike Pilavachi interns.

Did teenagers and adults giving to social justice expect that the money would end up funding travel expenses for interns to shadow him?

Here's the breakdown of the portion of the festival collection that reaches Soul61:

Financial year	Money received by Soul61 from collections
2011/2012	£30,150
2012/2013	£33,908
2013/2014	£34,147
2014/2015	£31,528
2015/2016	£40,721
2016/2017	£27,228
2017/2018	£35,123
2018/2019	£30,972
2019/2020	£0 (no events happened in 2020)

This wasn't a one-off. This was normal. Every year for 8 years.

The church connection

The other regular source of funding for Soul61 is the Soul Survivor Watford church/charity. Again, there are two parts to this.

Every year £12,000 is donated from Soul Survivor Watford to Soul61. Some years this amount was bigger, for example in the 2016/2017 financial year it was £24,500. In the first financial year of Soul61 operation, 2011/2012, there was a particularly big donation of £44,641.

As before, in practice this was a charity that Mike Pilavachi leads (or co-leads with Croft in later years), moving some of its funds to another charity that he is a trustee of. To pay for an operation that he runs.

Pilavachi was a trustee of Soul Survivor Watford and a trustee of Soul61.

How do the leaders of the church describe this money transfer to church members?

Do they even mention it?

I wonder if they say "We donate to Soul61" and let people jump to the conclusion that this money supports the paid-gap-year programme that the charity also runs. That programme provided many of the people who help run the Sunday services at SSW.

Because, according to their filings, the money doesn't go there. Instead, most of it goes on the Mike Pilavachi interns.

Sometimes Soul Survivor Watford will have a collection in a service specifically for Soul61. When that happens it's on top of the £12,000 and is labelled differently. In this example, from the 2015/2016 report it's labelled 'Soul Survivor Watford celebration offering':

I should point out the giving is very normal in the Christian world. Most church services have a moment where people give money. My experience in 9 churches is that there's rarely pressure, but I realise that experience may differ.

In total, in 2011-2021, Soul Survivor Watford provide £188,905 of funding to Soul61.

You know, it strikes me that this arrangement of separate charities would be a good way to limit objections to intern funding. Church leaders could say "We're giving to Soul61, to fund young leader development" without mentioning the interns specifically. Once the money moves to the Soul61 charity it's likely hidden from the view of staff, trustees, and church members.

More Soul Survivor blogs

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

Updates

An earlier version of this post mistakenly used the phrase:

'In 2016 it was phrased slightly differently:
"Take a collection at each of the summer events to be used towards activities that work for social justice."'

That was amended to:

'In 2016 the same phrase appears.'

Thanks for the correction Sally and Kate.

Pilavachi, Greig and the Christian Leader Playbook

2023-08-03T08:30:00.000+01:00

In the past few months I've been digging into the workings of Soul Survivor. By an accident of timing my social media feeds have been filling up with posts by another Christian leader: Pete Greig. The juxtaposition of these has been both jarring and thought-provoking.

Greig majors on prayer and on many of the ancient spiritual disciplines. It might be easy to grasp at these as a reaction to the Pilavachi investigation, and to scandals at churches like Mars Hill and Willow Creek.

But, I can see Greig using some of the same techniques and approaches Pilavachi uses in his ministry. And these approaches are part of what helped Pilavachi to get away with his behaviour for so long. They're almost like a weird sort of church-leader-playbook.

I am not suggesting the Pete Greig is guilty of any of the harmful behaviours that Pilavachi has been accused of.

Greig's face gets around, like Pilavachi's did. You come across it on conference programmes and on his social media posts. Do you see how in this post, the photo is Greig doing the discipline? Not just a photo of the labyrinth itself?

Speaking of conferences, like Pilavachi Greig has travelled internationally as a Christian speaker. Here's when he was in Hawaii. Other trips include California and Cape Town.

I have a concern about international speaking. As your teaching reaches people more geographically distant, the ability of your audience to check for hypocrisy grows smaller. It's like the further you project an image, the dimmer it gets. I bet Pilavachi's audiences in Toronto were less aware of his faults than those in Watford.

As the sentence 'international speaker' finds its way into your bio, people start to view you differently. You're seen as successful. You become more famous. That brings the odd fame-shield we see in other areas of culture.

I wonder if the challenges of individuals lose their potency. A person holding you to account publicly becomes 1 of 40,000 followers rather than 1 of 200. Maybe not.

Critically, you become too big to fail. If people have been damaged by your behaviour, they start to ask themselves "how will people believe me?" "Will I cause people to lose faith?". This can be the same with any church leader, but I think those internal doubts grow stronger in proportion to a leader's fame.

Like Pilavachi Greig is an author: 8 books so far. These books give his voice reach, and give him fame and earnings. I imagine a large number of Christians in the UK will recognise his name.

Greig's church is similar in scale than Soul Survivor Watford: £1.9 million income in 2021/2022, 38 staff members. They have a full-time head of communications, and a part-time broadcast technician.

Like Pilavachi he seems to be be split between two organisations: Emmaus Rd Church and the 24:7 Prayer charity. When he tweets about a life of simplicity, can we ask him about the simplicity of leading two organisation as once? Or leading a church so large there was 38 staff members (some part-time)?

This dual role creates complexities. I see money shifting between the two. Do they also borrow premises space from each other? Accountability gets harder here, at its does with the Soul Survivor group of charities

I notice both these organisations are heavily involved in the Wildfires festival that has run since 2018. Sounds like a familiar concept, albeit on a small scale.

I'm not say Greig had done anything wrong.

I am saying that behind his posts about retreats, and silence, and ancient practices, you find a familiar-looking church/charity/festival machine.

Questions for him - what measures are in place to hold you accountable? How are they better than those found in Soul Survivor?

The discrepancies around three large donations to Soul Survivor

2023-07-26T06:51:00.001+01:00

Three gifts. Three years.

£100,000

£500,000

All going to Soul Survivor's Soul61 charity.

But there's something else. The written records of these donations don't add up. I'll explain more.

But first, I need to recap the role of trustees. Trustees are important - they're the people who "share ultimate responsibility" for governing a charity. They have a long list of legal obligations. For example, trustees must:

make sure that charity assets are only used for its purposes
deal with conflicts of interests
ensure the charity complies with relevant laws

(Source: The Essential Trustee)

Back to those donations. As previously mentioned, I don't have particular concerns about the donor company at this stage. I do have concerns about the money going into the Soul61 charity and the wording that references Mike Pilavachi.

The first gift: in the 2016/2017 annual filings of Soul61, we find this passage:

"During the year, a significant donation of £100,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, page 6)

Okay, that's fairly standard wording. The trustees decide how the money gets spent. In this case, as in some other charities, the director (Andy Croft) is also a trustee, and so is part of that conversation.

This section of the report is signed by Andy Croft. He does that most years with the Soul61 reports. However, we should remember that Croft also seems to have a number of conflicts of interest that may alter this power dynamic.

Later on in the same report we find this passage:

"Soul61 received a donation of £100,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi"

(Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, page 16)

These two statements can't both be true.

Either the trustees decide together how the money is used, or Mike Pilavachi decides by himself.

One, or the other.

But this trustee report says both.

I see 3 possibilities about the contradiction here:

a simple mistake
deliberate, with the blessing of the trustees
deliberate, without the knowledge of some of the trustees

Can you see another option? Let me know if you can, and I'll consider adding it. Contact details are in the top-right of the page.

1. Is this a simple mistake?

Might this be a case of incompetence rather that design? That's possible. However, as we consider the circumstances, the chance that an error has occurred gets ever-smaller. I can think of a number of reasons these statements are unlikely to be mistakes:

a. The next year the same mistake happened again

"During the year, a significant donation of £100,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018, page 6)

and later on:

"Soul61 received a further donation of £100,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018, page 16)

b. Then the mistake happened another time, at the end of the 2018-2019 financial year

This is the year of the £500,000 gift:

"During the year, a donation of £500,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 6)

And the contradiction is found later in the report:

"Soul Survivor received further donation of £500,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."

(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 16)

c. The mistake happens in relation to the 3 largest gifts ever received by Soul61

In particular, the £500,000 donation is 33 times bigger than the next-largest gift from an external organisation.

The next-largest gifts are:

£15,000 donation from The Tufton Trust in 2013-2014
£15,000 donation from Holy Trinity Brompton in 2013-2014

There are no contradictions concerning those gifts in the 2013-2014 trustees' report.

d. This mistake is in the trustees' annual report - they'd spot it

They're expected to review this. Wouldn't they spot a mistake? At the time of these gifts the Soul61 trustees were, in alphabetical order:

Given the many legal responsibilities of trustees, wouldn't one of them spot this in one of these 3 years?

When you consider these four aspects together, you reach the conclusion that it's possible, and unlikely, that these were mistakes.

2. Is the contradiction deliberate, with the blessing of the trustees?

Maybe. I find it hard to believe though. Trustees have lots of legal responsibilities. I can't imagine that all of them would stand for this, particularly in a document that's part of the public record.

Some of them, such as David Saunderson, are leaders of other organisations with a reputation to consider.

3. Is the contradiction deliberate, without the knowledge of some of the trustees?

I find this explanation more plausible than the other two. This would explain how these contradictions exist in three separate trustee annual reports.

Remember how these donations were given to the single Soul Survivor charity that didn't get audited? I wonder if auditors would have spotted this conflicting documentation.

I wonder if routing the gifts to Soul61 then allowed someone to change their purpose?

So what? Does this matter?

It seems to me that either:

a. YTL Utilities wanted the trustees to decide how the money was spent and the sentence about Mike Pilavachi was added in some other way

b. they wanted Mike Pilavachi to decide how the money was spent and the sentence about the trustees was added in some other way

Charity Commission rules put a lot of focus on what the donor wants. The Fundraising Code of Practice says:

"You must make sure that donations are used to support the cause in line with any conditions attached to the donation. This may be conditions the donor sets when making the donation or representations you make (either verbally or in fundraising materials) about how the money will be used."

I've seen organisations put a lot of time and effort into making sure this happens. It's a big deal where charities are concerned.

Soul61 must honour the donor's wishes. What were they?

The donor knows.

The staff or trustees who liaised with the donor know.

Maybe they will share that information at some stage.

Overall, the contradictory information shifts and blurs control of £700,000 of funds.

It gives someone in leadership the opportunity to quote part of the report when making requests about the money.

If option a was true, then Pilavachi could, for example, ask an administrator to transfer an amount to the Soul Survivor charity for travel costs. Unless the employee had read the whole trustees report they wouldn't realise the request was invalid.

If option b was true, the trustees could block a request from Pilavachi to move some of the money to the Soul Survivor Watford charity, by citing only one section of the report. While we might prefer that, given the allegations against Pilavachi, it would run against donor wishes and break the rules of the Charity Commission.

The end result is that one party (either Pilavachi or the trustees) gain power that they didn't have over £700,000 of funding.

More Soul Survivor blogs

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern

Time to confess, Soul Survivor staff and trustees

2023-07-21T06:46:00.001+01:00

Dear staff and trustees, and former staff and trustees, of Soul Survivor,

We're Christians, aren't we? We worship, and learn about, and pray to Jesus Christ.

We've tried to listen to him at key decision moments in life. We've pleaded with him in times of tragedy and suffering.

He is our purpose and our goal. He is our companion and our ruler.

And we know about confession, don't we? That moment when we bring our self-inflicted horrors to God. When we kneel in shame like King David must have, amidst the wreckage of our actions.

Remember that sense of relief? Remember that moment of grace? When we remember that Jesus redeems us. When we remember that our sins are separated from us as far as the East is from the West?

It's time to confess.

It's time to bring out what you know, though it shames you. It's time to bring out what you did. It's time to tell of the moments when you were too scared, or too conflicted, or too horrified to do the right thing.

Tell them.

Tell the safeguarding investigators.

Tell the Charity Commission.

Tell the Police.

For you, and for your discipleship. You deserve to be free of these burdens.

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

2023-07-18T06:30:00.007+01:00

"Follow the money", they say, don't they? So I did. And it's led to some interesting discoveries about Soul Survivor.

It's been over 3 months since a safeguarding investigation was announced into Mike Pilavachi. Soul Survivor Watford leadership seemed to be hiding information at the time. That bothered me: I expect more from churches who preach about justice. So I took a closer look into the workings of the organisation. Recently, I've turned my attention to money. After all, if accountability was a problem for the Soul Survivor founder, then might that show up in other ways?

I've found a striking detail in the filings that Soul Survivor are obliged to make every year:

In 2018/2019 YTL Utilities made a £500,000 donation to Soul61:

(Source: Soul61 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 13)

There are a number of things that seem unusual to me about this gift.

I should say, I'm an outsider, albeit one who has attended Soul Survivor events, listened to Soul Survivor CDs and read Soul Survivor books. I'm not an accountant or finance professional. However, I do have 10+ years experience working in fundraising departments and charities, which gives me a little insight in this area.

1. Why is the gift made to Soul61?

The donation is paid to the Soul61 charity. There are several charities related to Soul Survivor. The purpose of this one is to:

"raise up young leaders who will change the world around them"

(Source: Soul61 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 4)

However, a note accompanying the donation says:

"Soul61 received a further donation of £500,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."

(Source: Soul61 Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 16 )

These sound like much broader aims than the purpose of Soul61. Why is the money paid into this charity and not one of the others: Soul Survivor or Soul Survivor Watford?

If we look at in later filings at how the money is spent, we can see these broad aims come to pass:

£110k to Soul Survivor Watford for 'reconstruction of the Watford church' (2018/2019)
£50k grant to Soul Survivor Watford for 'reconstruction of the Watford church' (2019/2020)
£200k 'grant to Soul Survivor Watford' (2019/2020).
£65k grant to Soul Survivor for 'investment in audio visual equipment' / 'for building works' (They say different things in different places in their 2020/2021 filings)

When I posted about this question on Twitter, Steve Lewis made a point:

This was news to me. I checked, and he's right. The UK Government guidance in this area says:

"Broadly speaking, an independent examination is needed if gross income is between £25,000 and £1 million and an audit is needed where the gross income exceeds £1 million"

A donation to Soul Survivor Watford, or to Soul Survivor would be audited. A donation to Soul61 would not be audited. Is this the reason for paying the money to Soul61?

In a similar way, I imagine a donation to Soul61 would be less visible to the trustees, staff and members of Soul Survivor Watford. Is there a reason one would want that?

2. Why is Mike Pilavachi mentioned in relation to the gift?

You might be surprised at this question. Isn't this normal? After all sometimes wealthy individuals end up speaking directly to charity directors.

Well, at the time of this gift Mike Pilavachi and Andy Croft are co-leaders of Soul Survivor Watford. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to specify both of them?

And, if I remember correctly, it's normal practice to avoid naming names in these sort of circumstances. After all, what if the person got a job elsewhere? At the time of this gift Pilavachi was 60 or 61. Wasn't there a chance he might retire soon? How would spending this money work in those circumstances?

This is relevant today. Now that Pilavachi has resigned, are there problems administering the use of this gift?

Regular readers may recall that the Director of Soul61 is listed as Andy Croft. He's in charge of day-to-day management of the charity, and seems to be chair of the trustees. This is another reason why Soul61 seems an odd place to receive this gift, if a donor wants Mike Pilavachi to decide how the money is spent. Why not donate to Soul Survivor Watford, where Pilavachi was co-leader?

I can see two further gifts from the same donor in 2016/2017 and 2017/2018. These are smaller - £100,000 in each case - but they are accompanied with the same Mike Pilavachi mentions. That's an indication that this was an intentional approach rather than an single error.

3. Why route a big gift to a small charity?

£500,000 is a massive amount of money for Soul61.

For perspective, their total income in 2015/2016 was £240k. In the subsequent financial years it was £357k and £302k (those amounts include those other two gifts mentioned above).

Imagine being told that the income of your charity was about to triple?

It's tricky to use a gift of this scale well. It's a fundamental shift in the possible. I imagine you have to think carefully about this, to keep focussed on the purpose of the charity.

It's another reason why it's strange they paid this donation into the Soul61 charity. Soul Survivor Watford has a larger income that seems better suited to the scale of the gift.

As an aside: this is big news. Staff get excited about big donations, because they provide fuel to their causes. I've seen big celebrations over much smaller gifts. Did other staff members, and trustees of the related charities hear about this money? Did the Soul Survivor Watford church hear about this money? This would normally be a cause of amazement and celebration.

What about the YTL Utilities?

You might be surprised to learn that I consider a donation from a large company normal.

It's normal for companies to give to charities. I've heard of lots of examples. Donations are a good thing - they are the fuel that keeps charities and churches running. Gifts like these help you to fulfil your purpose, whether that is medical research, tackling climate change or serving the poor.

It's rare a charity would refuse a gift. It happens in some cases, but it's rarer than we might imagine. In fact, the Fundraiser's Code of Practice insists that you almost never refuse a donation.

I should say I'm not familiar with any rules around giving to religious organisations. I assume that would be a matter for the board of the donor company to decide. But I could be wrong about that.

In conclusion

There are several questions here. They may have innocent explanations. However, when the founder of a charity is under investigation we should look carefully at all areas of that charity's operation.

Update
Since writing this blog I've found some more oddities about this gift and two other donations from YTL Utilities.

More Soul Survivor blogs

Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern

2023-05-24T23:17:00.002+01:00

"Follow the money" is what they say in the movies. So, I did. I took a close look at the accounts for the Soul61 charity, the one the operates the Mike Pilavachi intern programme. This is what I found.

They spent at least £352,295 on the Mike Pilavachi interns between 2011 and 2020.

That's £14,092 per intern.

At its highest, the 2014-2015 financial year, it was £18,038 per intern.

What do you think of those numbers?

For me, two aspects stand out. Firstly, it seems a lot, given the way the interns work:

Mike Pilavachi invites these individuals to shadow him on his speaking engagements for a year.

(Source:2017-2017 Trustees report, page 3)

I wonder: was this money well-spent?

Spending more than £14k of charitable funds for someone to shadow a speaker for a year seems like a lot. Some of this money will be donations from people at Soul Survivor Watford, and attendees of the Soul Survivor events.

Secondly, imagine you're an organisation the believes in female leaders. You give seminars advocating for female leadership without the restrictions that some churches have. You take female trainees onto The Leadership Course, because you encourage and support female leaders.

Meanwhile, the intern programme is conspicuous in its maleness. I've heard 10-15 different people mention interns on Twitter. I've seen now-deleted photos of interns on Mike Pilavachi's Twitter feed.

I've yet to hear of a female intern.

If the interns were all male, then this begs the question - is it fair to charge young female leaders £3k, £5k, £7k, to take part in one area of the Soul61 work, and then to pay more than £14k to people in another part Soul61, which only accepts men?

Is the money well-spent?

Is the money fairly spent?

If you know of any female interns - do let me know and I'll correct this post.

How did I calculate these numbers?

Soul61, the charity they set up to hold for this work, are obliged to file annual reports via Companies House. In 2011-2020 these reports give an itemised breakdown of the spending.

The reports have a number of lines that mention 'intern'. For example, in the filing for the financial year up to 31 August 2018:

Intern allowance -£13,425
International travel and subsistence for interns - £53,571

Earlier in the report (page 5) they list that 4 interns participated that financial year.

Remember, this spending is different from the spending on the gap year students. Both areas of work are part of the Soul61 charity.

If we add up the numbers for all of the 2011-2020 period, we get:

Year	Explicit spending on interns
2011/2012	£5,631
2012/2013	£19,720
2013/2014	£43,892
2014/2015	£36,076
2015/2016	£69,599
2016/2017	£27,072
2017/2018	£66,996
2018/2019	£31,853
2019/2020	£51,456

In total the spend on interns is £352,295. Sadly, in 2020/2021 the report is less detailed so we don't have figures for the amount spent on Mike Pilavachi interns.

The intern numbers fluctuate each year, as follows:

Year	Number of interns
2011/2012	2
2012/2013	2
2013/2014	3
2014/2015	2
2015/2016	4
2016/2017	2
2017/2018	4
2018/2019	2
2019/2020	4

In total, there were 25 interns.

Total spending, divided by total interns = 352295 / 25 = 14091.80 per intern = £14,092 to the nearest pound.

At least?

I say 'at least' earlier in this post. Why it that?

The reason is that the annual reports for Soul61 contain phrases like:

When they are in Watford, the interns also share accommodation with the Soul61's [sic], and attend the same teaching.

(Source: 2016-2017 Trustees report, page 3)

So, shouldn't we also include a portion of the money that's being spend on accommodation in these figures?

In the 2016/2017 financial year £104,669 was spent on:

Student housing costs, including general maintenance

This was split between 28 adults - 26 gap year students and 2 interns. If we divide the housing costs 28 ways, we get £3,738 per adult (to the nearest pound).

If we add that amount to the explicit spending number in the table from earlier, the spending on interns in 2016/2017 rises to £34,548, or £17,274 per intern.

One snag: not all of the reports are this clear about interns sharing accommodation with the gap-year students. This might have happened every year, or just in some years. So I've been cautious and excluded this from the headline numbers at the top of this post.

I can confidently save those figures are a minimum. And I haven't tried to split the teaching costs in the same way.

Learn more: The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

2023-05-07T07:19:00.007+01:00

When I dug into Soul61 in a previous post I spotted some odd aspects to the setup of the organisation. I went back and took a closer look. I've worked for charities before, but what I found surprised me.

Soul Survivor have established a structure of charities. That may seem weird, but it's how they're able to accept donations. And it makes sense, because they have a purpose which isn't making profit.

At the time of writing, the related parts are:

Soul61 - a charitable company
Soul Survivor Watford - a charitable incorporated organisation
Soul Survivor - a charitable company
Soul Survivor International - a charitable company

I've worked in several charities. In the charity world we have this role called a trustee. If you're a charity in the UK you must have trustees. According to the regulator, the Charity Commission, trustees:

have independent control over, and legal responsibility for, a charity’s management and administration.

(Source: The Essential Trustee)

If you work for charities you'll hear about trustees. And you'll notice that trustees sometimes make CEOs nervous - they provide a major part of their accountability. They're important, and for that reason they're publicly named.

I've previous blogged about the Mike Pilavachi interns, the small group each year who he invites to shadow him. They travel with him, and Soul Survivor pay their costs. We learn about this programme from the Soul61 annual reports - it's part of the activity for that charity.

It seems clear that Mike Pilavachi is in charge of this programme of work. But who is he accountable to?

Well, the reports of Soul61 list the Director of the charity as Andy Croft. Croft is in charge of the day-to-day management of the charity. So Pilavachi is accountable to Croft.

And who is Andy Croft accountable to? The trustees. As it would be for any UK charity, large or small. Between 2011 (when the charity was established) and March 2023 the trustees of Soul61 have been:

Alison Martin
Andy Croft (His dual role seems unusual, but can happen where small charities are concerned)
David Saunderson
Elizabeth Biddulph (until October 2019)
Rebekah Ricketts (since June 2021)

and...

Mike Pilavachi

Oh.

That's right. Mike Pilavachi is accountable to Andy Croft, who is accountable to Mike Pilavachi.

Hmmm.

How about the other trustees?

Well, Alison (or Ali) Martin has been a staff member of Soul Survivor Watford since 2005. In that period Pilavachi has been Senior Pastor, Co-Pastor and now Associate Pastor. Martin is currently described as Assistant Pastor. So, how does Ali-Martin-the-trustee hold someone who is also her manager to account?

David Saunderson is the CEO of Cantab Asset Management. I can't see any other Soul Survivor connections with him.

Elizabeth (or Liz) Biddulph was Chief Executive Officer of Soul Survivor until February 2014 alongside Pilavachi. How does Liz-the-trustee hold her co-leader accountable in 2012 and 2013? Particularly when he's also a fellow Soul61 trustee.

I can't find much information about Rebekah Ricketts. Companies House lists her as an accountant. I can't see any other Soul Survivor connections.

And, there's more complexity to unpack...

If you peruse the Soul61 annual reports you'll see that a portion of the income comes from Soul Survivor - £64k in 2012, £52k in 2016, etc . How does Croft hold Pilavachi accountable? Mike Pilavachi is joint leader of a major donor to the charity he manages.

This seems like a conflict of interest.

For a part of the 2012-2023 period Mike Pilavachi is Senior Pastor of Soul Survivor Watford. That would make him Andy Croft's boss. How does Croft hold Mike Pilavachi accountable for his interns?

This seems like a conflict of interest.

During this time Soul Survivor Watford are donating money to Soul 61 - for example, £46k in 2012. As Senior Pastor, I imagine Pilavachi has power to enable or block those gifts. How does Croft hold him accountable?

This seems like a conflict of interest.

You may recall that participants on the The Leadership Course spend two days each week receiving training. Apparently, the Mike Pilavachi interns also attend when their schedule permits. Where do you find space for 20-40 learners each week? According to the 2017 annual filing:

Soul61 uses warehouse space belonging to Soul Survivor Watford, which is normally given free of charge

In the early years of Soul61, how did Croft hold Pilavachi accountable, when Pilavachi provided the space needed to run a major part of the work for free?

This seems like a conflict of interest.

Andy Croft is married to a Soul Survivor worship leader: Beth Croft. In 2014 she released an album via Survivor records, a record label run by Integrity Music named after Soul Survivor. This label seemed to major on artists connected with Soul Survivor.

There's no indication that Pilavachi makes any money from Survivor Records, but it's likely he has sway in the artists involved because of the brand association from the names. In addition he is also a trustee of Word and Worship Trust, a charity where Integrity Music are the controlling party, which is based in their Brighton offices.¹

How does Croft hold Pilavachi accountable if the latter played a part in securing his wife's record deal?

This seems like a conflict of interest.

Let’s turn back to trustee Ali Martin. She wrote a couple of books, both published in 2012:

Each of these books have a foreword from Mike Pilavachi, and one mentions him on the front cover as follows:

Includes interviews with top Christian speakers such as J. John, Mike Pilavachi and Mary Pytches

As a trustee, how does Ali Martin hold Pilavachi accountable when he's providing support for her book sales?²

This seems like a conflict of interest

Speaking of books, in 2008 Croft and Pilavachi had a book published together. I imagine it was Mike Pilavachi's involvement that made that happen, as he'd written 11 previous books. So Croft is likely indebted to Pilavachi for his career as an author. This partnership continued with two further books in 2016 and 2018.

This seems like a conflict of interest.

When you look at all these factors... wow. I can't quite believe the confused lines of accountability. I'm left asking the question - who was in charge here? And I just don't know.

Updates and corrections

These changes have been made after the post was published on 7th May 2023.

1. Sentence about Word and Worship Trust added on 9th May 2023

2. Details of Ali Martin's books added on 10th May 2023

ethical custard

Three questions for Pioneer about Gerald Coates

The people in charge

1. Did the Pioneer leaders give up stopping Coates after 2015?

2. Did they warn the Monkton Combe School about Coates?

3. Did the Pioneer Leaders warn Wildfires Festival about Coates?

In conclusion

More Gerald Coates blogs

The Watford priest who couldn’t stay away from Australia

More Soul Survivor Blogs

Gerald Coates and 'fire' in Westminster

1997 - Sowing the Seeds of Revival events

2008 - Fire on Marsham Street events

More Gerald Coates Blogs

The troubling behaviour of Gerald Coates… did it also happen at Waverley Abbey?

More Gerald Coates blogs

The Gerald Coates report is only half the story

Does the home of the UCCF Director break Charity Commission rules?

The surprising owners of the Churchill Building

What does this mean?

More UCCF blogs

What's strange about the UCCF Leadership Networks?

The ring-fenced money that always adds up

The network that's hidden from view

More UCCF blogs

The puzzling connection between UCCF and The Areopagus Trust

Who are UCCF?

See also

Was there a hidden motive behind Mike Pilavachi's choice of interns?

The final post

What is the evidence for this?

The Soul61 charity flew one intern to six countries in six months to shadow Mike Pilavachi

How do I know all of this?

More Soul Survivor Blogs

Soul Survivor donated £53,000 to a charity led by one of their trustees

More Soul Survivor blogs

Questions about the relationship between Soul Survivor and Tearfund

Misplaced loyalty?

Do Tearfund have a justice problem?

Following the money - part 4: a £200,000 transfer of staff and a mystery £20,000

The bursary that's not a bursary

33% more staff

Post-festival life

A new charity

£20,000 with an unknown purpose

Sources

Uncovered: conflicts of interest in Soul Survivor's £100,000 in donations to XLP

More Soul Survivor blogs

Following the money part 3: concerns about the collection, a mystery money move and who took home more than £90,000?

The leader who never left

The final summer festivals

Who got paid over £90,000?

A mysterious money move

Problems with Soul Survivor Trading

Concerns about the summer festivals collection

Sources

Following the money - part 2: the decision to stop the festivals and Mike Pilavachi's two jobs

Sources

Following the money - part 1: the TV connection and questions of control

2016

2017

Idea 1

Idea 2

To be continued

Sources

Who paid for the Mike Pilavachi interns?

The festival connection

The church connection

More Soul Survivor blogs

Updates

Pilavachi, Greig and the Christian Leader Playbook

The discrepancies around three large donations to Soul Survivor

1. Is this a simple mistake?

a. The next year the same mistake happened again

b. Then the mistake happened another time, at the end of the 2018-2019 financial year

c. The mistake happens in relation to the 3 largest gifts ever received by Soul61

d. This mistake is in the trustees' annual report - they'd spot it

2. Is the contradiction deliberate, with the blessing of the trustees?

3. Is the contradiction deliberate, without the knowledge of some of the trustees?

So what? Does this matter?