Bernie Madoff, a Wall Street mogul, was arrested earlier this month for defrauding his clients, including a number of charities, of $50 billion. If true, it will rank as the largest fraud case ever. I don’t suppose anyone is that surprised anymore when a powerful figure abuses his or her position for personal gain. And sadly we’ve seen such abuses among church leaders as well.

But The New York Times is reporting on a much smaller case of fraud not coming from a position of power in the church, but from the pew. Bryant Rodriguez, 44, began attending El Camino Church last year. He attended baptism classes, became well connected with the small congregation, and subsequently defrauded members of the church out of $600,000.

The authorities said that Mr. Rodriguez asked parishioners to invest in an electronics firm he represented, which he said wanted “a blessing for a blessing” by providing Jews and Christians with the opportunity to invest in his company, a criminal complaint charges.

The complete article recounts numerous stories of how parishioners invested their savings with Rodriquez only to discover the money disappeared. Many of them lost their life’s savings.

One night this week a few dozen worshipers gathered for a regular service in the basement of El Camino…. The group sang a Spanish version of “Silent Night,” their hands outstretched, their palms up. At the end of the service, the pastor, the Rev. Miguel Amadis, addressed the congregation.

“We’re going through a very hard time,” he said. “We have to stay united.”

“He came to us like anyone else comes to the church,” Mr. Amadis said. “When I met this guy, he convinced me he was a true original Christian. Man, this guy could talk. He could convince anybody.”

The sad story reminded me of an interview I did with Ken Sande from Peacemakers a few years ago. Ken spoke with me about the importance of church membership. At a time when many congregations are de-emphasizing the importance of membership, Sande says it’s more important then ever especially if the church leaders are going to take their responsibility to protect the flock seriously.

Ken recounted this story:

I counseled a church where an attender used his relationships within the church to persuade people to invest over $2 million with him. The money was never returned to the investors. The church leadership struggled to respond because the man was not a member. If they said something publicly and warned the congregation about his actions, they risked a lawsuit for slander and defamation of character.

The church leaders finally asked the man to leave, but said nothing to the congregation. As a result he continued to scam people in the church for another year. When the victimized members discovered that church leaders knew about the man’s actions but failed to publicly warn the congregation, they in turn threatened to sue the church for failing to protect them.

Several courts have ruled that churches may not discipline people who have not specifically consented to discipline. In this case, church leaders could not publicly warn the congregation about the man’s actions without threat of a lawsuit because he was not a member, and had not consented to discipline. By not emphasizing membership, the leaders were prevented from fulfilling one of their most important biblical tasks-protecting the flock.

Read the full interview at LeadershipJournal.net.

What do you think? Is church membership passé, or should we be making it more important to protect people in these uncertain times. There are certainly other reasons for membership other than financial security, but this story vividly illustrates just one. Are you familiar with stories of people entering the church to grow their business? Even when not illegal, how do you feel about attenders using their church contacts for business?