ChristianWeek

TORONTO,ON-The scent of change will be strong in the air when members of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities (4Cs) gather in Toronto for their annual convention later this month.

For the first time in its history, the organization is undergoing a top-level leadership change. After 20 years as the only executive director the 4Cs have known, Frank Luellau is preparing to retire. Stepping into the position is John Pellowe of Waterloo, Ontario, a businessman and leadership consultant who has ministerial credentials with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.

Founded in 1972 to help Canadian Christian charities develop good stewardship practices, the 4Cs grew for more than a decade on the efforts of volunteers. During that time it conducted conferences for members and seminars for local churches, started publishing updates on changes to regulations governing charities and began representing members’ concerns to governments.

And it grew and developed. By the end of the 1970s the 4Cs had launched a group insurance program for employees of member organizations, started pooling investment funds, become legally incorporated in Ontario and received registered charity status from Revenue Canada.

More groups joined; more projects took root. In the early 1980s the 4Cs implemented an employees’ pension plan and decided to offer an accreditation program for Christian ministries-an "accountability seal" accredited members could display to signal their adherence to a demanding set of standards of financial accountability.

All of this was becoming too much for a volunteer board to manage, which is when Frank Luellau was appointed executive director. He began in September 1983 as a part-time administrator, and became the organization’s first full-time employee in January 1984. He steps away from the organization exactly 20 years later.

An important function of the 4Cs, says Luellau, is "to set forth a God-honouring code of ethics for integrity and financial accountability. And then, of course, to police it."

Now that challenge is defaulting to Pellowe, who began as an employee this month and officially picks up the reins of leadership November 1. "It is an awesome responsibility to conduct ourselves in a way that brings honour to Jesus’ name and to demonstrate to the world the values and ethics of God’s Kingdom," he says.

Most of the organization’s work is agonizingly technical as it aims to fulfill its original purpose of integrating the spiritual concerns of Christian ministry with the practical aspects of management, stewardship and accountability.

These days 14 people are working to make sure members get the service and information they need to meet the increasingly complex demands of regulators and donors.

Over the years it has made occasional headlines in a long running and largely successful legal battle to maintain the clergy housing deduction for Christian ministry workers. More quietly it managed to secure full old age security benefits for retiring missionaries, and won the right of Christian organizations to set religious standards for employees.

And it’s grown from 106 members when Luellau began to more than 2,500 today. "It could easily be 20,000 if all the churches would join," he adds. Tapping into that growth will be among the many challenges facing Pellowe.

But mostly the mundane but necessary work of properly securing, spending and accounting for money donated to Christian organizations will plod along. Audits, conferences, seminars for church treasurers; wills, legacies, pensions, receipts, taxes, deductions-always a new regulation, always a new treasurer, forever another form to fill out.

ChristianWeek is planning to publish a special supplement later this fall highlighting the work of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities. Send editorial suggestions to dkoop@christianweek.org