March 31, 2003
Burglar lifts Richardson church's entire Sunday offering
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___RICHARDSON--A burglar broke into a safe at First Baptist Church of Richardson and made off with the offerings from the morning of March 23.
___While Associate Pastor of Administration Ron Springate said there were too many variables involved for him to reliably estimate the amount taken, the church's budget needs per week are listed in the church newsletter as $66,723.
___The cash portion of the total amount normally accounts for only about 2 percent of receipts, he said.
___The exact time of the burglary is unknown, but it occurred sometime between noon Sunday and when the offices opened the next morning. Fingerprint results were negative, Springate said.
___The church sent out a churchwide e-mail instructing members to stop payment on their checks and to contact their banks about other security concerns. They also were told that even if the church somehow recovered the checks from that Sunday they would not be processed. The e-mail was followed up by a first-class letter, and Springate said he did not meet anyone on Wednesday night who was hearing of the incident for the first time.
___Springate said the risk to members was unclear.
___"The risk level is somewhat unknown without knowing the motivation of the burglar--whether he was looking for money or other information we don't know," he said.
___Church members have taken the incident as well as could be expected, Springate said.
___He also is hopes the church's annual giving will not be strained by the burglary.
___"This hasn't really put us in a cash-flow bind, but more of a cash-cushion bind," he said. "I really believe that a lot of our members are going to replace the initial checks so that there will not be too great a problem, but really we don't know.
___"In my 30 years of ministry experience, I've never seen a church lose its entire Sunday morning receipts, so we're dealing with a unique situation."
The Baptist Standard
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