Ravi fell, but he had help.
“It is with deep gratitude to God, joined by the best board anyone can imagine and affirmed by the rest of our senior leadership, that these two appointments have been made.”
These are Ravi Zacharias’s words as he celebrates the appointment of two executives of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, namely his daughter Sarah Zacharias Davis as CEO and Michael Ramsden, a Christian apologist as president. Ravi Zacharias remained as the chairman of the board. It’s difficult to say who’s currently on the board, because I can’t find an annual report on the website and RZIM seems to have used a religious exemption to avoid filing a public 990 for several years. The 2014 statement has Ravi and his wife earning a total of $523,926 ($190,565 + 174,750 & 143,690 + 14,921). His daughter, Sarah Davis earned $208,995 plus $7,042 in other compensation. Naomi Zacharias, who oversaw poverty relief internationally, was subsisting on $129,679.
If you serve on the board of a non-profit, you are responsible for oversight. When the poop hits the fan, it’s your fault. Why was the fan there? Why is poop being flung around the room? It is your fault; you should have been asking these questions! Family members of executive staff should not occupy a board seat. Contractors or employees of other organizations should never have a board seat or an executive position. Rarely do academics or public speakers possess any gifting with management or strategic planning. No matter how much prestige their name may carry, they should not manage or lead unless they have demonstrated ability.
Every board should review and publish an annual report and is responsible for setting the executive salary through its own research or consultants. Likewise, the board should ensure that compliance officers (HR and finance) have reporting mechanisms to catch ethical and legal violations when they are small. In other words, the board should be interacting discretely with these staff to address problems. A ministry the size of RZIM should undergo an external audit annually and should have published this audit on Guidestar.org or its own website. Problems are normal; cover-up allows gangrene to spread.
From the 2014 990, the RZIM board seems to have had about twenty members, including Ravi, Ravi’s wife and his daughter. That’s too big and the lack of a board-approved annual report causes one to wonder whether any of the members of the board had assigned annual responsibilities. The founder and/or CEO can never be the chairman of the board, unless s/he owns the company. If the president/CEO is also chairman of the board, you have no oversight. Zero.
Principles
Centrality of Christ. Christian charities should be based on a gospel mission which itself focuses on Jesus Christ. Naming a charity after yourself is unacceptable. Serving as chairman of your own oversight committee reflects nothing more than narcissism. Put Christ at the center. "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2)
Compliance and transparency. Compliance means knowing and following the legal and ethics mandates of your business. Transparency is speaking truth, telling people what they need to hear when or before they need to hear it. “Let God be true and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4.)
Accountability. Things will go wrong, because even the best people are selfish and depraved. Will your organization nip it in the bud or let the cancer spread? Recognize that the easiest way to solve a problem is to deny its existence. Acknowledge, however, that the easy solution is a lie. “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.” (Prov 12:1)
Greed.“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Tim 6:10)
Victims. RZIM must be shut down and its assets designated toward the victims. Ravi’s family can’t earn money from his name and the employees need to move on. The board members as well as Ravi’s family are people of integrity who fell short on compliance, but the current organization’s continued existence under any name will only continue Ravi’s now-inexcusable legacy. The “Executrix” should release all parties from the Non-Disclosure Agreements and likewise release the documents related to the earlier investigation of RZ which found him innocent. “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.” (1 Tim 5:20)
Backstory
This blog post responds to the Evangelical readers will have watched this scandal unfold through our niche media and may not realize that former-evangelical, now atheist skeptic, Steve Baugman played a central early role in building support for the victims. In other words, RZIM affiliated lawyers seem to have quashed the story and Christian media outlets pursued it with reticence. Baugman’s original discoveries entailed Zacharias’s extensive lies about academic credentials. Baugman himself was not shocked by the evangelical inability to hold its own accountable, saying, “This is exactly what my atheist worldview would have predicted.”
RZIM has released a twelve-page commissioned report, which largely relies on interviews with women and some of Ravi’s cell phones. While most of the 200 images of women on his phone were clothed selfies, he requested nude images from at least two women and received nude images from at least one woman. According to the report, another woman who purportedly sent nude images later requested “$5 million in exchange for a release of claims against him and the ministry.” Christian leaders would do well to consider the following summary paragraph:
[Ravi Zacharias] further claimed, “In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind.” Much of the inappropriate massage therapy behavior discussed above occurred prior to the Thompson matter, and Mr. Zacharias’s lengthy text and email communication with the massage therapist from Bangkok whose culinary schooling he arranged for through RZIM and whom he called the “love of his life” occurred in 2014. His claim that he had long made it his practice “not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters” was similarly false. As reported above, Mr. Zacharias’s inappropriate conduct often occurred when he was alone with massage therapists. Because his need for massage treatments was well known and accepted, he was able to hide his misconduct in plain sight. He further stated that, after reflection, he learned that the “physical safeguards” he had “long practiced to protect my integrity should have extended to include digital communications safeguards.” As the architect of those “physical safeguards,” Mr. Zacharias well knew how to elude them.