The Gateway Church series of "fails" should leave folks like me who address nonprofit governance issues: what might have been done differently? Plenty might be the answer.
But megachurches like many mega-institutions are founder-driven, and in the case of Gateway, a family-run business, tend to have a great number of curtains that in effect limit what the volunteer leadership may know and understand at anyone time.
This is not a viable excuse but it is a reality that a board can be used as a buffer to keep the constituents away from knowing anything or at least very much more than what they see and experience with their own eyes. This was true for the Boy Scouts, not founder-led but certainly governed by a "closed-shop" of loyal men. And also true for the Roman Catholic Church and countless other nonprofits with these experiences. It appears that the curtains are so effective in hiding truths, it takes multiple years for truths to surface if every they do.
I sincerely hope that eventually we all collectively can learn that these closed nonprofit governance systems do one one any good in the long run. They must stop or we will continue to see these situations continue.
Here's a link to the Gateway megachurch story by CNN. Bottom line, governance is all about accountability but if the only way for accountability to occur is through revelations by those who have been survivors, then we have to admit, this system is seriously broken and needs both a revamping and a rethinking of standards and enforcement action around those standards. But really - do we have to go here?