Pastor Mike is NOT texting you for Gift cards.

Published on January 23, 2024 • Michelle Voelker

Pastor Mike is NOT texting you, emailing you asking for gift cards for Staff or anyone else.

Someone is impersonating Pastor Mike – you can always check the number who is sending against his official phone number in the directory.

Any asks for the benefit of staff, membership, or outside groups will come from a committee, or all staff.

Key things/red flags to look for are:
Spelling and grammar – we are all more likely to be lax with text, but scammers requests often have poor grammar and spelling.

Saying that “I am too busy, don’t call, just text or email.” If Pastor Mike is busy at the time, he WILL return your call later. We have an emergency line specifically so that he CAN call you back outside of office hours.

Asking for money or gift cards – the few times we have asked for gift cards it was from a committee rather than one specific person, and for a specific person/reason (a members’ house fire, for stocking the interns house/groceries) and all were very well publicized: on the website, enews, in the announcements or newsletters. Asks for money are not kept secret.

Scammers will ask you to send them the information from the back of the gift card rather than the actual gift card. We will never ask for that information. On the few occasions we ask for gift cards (such as the Star Tree) we ask you to either bring the physical gift card to the church so it can be distributed, or we offer you the option to send the church a check (where we have safeguards in place to prevent fraud). We also always offer the option of sending money through the secure church website. Money that comes through the church is recorded by one entity or person – with a witness, deposited by another person, and balanced by yet a third person.

Nothing is ever done in secret or as a ‘surprise’.

Thank you to all who have reached out – while we don’t like to hear that this is happening, we do need to know. And we want you to ask questions so we can keep you safe from fraud.