Covering the Angel Food Saga
From: The Walton Tribune
By: Patrick Graham
My cell phone started ringing almost immediately.
This is a small town, after all, and it didn’t take long for word to travel about federal authorities going into the offices of Angel Food Ministries last Wednesday to remove electronic data and other documents. Everyone, it seemed, had heard a different version of the events that day and wanted to know if I had any inside scoop.
Trust me folks, the terms “FBI” or “IRS,” who were also involved in Wednesday’s search of the offices, don’t often collide in the same sentence with “inside scoop.” Federal authorities are notoriously tight-lipped about ongoing investigations, and the case involving Angel Food is no different.
Ministry spokesmen have said they believe the investigation centers around an individual or individual associated with the ministry rather than the ministry itself.
If true, we as a community should consider this good news, and here are some reasons why.
Whether or not you like Pastor Joe Wingo, the other members of his family or the ministry they have nurtured into a more than $100 million a year juggernaut, Angel Food Ministries does a lot of good locally and all over the country. There are more than 500,000 families receiving boxes of food each month though Angel Food, and the vast majority of those go to families who wouldn’t be able to afford to eat otherwise.
Angel Food currently employs somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 people. If the ministry goes away, we’ll be adding all those folks to the county’s unemployment totals at a time when the more who have jobs locally the better off the county’s economy will be.
Pastor Joe and the ministry also donates somewhere in the neighborhood of around $250,000 annually to different charitable organizations and events locally and those entities would now take a hit if Angel Food was no longer in the picture.
Like I said, whether you like them or not, none of the above would be a good thing.
It is way too early to see how this whole thing is going to play out.
In addition to being tight-lipped, federal authorities are also very deliberate, which means it could be some time before we know exactly what the FBI and IRS are looking for and why.
We’re going to continue to cover this ongoing story and we are going to continue to cover it well.
As soon as we know something, our readers will know it as well, either via the Web or our print edition.
If the investigation reveals someone associated with the ministry has done something illegal, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The public has a right to know charitable organizations like this one are run with integrity, and the founder and CEO of Angel Food has said the government will find this to be the case with his.
I know Pastor Joe well and consider him a friend.
From me, he has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Based on what he and his ministry have done locally, I think he has earned the benefit of the doubt from the community as well, but that is for you to decide.
