Let's talk about interns.
When this all began in April, I discovered Soul Survivor Watford had removed lots of mentions of interns from their website. Which made me think, do they have something to hide here?
Yes, I think they do.
Since 2011 the intern programme has been run by Mike Pilavachi through the Soul61 charity. Each year, 2-4 interns were selected by him. Their mission was to:
“shadow him on his speaking engagements for a year”
(Source: 2016-2017 Trustees report, Soul61 filings at Companies House, page 3)
Which is unusual, for two reasons.
Firstly, Pilavachi, “travels the world telling people about Jesus”. As such, shadowing him costs quite a lot of money. For example, in 2015-2016, Soul61 spent £55,799 on 'international travel and subsistence' for 4 interns.
Secondly, I’ve never heard of shadowing someone for this long. Sure, you might do that for a few days, or weeks. But for 8, 10, 15 months?
I've been wondering, was this a reasonable use of charitable funds? Let me give an example.
This is intern 9 (my randomly generated number). In a 6-month period, 9's travel included these countries:
- Malaysia
- Norway
- Singapore
- USA (3 times)
I can see there’s some useful learning in observing how a leader travels and ministers abroad.
I can also see how you might argue the case for having an intern travel to a different cultural context. Perhaps one approaches Christian ministry in Malaysia differently from the USA.
But at least 6 countries in 6 months? How much learning is gained from the 3rd trip to the USA?
When people gave money to the Soul Survivor festival collection, did they realise a sizeable chunk was going on long-haul airfares so shadowing could happen?
Intern 9's experience wasn't unusual. Through a mountain of research, I've managed to identify 10 of the 25 interns from the 2010-2019 period. All of them travelled the globe with Pilavachi. Destinations included Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, as well as those listed above.
None of this is the interns’ fault. They were the people with the least power in this organisation. This is the responsibility of the programme leader (Pilavachi), the leader of Soul61 (Andy Croft) and the Soul61 trustees. They are the people who agreed how Soul61 could spend its charitable funds.
I'm aware that the number 25 is based on who Soul61 declare is an intern in their filings. That may differ from whom people referred to verbally as an intern.
“But it’s where Pilavachi travelled” you might say. "They had to go where he went."
Sure. So isn’t a better way to use charity funds for Pilavachi to only take interns on one or two of these trips?
Or if developing young leaders is important to Pilavachi, why doesn’t he reduce costs by only accepting speaking engagements in Europe?
This approach costs the charity quite a lot of money, doesn’t it?
I did some calculations in a previous post about spending on the intern programme. I've revisited them to check the travel cost. Here is the spend on intern travel each year:
| Year | Spending on intern travel |
|---|---|
| 2011/2012 | £3,671 |
| 2012/2013 | £8,650 |
| 2013/2014 | £30,702 |
| 2014/2015 | £29,176 |
| 2015/2016 | £55,799 |
| 2016/2017 | £22,122 |
| 2017/2018 | £53,571 |
| 2018/2019 | £25,253 |
| 2019/2020 | £40,691 |
In total, for the 2011-2020 period, Soul61 spent £269,635 on flying interns around the world to shadow Mike Pilavachi.
(Sources: the expenditure section of the documents labelled 'Total exemption full accounts', Soul61 filings at Companies House)
Is that a reasonable way to spend money from donors to the church and to the festival collection? When those givers were told 'Soul61' or 'young leaders' were they aware they were paying for extensive long-haul travel?
How do I know all of this?
I can evidence what I've said, but I can't share that information without identifying the interns. And the stories that have appeared in the media say that at least one of these interns is a victim. With that in mind, I won’t be identifying these interns either publicly or privately.
If you have doubts, look at my posts – you’ll see I’m careful to have sources for any factual statements I make.
More Soul Survivor Blogs
Who paid for the Mike Pilavachi interns?
Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern
