I’m not surprised that this request is being made now. I am surprised that it hasn’t been made for years. Paul and Jan Crouch have been off the reservation for over a decade now, with few people calling them on their behavior. Hank Hanegraff at the Christian Research Institute has been one. The Trinity Foundation, Inc., who publish The Door magazine is another.

But now Wall Watchers is making a public call for Paul and Jan Crouch to step down and to re-tool TBN:

Wall Watchers, a North Carolina group that monitors the finances of more than 500 Christian nonprofits, proposed the series of reforms in response to recent stories in The Times that detailed the Crouches’ luxury lifestyle…

Wall Watchers officials recommended that TBN revamp its board of directors, which consists of Jan and Paul Crouch and his sister, Ruth Brown, to be independent of the Crouch family. The group also proposed that the network stop relying on the “prosperity gospel” — a religious principle that donors will receive financial rewards from God by giving money to TBN — for fundraising.

Of course, the article also says that TBN rejected these ideas, but is willing to provide financial information to Wall Watchers. If nothing else, the TBN board needs to be re-structured. There are a number of qualified religious broadcasters, Christian leaders, and executives that I would love to see on that board. How about Jim Wallis from Sojourners? Or Wayne Pederson from Moody Broadcasting? Or Ravi Zacharias? Or Hank Hanegraff?

It’s obvious that TBN is coming under much more scrutiny these days, so I don’t think it’ll be a huge surprise if Paul and Jan step down and turn things over to their son Paul, Jr. That might not be a terrible thing, since Paul, Jr., seems to be working hard to distance the network from scandal. Maybe he’ll take this thing in the right direction.