It is a common thing for small churches to also steal from people. I have heard many stories of contractors and workers doing work to repair churches, and the church pays them with a bad check. They think people will assume that a church will never steal from them. I heard a story of a guy who installs floors, and he will only work in a church if he is paid the full amount before he starts any work, and sees that the check cleared. The priest or someone working for the church said "You can trust us. We are people of god. We can give you the check at the end like most of your customers." And he just opened the drawer and pulled out a stack of bad checks that were all written by churches.