Warren Cole Smith wants to strengthen Christian ministries.

A major way he intends to do that: through investigative journalism.

Smith, 61, has served since October as president of the independent donor advocate MinistryWatch.com.

“Our overarching goal is to create transparency and accountability in the Christian ministry world,” the 1980 University of Georgia journalism graduate told me.

Rusty Leonard, who founded the nonprofit with his wife, Carol, in 1998, serves as board chairman. Leonard reached out to Smith after a donor provided funding for the new position.

Smith’s past experience includes serving as vice president and associate publisher of World, a leading evangelical magazine, and owning a chain of Christian newspapers. He is working on a book titled “Faith-Based Fraud,” which MinistryWatch hopes to publish in August.

His interest in reporting stretches back nearly five decades to the 1970s Watergate scandal uncovered by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

“When we’re doing investigative journalism, there are two audiences that I care most about,” Smith said. “What do donors need to know to make them more effective stewards? And how can we serve the victims?

“There’s an old saying that I use a lot in this kind of work: Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims,” he added. “So we want to be an advocate for the victims, which is why we will not only cover financial abuse, but we will also cover sexual abuse as well.”

See examples of Smith’s recent work here, here and here.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. DNA points to former suspect in 1985 church murders: Here’s a real whodunit with a major break in the 35-year-old case, thanks to digging by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

If asked to name the work of new fiction (in other words, as opposed to Jane Austen) that I have read in the past few decades that moved me the most, I would without hesitation say "The Children of Men" by P.D. James.

No, I have not seen the movie that is allegedly based on the book because friends who are fierce James fans warned me not to. Why? They said the team behind the movie ripped out the book's gripping Christian foundation, which I have heard referred to as a sci-fi take on the "Culture of Death" theme in the work of Saint John Paul II.

Here is the last sentence of the book, in which an underground (and very fragile and flawed) circle of Christian believers fight to bring life back into a world that has mysteriously gone sterile: "It was with a thumb wet with his own tears and stained with her blood that he made on the child's forehead the sign of the cross."

Now, we are watching a similar editing process take place in some -- repeat some -- of the mainstream media obituaries for one of the most important English writers of the past half a century.

C.S. Lewis said the world didn't need more "Christian writers," it needed Christians who were willing to do the hard work of writing for everyone. That was P.D. James. The great Dorothy L. Sayers considered murder mysteries the perfect form of writing for Christians because they open with an act of undeniable evil (evil exists) and then someone goes into the world seeking concrete evidence of truth (truth exists) in order to produce justice (it is possible to do good in the real world). That's P.D. James, as well.

Plug-In: This Woodward-and-Bernstein fan's way to strengthen ministries? Investigate them!

Memory eternal: Editing out P.D. James the believer and the mystery of the human heart (and soul)