LEWISTON – The Vineyard Church fired its bookkeeper and has hired an outside accounting firm to look into “very questionable practices in our bookkeeping,” Pastor Phil Strout said Wednesday.

The church noticed the bookkeeping problem last week. Strout informed parishioners about it during services Sunday.

The bookkeeper, a church employee, was fired. An accounting firm has been going over the church’s books for the last two days and is looking into whether Vineyard’s bills had been paid as promised.

So far, the church doesn’t know whether money is missing, misappropriated or simply poorly accounted for. It also doesn’t know how much money is involved.

“We’re not making any accusations, except we know something is amiss and we need to get to the bottom of it,” Strout said.

He called the situation “unacceptable.”

“We’re doing our best to understand how it happened and move on, figure it out. That’s all we can do,” he said. “That’s what our responsibility is to do.”

Located on Foss Road, the Christian church has rapidly grown in recent years. It now has more than 1,000 attendees and recently added a new building.

Church officials will tell parishioners what the outside accountants found after the firm finishes its work.