“When everyone was making money, everyone was happy.
Or so Rodney McGill thought, especially when the one-time drug dealer from Fort Lauderdale seemed to be one of the richest black men in the Treasure Coast, the man to go to if you wanted to invest in the real estate game and make easy, legit money.
He parlayed his success into a brand: the Young Millionaires Group. He was the plain-spoken, often-comical host of a local radio show where the topic was usually money but sometimes strayed to conversations about family, love and the American Dream.
He pastored a church in Jensen Beach, where on his last Sunday in the pulpit before he was arrested on mortgage fraud, grand theft and racketeering charges, his message was titled “Reckless Faith.”
“I still don’t think I did anything wrong,” he said in a jailhouse interview last week. “You won’t hear about all the people who were happy. But when you’re up here, you can make hundreds of deals and if five of them don’t work out, your name is out there.”
Authorities say McGill and his mortgage-broker wife, Shalonda, are guilty of much more than making a few bad deals.
They say the couple used their position in the community to sell homes at inflated prices in a faltering real estate market, only to leave buyers with high mortgages on homes they couldn’t afford.
Ted Padich, a Florida Department of Financial Services detective, said McGill used his radio show for a promotion called the “Fab 5″ – where an eligible few could buy and sell a house for profit under his expertise. The victims, Padich said, bought houses at inflated values that the McGills had purchased months earlier for hundreds of thousands less.
Padich compared McGill’s dealings to a Ponzi scheme. Victims on the front end were promised a quick return on their investments, and though he satisfied a couple of those promises, others were told the risky real-estate market had taken a downturn and they would have to wait to get their money back, Padich said.
“When they kept calling, that’s when he would stop answering phone calls, and they wouldn’t hear from him again,” Padich said.
Through it all, the McGills appeared to be a couple who had all the trappings of wealth.
If a $100,000 car was rolling through the streets of East Stuart or Fort Pierce, chances are one of the McGills was driving. Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls-Royces and stretch limousines filled the parking lot at the headquarters of the Young Millionaires Group, which in recent years moved to the office of the New Hope Outreach Center, where McGill pastored.
But the cars were leased; the waterfront home was rented. The properties the couple owned were going into foreclosure, first one by one, then in twos and threes.
“Everyone was on the ride,” McGill said. “You think if the banks thought it was going to get this bad that they would have done what they did? We were all on the ride, and whoever was left on the ride got left holding the bag. That’s why you’re hearing about R. McGill and people like us.”
McGill, a graduate of Dillard High School, said he attended college briefly, got in legal trouble there and eventually returned to Fort Lauderdale, where the lure of the streets led him to dealing drugs. By the mid-’90s, his criminal record included convictions for burglary, battery and cocaine possession.
He married Shalonda in 1996 and the couple settled in Fort Pierce, where McGill was determined to leave his past behind.
He took a friend up on an offer to attend church, where he “started on the back row, then I moved to the middle, then the front.” Eventually, he became an ordained minister.
McGill also became known as a community organizer, putting together marches in Fort Pierce to protest high utility bills and even chipping in some of his growing profits in the real estate business to help others pay their bills.
McGill still smiles when he thinks about the first home he bought.
“It was about 10 years ago – at a steal of a price, about $6,000,” he said, adding that he later sold it for about $69,000.
He said he has made 300 to 400 real estate deals, and the ones at the center of the investigation are just some of the few that went bad.
When he talks about the waterfront home in Sewall’s Point where he and his family lived at the time of his arrest, he still refers to it as his.
But the owner is Kari Lydon. Her husband, John Lydon, said the McGills were tenants who never came up with the rent on time. Lydon said he had them served with a three-day eviction notice in jail – not the first time they had received such a notice.
McGill still insists that the people named in the charging documents, such as Sharon Schofield, one of the Fab 5, made money on their deals. Schofield’s attorney, Joseph Gufford, calls that notion a joke.
“That’s like a young millionaires club that has no millionaires in it,” he said.
McGill remains in the Martin County jail on $1.4 million bail, as does Shalonda McGill, who declined a request for an interview.
Despite his legal troubles, McGill is confident he will be cleared. He says his “Investing Made Simple” strategies could bring others success in the real estate business.
“It’s a beautiful concept,” he said. “If I could show it to you.”
“Ray Boltz wanted to do something nice.was they loved me and they still love me … it’s been an amazing journey of acceptance on their part … I was offered support and love from each member of my family, including my wife.”up singing in front of 1.3 million Christian men at a Promise Keepers rally (“Stand in the Gap”) at the Mall in Washington in October, 1997. And one of the Christian teens killed in the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in 1999 had been a Boltz fan and had performed choreography to his music.and “God Knows I Tried,” two of the most recent he’s written, capture where he is now.do not comment on the lifestyle choices of people in our community.”
He’d visited the mostly gay Jesus Metropolitan Community Church in Indianapolis and liked Rev. Jeff Miner, so he decided to give him a copy of his 1997 holiday recording, “A Christmas Album.”
It was one of 16 albums Boltz, 55, recorded during a nearly 20-year recording career that saw the Muncie, Ind., native become one of the better-known singer/songwriters in Contemporary Christian Music, a genre born out of the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s that made singers like Amy Grant, Sandi Patty, Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman superstars in religious music with occasional excursions into mainstream pop culture.
Boltz, with about 4.5 million LPs, cassettes and CDs sold, never made a splash outside of Christian circles but he never really tried. With a handful of RIAA Gold-certified albums, three Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association (GMA) and a string of 12 No. 1 hits on Christian radio, Boltz is a household name in evangelical circles. “Thank You,” a sentimental song about a dream in which a Christian thanks the Sunday school teacher who led him to embrace Christ, is his signature song. It was the GMA song of the year in 1990 and has become a staple of Christian funerals. Other Boltz trademarks are “Watch the Lamb,” “The Anchor Holds” and “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.”
Boltz brought the Christmas CD with him to MCC-Indianapolis on that cold, sunny December 2007 day and slipped it to Miner on his way out with a note taped to it on which he’d jotted his e-mail address.
Ostensibly it was an innocuous thing to do, but for Boltz it was a big step. It eventually led to him opening up to Miner, one of the first times anybody outside Boltz’s circle of family and friends knew his long-kept secret: Ray Boltz is gay.
“I didn’t make a big deal of it,” Boltz says during a 90-minute phone interview from his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. “But I was trembling. I’d kind of had two identities since I moved to Florida where I kind of had this other life and I’d never merged the two lives. This was the first time I was taking my old life as Ray Boltz, the gospel singer, and merging it with my new life. Emotionally it was kind of a big deal to think about that.”
Ray Boltz was tired of living a lie.
He’d gotten to a point nearly three years before where he couldn’t continue down the road his life had gone.
His 33-year marriage to ex-wife Carol was, he says, largely a happy one. It produced four children — three daughters and a son who are now between 22 and 32 — but family life and going through the motions of being straight had grown so wearying to Boltz, he was in a serious depression, had been in therapy for years, was on Prozac and other anti-depressants and had been, for a time, suicidal.
“I thought I hid it really well,” he says. “I didn’t know people could see what I was going through, the darkness and the struggle. After I came out to my family, one of my daughters said she was afraid to walk in my bedroom because she was afraid she’d find me — that I’d done something to myself. And I didn’t even know they’d picked it up.”
The Boltz family remembers Dec. 26, 2004 for two reasons: the tsunami in the Indian Ocean but also the tsunami that their husband and father unleashed when he told them what had been bothering him for so many years.
He hadn’t planned a major announcement — but sitting around the kitchen table at his daughter’s house, Boltz’s son, Philip, asked him what was wrong.
“I thought, ‘Well, I can just do what I always do and hide the truth or I can take a risk and be honest,’” Boltz says. “That day, with the tsunami, has become very symbolic in our family.”
Nobody was sure, at the time, what the ramifications of the revelation would be, least of all Ray.
“It’s hard to say I came out because I didn’t have all the answers. I just admitted what I was struggling with and what I was feeling. It’s hard to go, ‘This is the point where I accepted my sexuality and who I was,’ but I came out to them and shared with them what I’d been going through.”
Continuing to pretend, Boltz says, was no longer an option.
“I’d denied it ever since I was a kid. I became a Christian, I thought that was the way to deal with this and I prayed hard and tried for 30-some years and then at the end, I was just going, ‘I’m still gay. I know I am.’ And I just got to the place where I couldn’t take it anymore … when I was going through all this darkness, I thought, ‘Just end this.’”
His family’s reaction took time.
“I don’t want to downplay it like it was just, ‘Oh, well that’s OK.’ It was a very tough time for them too, but the bottom line
Humble beginnings
Ray Boltz was born in June 1953, the middle of three children (a fourth died shortly after birth) to William and Ruth Boltz. Ray’s early religious experience centered around a small country Methodist church.
He discovered rock music in high school. Lying on his bed at age 17 hearing the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post” awoke him to the possibilities of music. There was a smidge of budding radical in him — he participated in an anti-war rally; high school friends had gone to Woodstock, though he didn’t. A hippie spin-off of sorts, the Jesus Movement was gradually making its way across the country from California.
Boltz injured his back in 1972 and was in the hospital when a visiting minister invited him to Jacob’s Well, a Christian coffeehouse in nearby Harper City, Ind. When Boltz recovered, he checked it out, saw gospel group the Fisherman perform and had a life-altering experience.
“That evening had a profound impact on my life,” he says. “I realized that this was the truth and that Jesus was alive … that’s really where I made a commitment to Christ. I decided I could be born again and all of the things I was feeling in the past would fall away and I would have this new life.”
He became a regular at Jacob’s and met Carol Brammer at its upstairs Christian bookstore later that year. They attended Bible studies together and eventually wed in 1975.
Indiana — for some reason that’s never been fully explored — had become a hotbed of Christian music. The Jesus Movement had a surge of early ’70s activity in Boltz’s part of the state and gospel music legends like Bill and Gloria Gaither, Sandi Patty, members of Petra and late gospel singer Rich Mullins all hailed from the Hoosier state.
His early years of family life were good ones and Boltz recalls them fondly. He worked for the state highway department and drove a snowplow truck while putting himself through college. He’d write songs and sing on weekends. After college he worked five years at a manufacturing plant.
A series of self-made indie cassettes of his songs, which he sold at concerts, made him realize the importance of having a producer/arranger and by the mid-1980s, he plunked “everything we had” into recording an album at Bill Gaither’s Indiana studio.
Boltz financed “Watch the Lamb” for $11,000. It was picked up by Heartland Records in Orlando, Fla., and distributed by the CCM label Benson.
He quit his job in 1986 and went into music full time. Boltz’s career soared with the release of his second album, “Thank You” (1988).
He spent most weekends on the road and maintained a steady output of recording. Despite Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) having its unofficial headquarters on Nashville’s Music Row, by the time Boltz became well known, his children were in school in Indiana and, like the Gaithers and Sandi Patty, he remained based there. He became well regarded for an unusual level of giving back, eventually donating some concert proceeds for orphanages in Calcutta, Sri Lanka and a home for abandoned AIDS babies in Kenya.
Touring eventually involved a band, two buses and a semi-trailer truck and a crew of about 15 people with Ray headlining venues that sat between 5,000 and 7,500 people.
“Those were definitely wonderful, wonderful years,” Boltz says. “There’s absolutely no question about it … I believed what I sang but in the back of my mind, I always felt I could never quite measure up. So yes, they were good years, but there was also a lot of pain.”
It got to the point by the early-to-mid ’00s that keeping his homosexuality hidden had become an increasingly wearying notion.
“You get to be 50-some years old and you go, ‘This isn’t changing.’ I still feel the same way. I am the same way. I just can’t do it anymore.’”
There was some exploration of “ex-gay” therapy though Boltz never attended an “ex-gay” camp or formal seminar.
“I basically lived an ‘ex-gay’ life — I read every book, I read all the scriptures they use, I did everything to try and change.”
Indirectly, this spilled out into his songwriting. Boltz says even though he never told his fans the specifics of his struggle, it added a dimension to his lyrics that resonated.
“It’s there on every single record,” he says. “That struggle of accepting myself and my feelings. There’s a lot of pain there and it connected with a lot of people. They weren’t struggling with the same thing necessarily but we all suffer with our humanity.”
There were other signs that his music was connecting. He was shocked to see two kids from a Calcutta mission singing “Thank You” during ABC’s coverage of Mother Teresa’s funeral in 1997.
He’d met Bill McCartney, the founder of Promise Keepers, a controversial religious group that advocates men being the head of Christian households, at a meeting and ended
But on the personal side, the pain of the closet kept a tight grip.
His physical relationship with his wife hadn’t been torturous. He says it helped that he felt genuine affection for her, if not sexual desire.
“Sex was based on the fact that we loved each other and I wanted to make her happy,” he says. “I had sexual drives as well. You know, it’s like I never had to talk myself into having a relationship with her or that I was going, ‘Oh God, here we’re going to bed again’ — it wasn’t that. I loved her and we had a very full life; it’s just that inside, deep inside, it really wasn’t who I was.”
Aside from sex, Boltz says this eventually took a toll on the couple’s intimacy.
“It wasn’t something that manifested itself in that we never had sex … but how can you truly be intimate with someone when you don’t know who they are, when they won’t reveal themselves to you … I thought if I can’t say this to the people I love, then what kind of life is this?”
Retiring from singing
Boltz began slowing down in the summer of 2004. He quietly retired from singing, recording and touring.
He and Carol separated in the summer of 2005 and he moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He only casually knew a few people there but thought it would be a good place to start a new, low-key life and get to know himself.
He and Carol Boltz remain close (their divorce was finalized early this year). She’s become involved with the gay advocacy group Soulforce but declined, through Boltz, to be interviewed for this story.
Not many in CCM seemed to think anything was awry. Boltz says people just assumed he was ready for a break after so many years on the road.
Touring and wise investing had put Boltz in a comfortable place financially; it was important to him to make sure Carol had money, too, before moving.
The early months in Florida felt strange and different, but also liberating.
His faith was in transition — tenants he’d adhered to all his life suddenly were up for reconsideration, but there was a peace he hadn’t felt before.
“I had a lot of questions [about faith], but at the bottom of everything was a feeling that I didn’t hate myself anymore, so in that sense I felt closer to God.”
Boltz declines to go into specifics about the first time he was with a man, but says he has been dating and lives “a normal gay life” now.
“If you were to hold up the rule book and go, ‘Here are all the rules Christians must live by,’ did I follow every one of those rules all that time? Not at all, you know, because I kind of rejected a lot of things, but I’ve grown some even since then. I guess I felt that the church, that they had it wrong about how I felt with being gay all these years, so maybe they had it wrong about a lot of other things.”
As he sorted out his faith, Boltz began building a new life for himself. He took some graphic design courses. He found he could be almost completely anonymous in Ft. Lauderdale. The mullet he’d sported in the ’80s was long gone and CCM had always been a somewhat insular community.
Boltz says the anonymity was a blessing.
“I didn’t have to be who I was in the past. I didn’t have to fit somebody else’s viewpoint of what they thought I was. I could just be myself and I met a lot of wonderful people.”
New directions
The name on the CD didn’t register with MCC’s Rev. Jeff Miner at first. And that was just fine with Ray Boltz.
Miner liked the Christmas CD and was so impressed he e-mailed Boltz and asked him if he’d ever thought about doing music full time.
Boltz laughed as he read the note.
“He obviously had no idea who I was and I just loved that,” Boltz says. “I just said, ‘Uh, yeah, I used to.’”
Miner showed the CD to the music leaders at MCC Indianapolis who, recognizing Boltz’s name, were dumbfounded that he’d been to their church. When they mentioned some of Boltz’s hits to him, Miner made the connection.
Miner told Boltz if he was ever in the area again — Boltz makes regular trips back to the Midwest to visit family — that he was welcome to sing.
“I was scared to death when he said it,” Boltz says. “But I finally got the courage and said, ‘Yeah.’”
Boltz had no interest in rejuvenating his career but the same musical passion that had driven him since he was a teen, inspired him to use songwriting cathartically. The songs “I Will Choose to Love”
“I was so good at pretending/like an actor on a stage/but in the end nobody knew me/only the roles that I portrayed/and I would rather have you hate me/knowing who I really am/than to try and make you love me/being something that I can’t” (from “God Knows I Tried”).
This started a chain reaction of events that led to this story. Boltz performed at Miner’s church to an enthusiastic reception. Miner then introduced him to Rev. Cindi Love, executive director of the Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, who’d just released a book called “Would Jesus Discriminate,” a discussion of Christianity and homosexuality.
Love speaks highly of Boltz, whom she met in May.
“After I got to know him, I thought, ‘This is one of the most sincere guys I’ve met in a long time,’” she says. “It’s an especially rare thing to see for someone who’s been in the music industry. He’s just clearer. He’s not jumbled up in ego.”
Love invited Boltz to join her at MCC Washington where he sang on May 25 and, even though it was not stated that Boltz is gay, the congregation connected with the songs.
“I didn’t tell them I was gay but I still felt like I was being authentic, that I could be who I was,” Boltz says. “They all jumped up at the end of the song, clapping and all gave me hugs. It was pretty amazing.” (Boltz will return to MCC Washington for a free concert at 3 p.m. on Sept. 21.)
Boltz is clear, though, about his reasons for coming out publicly.
“I really had no master plan here,” he says. “I’ve just been trying to go with the idea that you can either live your life out of love or out of fear. I could just stay here in Florida and be pretty anonymous. I could go work at Wal-Mart or something where nobody knows who I am, but to me, that’s kind of living in fear.”
Though he’s open to performing, Boltz says he doesn’t plan to let this issue take over his life.
“I don’t want to be a spokesperson, I don’t want to be a poster boy for gay Christians, I don’t want to be in a little box on TV with three other people in little boxes screaming about what the Bible says, I don’t want to be some kind of teacher or theologian — I’m just an artist and I’m just going to sing about what I feel and write about what I feel and see where it goes.”
Anti-gay discrimination
Even though Boltz plans no triumphant homecoming to Christian music, there may be rough days ahead. The Contemporary Christian Music scene has traditionally held its artists to much higher standards than their pop counterparts and it’s only been those who’ve shown repentance for their perceived sins, who have been able to rebuild their careers.
Joe Hogue worked for years as a CCM producer in Nashville with acts like Carman, DC Talk, BeBe and CeCe Winans and others, and found the calls for work completely dried up when he divorced his wife and came out.
“There are a lot of closeted people in Christian music,” says Hogue, who now lives in California and works with gay singers like Nemesis and Jason & DeMarco. “And, you know, it’s not even really the artists that care about it so much, they just know their audience will.”
No artist of Boltz’s prominence has come out. A few minor CCM players have, but their decisions were hardly celebrated.
Marsha Stevens, a Jesus Movement songwriter famous for the Christian folk song, “For Those Tears I Died,” a favorite in youth camps and churches for decades, came out in 1980. She was famously renounced by Bill Gaither, whom she’d been photographed with at one of his “Homecoming” concerts, in 2006.
Kirk Talley, a Southern Gospel singer (a slightly different genre than CCM, though there’s some overlap of the players), confessed to struggling with homosexuality and came out in GQ in 2005. He’s continued singing in churches but only because he’s categorized his sexual orientation as a burden to be carried.
Talley initially declined to be interviewed for this story saying he’d “been through enough hell,” but did consent to one comment: “I will definitely be in prayer for Ray,” he said in an e-mail. “He has no idea the crap he will have to endure.”
Others appear to avoid the topic altogether. Though it’s not fair, of course, to assume a Christian singer who never married is gay, speculation has existed in fan circles for years that single CCM artists like Mark Lowry and Margaret Becker might be gay (Lowry has denied that he’s gay; neither Lowry nor Becker responded to interview requests for this story).
Word records, which used to distribute Boltz’s music, didn’t respond to a request seeking comment. The Gospel Music Association, the organization that gives out Dove Awards, said via e-mail that “GMA is a trade organization that works for our members to promote gospel/Christian music, not a religious or political group. As such, we
Gay Christian artists like Jason & DeMarco have never been embraced by the CCM community, but have found a degree of compensation for it in the gay community.
And things may be easing — when Christian DJ Azariah Southworth and Tony Sweet, a runner up on a gospel-music reality show, came out, reaction was muted. But neither have the prominence of a major CCM act.
Even MCC’s Cindi Love anticipates tough times ahead for Boltz.
“He needs to get through this initial coming-out process and just see how that feels,” she says. “A lot of people will probably throw a bunch of stuff at his family. I pray they don’t, but I bet they will.”
Hogue, who worked with Boltz on his 1991 album “Another Child to Hold” and has helped him record a few new songs for a still-evolving possible new project, says he hopes for a day when Christians will see homosexuality as no more a perceived sin than it used to be for women to be ministers or for divorced Christians to hold leadership positions in churches.
“I like to hope for the best, but it will be slow moving,” Hogue says.
Boltz admits to some nervousness, but says ultimately, he isn’t worried.
He doesn’t want to get into debates about scripture and has no plans to “go into First Baptist or an Assembly of God church and run in there and say, ‘I’m gay and you need to love me anyway.’”
For him, the decision to come out is much more personal.
“This is what it really comes down to,” he says. “If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live. It’s not like God made me this way and he’ll send me to hell if I am who he created me to be … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself.”
In his recent reflections on Michael Guglielmucci’s cancer hoax, Brian Houston wrote, “…..It was a two year Academy Award worthy performance as far as I am concerned…..”
I thought that was a bit rich, given the tendency of Pentes towards hamming it up at every opportunity.
So here’s some more Academy Award winning performances from Hill$ong and its related group sects churches.
Best Supporting Actor
Hill$ong guest speaker Jesse Duplantis
‘God told me to get a bigger airplane’
Best Supporting Actress
Hill$ong’s Christine Caine
‘Christians ought to be the spunkiest people on the Earth’
Best Actor
Hill$ong’s Brian Houston
‘You need more money’
Best Actress
Hill$ong’s Darlene Zschech
“Pretending to give a shit about justice and the poor while mistreating the Mercy Ministries girls and raking in the mega-bucks from worship DVD’s, baby’
It turns out Michael Guglielmucci was the Youth Pastor at the Lakes groupsect Christian Life Centre in Perth from 1999 to 2003, before going on to bigger and better lies.
I think it’s worth regurgitating this observation I made on the (original) Signposts blog from January 19, 2007.
“I did a ‘cub report’ a few weeks back on my visit to the Planetshakers church in Perth..in particular it was a Wednesday night meeting of Lakes CLC in Northbridge.
The young people went out of their way to make an old fart like me feel welcome.
However they were being force-fed a lot of shit from the youth pastor [Matt Garner - Michael Guglielmucci's successor] about how good it would be to be rich and the importance of being ‘awesome’…..the usual crap from these churches.
Great young people slowly being corrupted….. is my take on Planetshakers.
And it’s run by a generation of young leaders who were themselves corrupted in the 80’s and 90’s.
So the corrupt culture of false teaching is pretty firmly entrenched.
One of the icky things about Planetshakers at the moment..is the pressure on one of their leaders to ‘be an example of being awesome’ while they’re dealing with cancer.
I haven’t posted much about it, but I’m watching with interest how the church culture deals with something that’s ‘like, wow, hard, man’….”
“The State Government has dropped court proceedings against the Hillsong Church after a number of its buses were caught illegally using the T-Way bus lanes in Sydney’s northwest.
The revelation comes as RailCorp and the Roads and Traffic Authority consider allowing community buses to use the T-Way lanes, which are left virtually empty on the weekends.
The RTA said a procession of Hillsong buses was photographed in the lanes, carting churchgoers between the Baulkham Hills church and convention centre, and Parramatta and Blacktown train stations.
Up to 3,500 mostly young people join the pilgrimage to the massive church campus each weekend. The RTA had threatened court action after Hillsong failed to pay the fines, each worth up to $220.
“A number of potential offences were detected involving Hillsong vehicles,” an RTA spokesman told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
“However, after representations made to the RTA, it was decided on September 5, 2008 that court proceedings against Hillsong buses would not proceed.” The church said the drivers had admitted to using the T-Way lanes.
“Volunteers driving our buses did use T-Way lanes by error, resulting in fines from the RTA which after discussion were later withdrawn,” Hillsong general manager, George Aghajanian told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
“We believe that it would be good use of the T-Way lanes if private buses were able to take advantage of them.”
RailCorp said yesterday that the RTA was now considering opening the T-Way lanes to community buses, including Hillsong.
The buses use RailCorp parking stations whilst waiting for train commuters. “RailCorp is aware of this community buses issue and is working with the RTA to determine if any changes to the bus lane and interchange arrangements would be workable,” the RailCorp spokesman said.
“We will examine what kind of impacts on traffic flow may occur if community bus services were granted to bus lanes and at bus interchanges,” the spokesman added.
The Roads and Traffic Authority said 195 buses use the T-Way in both directions on an average weekday, compared to 108 buses on Saturday and 74 buses on Sunday.”
The Australian political party Family First has been at pains over the years to distance itself from its church roots.
Party members have repeatedly denied direct links between the Assemblies of God group sectschurch and Family First.
Here, clearly and unambiguously, Adelaide Paradise Community Church Senior Pastor Ashley Evans claims the credit for Family First being an initiative of his church.
Evans refers to Family First at 45 second mark of video.
“I have been away overseas while a drama has unfolded in Australia about Michael Guglielmucci… writer of the song ‘Healer’, which has blessed and encouraged so many people.
Michael has confessed to making up the story that he was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal blood cancer and multiple secondary cancers.
This is easily the biggest and most elaborate hoax I have ever personally witnessed. I still am perplexed by it.
I have never felt any reason to question the validity of Michael’s story. I guess you don’t greet such horrific news as cancer with cynicism, and it’s a sad day when we have to do that.
I have known Michael’s parents since we were young people ourselves and they are great and genuine people. When Danny called me in 2006 to tell me of his sons illness I felt absolutely lost for words as he sobbed on the telephone. This family did not deserve such utter pain.
I just didn’t have any reason to doubt his story. There were one or two things that were hard to work out such as how anyone could function with multiple broken bones (I was in agony with one broken elbow, but I just thought I must have been a wimp.)
I saw Michael as an unbelievably gutsy and courageous man who was refusing to just lie down and accept his diagnosis.
I can only ever remember spending any significant length of time with Michael once. Apart from that it was short conversations here and there, and mostly I would hear how he was doing from his dad or from others. If I did get to say hi, I would ask him how he was and he would tell me where he was up to… but after a service one Saturday night when Michael was supposedly in Sydney for “specialized treatment,” I arranged to meet my son Joel outside a tiny apartment in the cities inner west. This is where Michael and his wife were staying. Joel had already been there for a few hours hanging out with Michael, as were one or two others. Michael was apparently in immense pain that night, as the pain killing medication he was taking was wearing off well before the four hours the doctors had instructed it should be, before he take any more.
When I went inside, Michael was sitting on the floor and had… I think… an hour and a half to go before he could take that next dose. The pain was obviously becoming more and more intense as he shook and groaned with sweat-beads clearly breaking out across his brow. Those around him began to gently pray and do what they could to keep him comfortable while Michael himself turned on a recording of his song Healer which he had made in his own bedroom a year or two before.
As the discomfort seemed to be getting worse and worse, I placed my hand on Michael’s head and prayed for healing with all the faith I could muster, whilst inwardly feeling helpless to do anything else but trust God for the miracle that this young man claimed to be SO diligently pursuing.
Eventually Michael could take no more of the pain and said that he was ringing his doctor, which he proceeded to do. (I don’t even know now whether anyone was on the other end of the line or what the pills actually were…but there was nothing to make me doubt it then).
The “doctor” told Michael it would be okay to take another half-dose and that’s what he did. Soon the pain eased again and things became much calmer, though he certainly still looked and acted very sick. A few other friends of Michael’s arrived, pizza was ordered and after about 45 minutes I said my
goodbyes and left.
I drove away that night feeling an overwhelming heaviness for Michael, his wife and his family. I also felt a real sense of pride as I watched those young people rallying around him as indeed they have done all over Australia and in other parts of the world.
That night was the closest I got to seeing first-hand what others witnessed many times. His friends saw him coughing up blood and were there when vomit had to be cleaned up. At other times they dropped him off at the hospital, picking him up hours later as he insisted that he did not want them to come in. There had been a time prior to this, I am told, when Michael’s hair was even falling out in clumps as a result of the “chemotherapy.”
So now we all know that so much of this was not real… but was I personally sucked in?
Yep,100%!!!
It was a two year academy award worthy performance as far as I am concerned.
I never met one person including any doctor, who expressed doubt about Michael’s claims during the two years of this very public farce (or in fact, in the years before that.)
It is amazing how quick some are to comment now… but I guess that is just human nature, as is the premature way in which some lay blame, post blogs or comment in a self serving and self righteous way.
But with Michael’s short confession now readily available, can I say to anyone who doesn’t understand why someone would do so much to hurt and betray so many, that it all makes no sense to me either.
But will it affect my faith in Christ, the power of His Word, and the truth about His heart to save, heal and transform the lives of people?
Absolutely not.
Will it discourage me from believing in people, and desiring to see them flourish? Or will it stop me from giving people opportunities in the future?
No way.
Do I believe the result of this will be catastrophic for the cause of Christ
in our nation?
Definitely Not. I believe that quite the opposite can be true.
Should it cause us all to ‘look honestly at ourselves and endeavour not to
let anything like this happen again?
Yes it should.
Do I feel an empathy with anyone who is feeling angry, confused or betrayed?
Yes I do.
Ultimately only one person really knows what was going on in Michael Guglielmucci’s heart and head… and that is Michael himself.
The scriptures say,
Galatians 6:1 – “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently but watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”
This is a very sad situation but I pray it will spur you to be even more committed to ‘fighting the good fight of faith’ and leading an over comers life.
To live a lifetime in the service of Christ, you will have to make a decision that NO disappointment with an individual or with people generally, can sway you away from that course.
I pray for every person who has been hurt or confused by Michael and I challenge you to… “Having done all, still stand”.
Remember, there are many, many genuine people out there serving God faithfully, and setting an example of faithfulness and tenacity.”
“South Australian police are unlikely to lay criminal charges against “porn pastor” Michael Guglielmucci over the fake cancer donation controversy.
The police say while they have taken a “very proactive approach to it”, no one had made a formal complaint.
The Advertiser understands that Mr Guglielmucci is in hospital receiving psychiatric care after confessing to faking a battle with terminal cancer to hide his 16-year obsession with pornography.
But police say the former pentecostal preacher, who performed his hit song Healer with an oxygen tube in his nose, may not face further investigations. Detective Superintendent Jim Jeffery said police were finalising their investigations.
“Unless further information comes to light or people that may have been affected by Mr Guglielmucci action’s come forward, no further police investigations are likely,” he said.
At the centre of the inquiry was a website, established by a friend of Mr Guglielmucci, asking for donations to the Praying Together for Mike Guglielmucci cancer cause.
“We have tracked that but as far as monetary amounts are concerned, we can’t comment on that,” Det-Supt Jeffery said.
Despite two people complaining to The Advertiser about feeling duped after donating money to cause, police said the majority of people who gave money were interstate.
No one has yet made any formal complaint to police interstate.
Mr Guglielmucci’s father, Danny, the founder of Edge Church at Reynella, yesterday confirmed four people had received refunds after writing to a post office box the church established.
“They were small amounts,” a spokesman said yesterday.
The church has also assisted police with auditing the accounts of Michael Guglielmucci, but despite repeated requests The Advertiser has been unable to view records for those accounts.”
“The Press Council has dismissed a complaint from Benjamin Isaac against the Herald. The ruling said:
Mr Isaac [complained about] aspects of a series of articles about Mercy Ministries’ work with women in crisis, its links with Hillsong Church, and related matters.
In particular, Mr Isaac took issue with an article not concerned directly with Mercy Ministries, but which reported a letter of support for a development proposal in Rosebery by the Hillsong Church. The letter of support came from Caroline Bateson in her role as manager of the South Sydney Police and Community Youth Club. Ms Bateson was a former volunteer worker for Hillsong.
The article included quotes from the club’s chief executive confirming that Ms Bateson ceased working for Hillsong before becoming club manager, that the club had written similar supporting letters for other community organisations, and that other Hillsong members had been club volunteers, but no longer worked there. Sydney’s Deputy Mayor was quoted saying the letter breached the club’s charter and that Ms Bateson had been an active recruiter for Hillsong before taking up her club management role.
Mr Isaac complained that the article insinuated that Ms Bateson had infiltrated the club to act as a Hillsong agent. He also said describing the proposed development as “controversial” was a prejudicial remark, and that the phrase “Hillsong link” in the report’s headline was misleading as the word “link” was usually associated with crime.
Mr Isaac also complained that the article lacked balance and breached a Press Council principle concerning gratuitous emphasis on people’s religion. He wrote two letters to the newspaper, neither of which was published.
The newspaper responded that the articles on the Mercy Ministries had been meticulously researched, used both named and anonymous sources, included relevant associations to religious organisations, and were clearly in the public interest. Officials from Mercy Ministries had been quoted, as had several independent health professionals. The newspaper had published an opinion piece by Peter Irvine, a senior board member of Mercy Ministries, along with a significant number of letters on the matter.
While the newspaper quoted several women who alleged poor treatment or abuse by Mercy Ministries, it also published the favourable remarks of a woman who had graduated from the Mercy program, although information about successful outcomes was not forthcoming from the organisation itself.
Concerning the story about Ms Bateson’s letter of support for the Hillsong development, the newspaper outlined the numerous attempts its journalist had made to contact and meet Ms Bateson, all of which had been rebuffed. Various relevant parties to the matter had been contacted for comment. The newspaper argued that, as well as the clear public interest in the development, it was extremely unusual for a Police and Community Youth Club actively to support a development proposal, especially one of the size and controversy involved.
The Press Council found no breach of its principles of the kind suggested by Mr Isaacs.”
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports…
“The evangelical organisation to which the Hillsong Church belongs has denied Hillsong is using New South Wales public schools to recruit new members.
The state’s Federation of Parents and Citizens says it has received complaints that the Hillsong Church has been trying to convert public school students through events called ‘Exo days’.
Federation president Dianne Giblin says the church is using its young people to go into schools and host barbecues in about 30 schools across the state.
The events are administered by the Youth Alive initiative, which is linked to Hillsong.
But the Australian Christian Churches’ National Ministries director, Keith Ainge, says attendance is not compulsory and students are made well aware of what the events entail.
“It’s totally voluntary and they understand what they’re going for… it’s going to be a day of encouragement and a day of fun really,” Mr Ainge said.
“It’s certainly not a recruiting thing in the sense of going out and just trying to grab people. It’s a ministry to people and obviously if people want to join the youth group, then they are going to do that.”
NSW Greens MP John Kaye says he has also received a number of complaints from teachers about the ‘Exo days’.
Mr Kaye says the new Education Minister, Verity Firth, should step in.
“The Education Department is calling it a cultural event but that’s not true. It’s an event which is designed to convert children to the Assemblies of God religion.”
“In a Brampton courtroom, Diana Carrol finally faced down the Mississauga church accountant she has accused of sexual assault.
But she stood practically alone.
Her former employer, the high-powered female televangelist behind the multimillion-dollar-generating Kingdom Covenant International was nowhere to be found.
In fact, not only has Dr. Pat Francis of Vision TV fame never offered a word of support or sympathy to Carrol but her church continues to employ the accused.
But then there is no brotherly love these days for Carrol, no offers of Christian charity, despite her 14 years at Kingdom Covenant International — first as devoted congregant and volunteer and then employee.
Not when she threatened the church by bringing this charge against their accountant.
And not when she went even further and dared to launch a $6.8-million lawsuit against the evangelical church for failing to protect her.
“What I have gone through is hell,” she says of coming forward against her former church. “You lose everything.”
But yesterday, there was finally some good news for her to celebrate. After a preliminary hearing the previous day, the judge decided to commit Anthony “Prem” Fernando to trial for sex assault.
“I’m elated,” said the 39-year-old, who has racked up thousands in debt, lost her house and has been on doctor-ordered stress leave since she left her job as the church’s production supervisor last September. “It’s been a trying and very, very difficult year but I believe the year ahead will be much better.”
In 2003, when she began working in Pat Francis Ministries, the media arm of the church, Carrol was showered with thank-you cards and gifts from the charismatic Francis, who would often call her “Princess.”
But she says her dream job soon turned ugly.
In her lawsuit filed in March against her alleged abuser, the church, the director of human resources, Francis and three other pastors, Carrol claims that over 21 months, she was sexually harassed and assaulted by a supervisor who touched her buttocks on several occasions and pressed his body against hers.
Trying to protect the church, she says she tried to deal with it on her own. When she finally felt compelled to go to her superiors, Carrol expected that he would be fired or disciplined.
Instead, despite her many tearful complaints to church officials, she claims virtually nothing was done.
None of the allegations has been proven in court.
In July, the superior court dismissed Carrol’s claims against the six individuals, struck out many of the paragraphs she had written herself before she had a lawyer and asked her to submit a revised statement of claim against the church within 90 days.
Through their lawyer, Kingdom Covenant International has insisted Carrol’s lawsuit is without merit, but declined further comment while it is before the courts.
“We find Ms Carrol’s allegations troubling because they are such a departure from the life-changing and uplifting message that we share with more than 3,000 members of our fellowship every week,” the church said in a statement after her lawsuit was filed.
Carrol knew that going against Kingdom Covenant International would be difficult — millions around the world tune in to watch Pastor Pat preach the gospel on her weekly television show, Washed by the Word, and the church’s reputation is at stake.
So she has become the pariah, while the employee who will now stand trial for sexual assault continues to work in the bosom of the church. Why would that be? Francis was out of the country and unavailable to comment while another pastor in her place would only say, “I’m not going to answer that.”
WHISPER CAMPAIGN
While she is happy there will be a trial, Carrol still cannot believe she is in the midst of this nightmare — with the church she once loved turning its back on her and its supporters launching whispering campaigns against her.
“You’re either with us or you’re going to hell,” she says of their attitude. “I was a member there for 14 years and not one person from that church has called me. Not even one. That’s the caring, loving church. That’s how they extend the loving hand of God. It’s disgusting.
“The church is not the church. It’s the gospel superstar show.”
“At the Pentecostal church where Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin worshipped for more than two decades, congregants speak in tongues and are part of a faith that believes humanity is in its “end times” — the days preceding a world-ending cataclysm bringing Christian redemption and the second coming of Jesus.
The Rev. Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Pentecostal church, Wasilla Assembly of God, says he has told church members that God put President George W. Bush in office and that America is locked in a “holy war” with terrorists.
Mr. Kalnins’s views and the teachings of his church provide a glimpse of the religious upbringing of Gov. Palin, 44 years old, whose Christian credentials and antiabortion views have been lauded by social conservatives. Gov. Palin hasn’t discussed her personal and spiritual beliefs since she was named to Sen. John McCain’s ticket on Friday, and the campaign hasn’t been eager to discuss them.
“I am not going to get into that. I think talking about where she worships today and how she characterizes herself speaks for itself about where she is today on this issue,” says Maria Comella, a campaign spokeswoman.
As a junior high schooler, Gov. Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God, where she attended with her family until 2002 before joining another church, which is evangelical and nondenominational, according to Mr. Kalnins, the pastor since 1999. He said the governor has continued to visit his church for meetings and conferences.
At Mr. Kalnins’s invitation, Gov. Palin appeared on stage in June before a youth group at Wassila Assembly of God, where she reminisced fondly about getting baptized there, before asking the young people to pray for a proposed natural-gas pipeline in Alaska and for American soldiers.
“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country,” Gov. Palin said, in a video of the talk posted on the church’s Web site. Pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure we’re praying for: that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”
David Gushee, a Christian ethicist at Mercer University in Atlanta, says he is troubled that a public official might presume that government action could be God’s intent. “I would never think it is appropriate to describe the actions of the United States military or the strategies of our commanders as a plan from God,” Mr. Gushee says.
Mr. Gushee says Gov. Palin should explain her beliefs concerning the inevitability of a cataclysm and the end of time. “To me, it is highly relevant to someone who potentially has her hand on the nuclear button,” he says. “If that is her worldview, I would want to know about that.”
The McCain campaign has said Gov. Palin was baptized as an infant in the Catholic Church and that for the last seven years, she and her family have attended the Wasilla Bible Church, a nondenominational church in Wasilla. The church is evangelical, though not Pentecostal or charismatic, and believers don’t speak in tongues, said its pastor, the Rev. Larry Kroon. He described the church’s teachings as “so normal.” Several sermons, posted on the Internet, discuss aspects of common Christian theology, such as the significance of communion.
While in Juneau, the state capital, Gov. Palin attends the Juneau Christian Center, an Assemblies of God church, while in session, said her spokeswoman, Sharon Leighow.
At the Wasilla Assembly of God, Mr. Kalnins’s predecessor, the Rev. Tim McGraw, who served until 1998, says Gov. Palin attended a “discipleship class … to deepen her faith in Christ” and worshipped at the church at least twice a week.
The Wasilla Assembly of God and its parent denomination — the three-million member General Council of the Assemblies of God — espouse core beliefs not widely ascribed to by major Christian factions. Many members pray in undecipherable sounds or “tongues.” The denomination’s Web site says some scholars believe that the “end times” foreshadowing the end of the world was confirmed in 1948, with the founding of the state of Israel, marking the Jews’ return to the Holy Land, fulfilling a Biblical prophecy. The Assemblies of God is part of a Pentecostal movement that numbers 80 million people world-wide.
The Bible, Mr. Kalnins said in an interview, foretells world events. “I don’t think it’s God’s will to have a war,” he says. But in Iraq, America is fighting an enemy that has made it a war over beliefs, he said. “I really think it is a holy war. It’s a war of gods. … When someone fights in the name of God, that becomes a holy war.”
Mr. Kalnins is an enthusiastic supporter of “Governor Sarah,” as he calls her, and of President George W. Bush, who, he believes, was put in office by the hand of the divine. “I believe criticisms come from hell. God has placed this man in authority. … You criticize the authority, you’re literally bringing in hell with the criticism.”
“Donations to the Oral Roberts Ministry were deposited into an unmarked, miscellaneous account and various other ORU accounts, despite their earmarks, according to the affidavit of a former ministry employee and ORU student.
The affidavit and other court documents were filed Wednesday in the lawsuit of a former ORU accountant who alleges that he was forced to “falsely list thousands of dollars as expenses rather than assets.”
The assets were then allegedly used to remodel the home of former ORU President Richard Roberts and his wife, Lindsay Roberts, thereby defrauding the IRS and the public.
The accountant, Trent Huddleston, was forced to quit because he would not stay quiet about the practice, according to the lawsuit.
A hearing slated Friday in the lawsuit will be rescheduled because of the illness of one of the defendants’ lawyers.
A new date has not been set for Huddleston’s case against ORU and its leaders. It was filed in November.
Vanessa Patrick alleges in the affidavit that she once handled a $500 donation meant for a student who could not otherwise afford to go to ORU but which was instead deposited into a miscellaneous account.
When she went to supervisors to report the irregularities, she was intimidated and told, “This is the way things work. If you don’t like the way it works, then you can leave,” according to the affidavit.
Patrick has resigned and left the ministry and the university.
In court documents filed Wednesday in the case, Huddleston’s attorneys deny ORU’s claims that no written records exist for an audit conducted at ORU by a Washington, D.C., law firm in October.
ORU has maintained that it was an oral audit delivered to the board of regents and that no written records exist.
Huddleston’s lawyers have requested that ORU release the audit report, bank accounts and ledgers from the time period Huddleston worked for ORU, and documentation from meetings of the board of regents.
ORU has refused to do so, and its lawyers said the requests were overly broad, unduly burdensome and, in some cases, irrelevant.
In the documents filed Wednesday, Huddleston’s lawyers said that if the audit was delivered orally to the regents, it is “ridiculous to now allege that the requested meeting records are irrelevant and that the report ‘does not exist.’ “
Allegations of misspending of university funds by Richard and Lindsay Roberts were first leveled in an October lawsuit by three former ORU professors who said the Robertses used university money to support a lavish lifestyle.
The Robertses have denied the allegations.
Richard Roberts resigned in November, and Yukon businessman Mart Green and his family later gave $70 million to the university, which had announced that it was $55 million in debt.
ORU has since created a new board of trustees, with Green as chairman, and reduced its debt to about $19 million.
A presidential search has been narrowed to about 25 candidates, and the trustees expect to name a president by next [northern] summer.”
“In a sign of rising election fever, a City of Sydney councillor is considering suing a fellow councillor following accusations he took part in secret “multimillion-dollar wheeling and dealings” with Hillsong Church.
Cr John McInerney, a close political ally of the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, said the accusations made by Liberal councillor Shayne Mallard at a council meeting on Monday night were untrue. “I have asked for legal advice as to defamation by what he said last night,” Cr McInerney said yesterday.
The slanging match concerned plans by Hillsong Church to build a $78 million, 2700-seat church in southern Sydney.
Cr Mallard publicly asked Cr McInerney to confirm he had attended a meeting with senior council staff, representatives of Hillsong and a property adviser, in which the church was advised to withdraw its development application for a site in Rosebery in favour of purchasing a council property, the former South Sydney Hospital in Joynton Avenue.
He also asked the Lord Mayor what she knew about “Cr McInerney’s multimillion-dollar wheeling and dealings with Hillsong while a member of the Central Sydney Planning Committee”.
“Can’t you see there’s a conflict there? It’s a cover-up and people have a right to know,” Cr Mallard said on Monday night.
The church withdrew the development application for the Rosebery site in June after independent experts hired by the council found the proposal was too large and would cause traffic problems. Hillsong Church subsequently offered to buy the former South Sydney Hospital site from the council but the council instead called for expressions of interest in the site from the wider market.
Cr McInerney confirmed that he and council staff met Hillsong late last year but said he did not encourage its representatives to buy the council property.
“I said they should be looking for another site closer to Green Square station. To extrapolate from there and say I was trying to sell the site council owned, well, that’s dreamland,” Cr McInerney said yesterday. “We have been very straightforward.”
Graeme Grace, from the Rosebery Residents Action Group, said the group did not support such a large development at either site.
“We don’t believe a mega-church should be located in an inner-city area,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with council having discussions with any developer about any proposal if it is later put on exhibition.”
Former Australian Assemblies of God General Secretary Philip Powell writes…
“……Obviously Michael and his family need our prayers, but what the Church does NOT need is another lack of total transparency from leaders who practice lies and deceit in an attempt at damage control. Danny Guglielmucci, Michael’s father has a reputation to protect, both his own as a prominent leader of AoG–recently repackaged as the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) and that of his mega-Church, Edge Church Reynella, South Australia.
Some will say that we should not speculate as to whether Danny is telling the truth when he claims that their son misled everyone, including him and his wife, by Michael’s bogus claim to have terminal cancer, plus the implied suggestion that as parents they did not know until the disclosure about the bogus claim of their son’s 16 year obsession with pornography, which has now been confessed. Both claims stretch credulity. Were they naïve, irresponsible as parents, or just totally uncaring? Having parented three sons and a daughter I put myself and my wife in their position. How would we have acted if a son claimed he had terminal cancer? In a video interview Danny admits he dropped Michael off at hospital for what he now knows were non-existent appointments. Is it feasible that he or his wife did not inquire about the report and if they inquired would this not have revealed the true situation? It is admitted that this went on for two years, during which time knowingly or in ignorance Danny contributed to his son’s fraud?
These are questions which really do demand answers. You’d think that the AoG would have learnt their lesson following the attempted cover-up concerning Frank Houston and his paedophilia. Is the Guglielmuccisaga just another big con in another attempted cover-up by the AoG (ACC) hierarchy?……”
“On Saturday, I stopped in at the local Christian bookstore. While I was there, I asked the clerk if she’d heard anything about Hillsong recalling their product, because some of my readers in Australia said the ministry was recutting the video to remove Guglielmucci’s segment talking about cancer. No one at the store had even heard anything about Gugliemucci’s confession, and they were concerned that customers should know before they bought the DVD.
Then that afternoon I got a newsletter from a local church that included a message from the pastor about Mike Guglielmucci – using his story of cancer to illuminate the lesson that God always supplies our needs. I then heard about another church that had used the video of Guglielmucci performing with oxygen to lead off a series on the miracles.
Sigh. Again, I’m not sure what happens now. Do these pastors end up with egg on their face? Does the gist of their message change, just because the example they used did? …..”
“……….Probably my favorite part was when [the pastor] addressed a situation that he said sometimes happens at Hillsong. I thought it was so great. He said sometimes a member will come to him and say, “we are going to leave the church because we want to go somewhere where we can get a deeper message”. saying, the messages aren’t deep enough or exigetical enough. The pastor had the best response to it, He said on average the messages that we hear at Hillsong are not super deep, not so intense that they would maybe stump someone to the point that they would need to get the CD to hear it again because it was packed so full of intense biblical teaching…….”
Are President Pringle and Christian Sh*tty Church First Lady Christine really staying this week in the Presidential suite of Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach Hilton for the C3global Conference?
“1-Bdrm Presidential Suite – From $4100.00 [per night] + tax 2-Bdrm Presidential Suite – From $4600.00 [per night] + tax”
Isn’t all Christianity exploitative?
That would be the view of many who’ve never had contact with this curious religion but as one who’s been on the inside, I can definitively say there are bright sides and darker sides to Christianity.
Some of the most wonderful people I have met and observed have ... Continue reading »
