This is from a recent Hill$ong podcast, about six months after Mercy Ministries’ abusive practices were exposed by the Sydney Morning Herald.
It’s audio from a church service in which Houston gives a cheerio from the stage to the international board members of Mercy Ministries who are visiting the Sydney congregation.
BTW, the reason why I haven’t reposted the Nashville Scene article on Nancy Alcorn here, is because I’d first like to see corroboration from more than one person about her …um…..’friendships’.
It was a well-written and researched article, but I think it needs some more verification before being accepted as fact (which it may well be, but I’d like to see more people with direct knowledge of the situation coming forward)
“Tribulation has stalked three Colorado Springs churches in unusual ways. After being turned away Sunday by the first, I was inspired to drop in on the other two, to see how they were doing:
Trinity Missionary Baptist Church: Everybody’s dressed elegantly, in crisp suits, high heels, beautiful hats. Appearances aside, since May police have been called here nine times to investigate fisticuffs among church members – lending new meaning to the term “spirit-filled.”
“Even the city attorney ended up out there,” Sgt. Jeff Maxson, a community relations officer, told me last week. It’s an age-old complaint – the pastor’s leadership. But I couldn’t find out more because Pastor James Dotson left the pulpit to tell me himself, politely, he never does business on Sunday (or talk to reporters).
“It’s very difficult to sort out,” Maxson said, describing it as “a personality clash” with the pastor, who “rubbed some church members the wrong way.”
The last clash, mostly pushing and shoving, was three weeks ago. There have been harassment complaints, too.
“We got scars; we’ve been through some things,” prayed Associate Pastor Josie Funchess, “but Lord, we are still here!”
And the crowd shouted “Amen!” which will have to be the final word for now.
Grace Church & St. Stephen’s: This gothic landmark has had it all: prestige, prosperity, a storied history – and now, a fight to the death with its former mother church, the Episcopal Diocese.
Out of the limelight for a year, the Rev. Don Armstrong had some fresh news Sunday about the legal battle over who owns this stately property.
The rupture, as in many dioceses around the country, revolves around conservative parishes rejecting the increasingly malleable doctrines of the Episcopal Church for strict, traditional Anglicanism.
Armstrong announced that three former vestry members are being deposed today in the ongoing civil lawsuit, which goes to trial in February. (He’ll be deposed soon.)
Still master of the dramatic quote, Armstrong asked for prayers for the vestry members. “Interrogations by the other side are not pretty – pray they can face the enemy who challenges us,” he said.
After losing one-third of his parishioners, membership is now back up to 1,400, he told me. Later this year the parish will be joining a newly created province of conservative Anglican churches. And how will he feel if the diocese gets the property? Armstrong shrugged: “Our community is not defined by a building.”
New Life Church: Here’s tribulation only a fiction writer could love: In 2006, super-evangelist Ted Haggard disgraced the church with a sex scandal. A year later, a gun-wielding maniac stormed the church, killing two.
But this Sunday, it was clear that New Life was, well, brimming with it. The lobby, once refuge to brave-faced loyalists, exploded with people. The bookstore, which had been down to a skinny selection of titles (especially after Haggard’s books were removed), looked like Barnes & Noble.
Members say the new pastor, the Rev. Brady Boyd, has restored the 11,000-member church with his Bible-and-person-centered style (“God knows you – and he’s crazy about you!”). A French film crew was waiting to interview him on the American election, yet Boyd lingered for 30 minutes or so, just to schmooze with his flock.
“I still get a ton of attention from all over the world,” Boyd said later, with a shrug and a take-it-or-leave-it smile.
His wife, Pam, would rather leave it. These days, she said, “We’re trying to keep New Life out of the news.”
“Crystal Cathedral founder Robert H. Schuller’s son, who was removed from the church’s weekly “Hour of Power” syndicated TV broadcast, said Monday that he is “very sad” not to be a part of the Orange County mega church’s popular program any more.
“It feels surreal not to be part of something that I was born into,” said the 54-year-old Robert A. Schuller.
He said his removal from the program had nothing to do with his preaching style or his vision for the church’s future.
“But it had a lot to do with the style of administration,” the younger Schuller said. He declined to elaborate, but said his removal had to do with the Cathedral’s president and board members.
“I don’t think my father had much of a say in it,” he said.
Rev. Robert H. Schuller told his congregation Sunday that his son would no longer be the preacher for the “Hour of Power.” Instead, the program would have a guest pastor each week to preach during the show. The 82-year-old Schuller had turned over the church ministries and the TV program to his son during an emotional service at the Crystal Cathedral in January 2006.
The older Schuller explained Sunday that he and his son lacked a shared vision.
“Hour of Power,” since its first airing in 1970, is currently broadcast to about 20 million viewers in more than a dozen countries worldwide.
Robert A. Schuller said today that his dream and vision was to see the “Hour of Power” grow into an international phenomenon.
“I wanted the “Hour of Power” to be seen on every screen in the world,” he says. “And by that I mean every iPod and every computer and cell phone screen. That was a doable thing for us.”
He had personally visited countries such as Australia, New Zealand, China, Russia, The Netherlands and South Africa, popularizing the program and setting up offices.
“We wanted to expand to China and India where the opportunities are simply abundant,” he said.
He said he “saw this coming” after July 9 when the church’s board named Jim Penner as CEO, Jim Coleman as president and Fred Southard as the Chief Financial Officer.
But John Charles, Crystal Cathedral spokesman, said the decision was made because of “a lack of shared vision.” The church’s principals told him that the younger Schuller’s removal was definitely not “planned” when they took over leadership, Charles said.
“(Robert A. Schuller) still remains our senior pastor,” Charles said. “The church has no plans of looking for another pastor.”
Schuller could also return, if he chooses, to be one of the preachers at the “Hour of Power.”
But the younger Schuller says he is still coming to grips with the latest developments. He says his earliest memories of the Crystal Cathedral were that of sitting on the wooden benches in the Orange Drive-In Theater – even before the landmark church was built just down the street.
“I’ve had several touching, moving experiences as part of the program,” Schuller said. “Today I’m just sad.”
Robert A. Schuller, however, has “very exciting” plans for the future.
“I can’t reveal what they are for at least two weeks,” he said. But it will be along the lines of what he was doing for the Crystal Cathedral, Schuller said.
He says the biggest accomplishment of the “Hour of Power” program was that it was transforming the theology of the church across America from “a negative theology to a positive theology.”
“Historically, there has been a tremendous emphasis on sin,” he said. “Crystal Cathedral was largely responsible for developing self-esteem among the faithful. This church has taken the Gospel in a positive light and spread that positive message around the world.”
The church would hopefully “begin the healing process” after what could have been a divisive issue within, said Marvin Meyer, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Chapman University.
“These issues can be quite contentious and painful, especially for the (Schuller) family,” he said. “It would really help the Cathedral to discuss the matter openly unless it involves internal family issues.”
Meyer said he has observed that the Schullers had different preaching styles.
“The younger Schuller always based his sermons on the scripture, quoting from and referring to specific passages in the Bible,” he said. “The older Schuller’s sermons were more thematic. He drew a lot of what he said from his own books.”
This could also be an important time for the “Hour of Power” program, Meyer said.
“The “Hour of Power” in my opinion is more restrained and helpful than other programs of this kind,” he said. “The decisions the new leadership makes could well determine the course and tone of broadcasts in the coming years.”
And later…reflections from former Assemblies of God pastor Jim Bakker and his 1996 autobiographical book, ‘I Was Wrong’.
(Bakker spent 5 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy)
“About the time of my parole hearing (1993), I completed my study of all the words of Jesus in the New Testament. To my surprise, after months of studying Jesus, I concluded that He did not have one good thing to say about money. Most of Jesus’ statements about riches, wealth, and material gain were in a negative context. Even “The Prodigal Son,” one of my favorite stories told by Jesus, took on new meaning as I read it again for the first time with an overview of Scripture in mind. I quickly noticed that the story began with the younger brother saying to the father, “Give me! Give me my part of the inheritance” (Luke 15:12). He didn’t even say, “Please give me.” He simply demanded. Before long, that young man landed in the pigpen. I began to see that the fastest way to the pigpen begins with “Give me” … and the fastest route to the “big pen,” the federal penitentiary, often begins with the same phrase, “Give me!”
I was amazed at this “new” revelation, but beyond that, I was deeply concerned. As the true impact of Jesus’ words regarding money impacted my heart and mind, I became physically nauseated. I was wrong. I was wrong! Wrong in my lifestyle, certainly, but even more fundamentally, wrong in my understanding of the Bible’s true message. Not only was I wrong, but I was teaching the opposite of what Jesus had said. That is what broke my heart; when I came to the awareness that I had actually been contradicting Christ, I was horrified.
For years I had embraced and espoused a gospel that some skeptics had branded a “prosperity gospel.” I didn’t mind the label; on the contrary, I was proud of it. “You’re absolutely right!” I’d say to critics and friends alike. “I preach it and live it! I believe in a God who wants to bless His people. Look at all the rich saints in the Old Testament. And the New Testament clearly say that above all, God wants us to prosper even as our souls prosper. If your soul is prospering, you should be prospering materially as well!”
I even got to the point where I was teaching people at PTL. “Don’t pray, ‘God, Your will be done,’ when you’re praying for health or wealth. You already know it is God’s will for you to have those things! To ask God to confirm His will when He has already told you what His will is in a matter is an insult to God. It is as though you don’t really trust Him or believe that He is as good as His Word. Instead of praying ‘Thy will be done’ when you want a new car, just claim it. Pray specifically and tell God what kind you want. Be sure to specify which options and what color you want too.”
Such arrogance! Such foolishness! Such sin! The Bible says we are not to presume upon God, but we should say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that” (James 4:15).
I may not always have been so blatant about it, but I often preached a prosperity message at Heritage USA and on our PTL television programs. But when I began to study the Scriptures in depth while in prison, something I am embarrassed and ashamed to admit that I rarely took time to do during the hectic years of constant building and ministering at PTL, I was very distressed at what I discovered. I realised that for years I helped propagate an impostor, not a true gospel, but another gospel – a gospel that stated “God wants you to be rich!” Christians should have the best because we are children of God, “King’s Kids,” as I often put it. And shouldn’t the King’s kids have the best this world had to offer?
The more I studied the Bible, however, I had to admit that the prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of Scripture. My heart was crushed to think that I led so many people astray. I was appalled that I could have been so wrong, and I was deeply grateful that God had not struck me dead as a false prophet!
How could I have taught and even written books on the subject of “how to get rich” when Jesus spoke so clearly about the dangers of earthly riches? One of the statements of Jesus that kept echoing in my head and heart was in the parable of the sower, where Jesus said that “the cares of this world, the deceitulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). The deceitfulness of riches. The more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that I had fallen into that snare. I had allowed the quest for material possessions and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts for other things to choke the Word of God in my own life and in the lives of my family members and coworkers. As PTL grew larger and our ministry more widespread, I had a financial tiger by the tail, and just coming up with enough money to meet the daily budgets dominated my thoughts and my time.
In prison, I decided to dig into the Scriptures further to see what else Jesus had to say about money. I noticed that He said,
Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:19-21 NIV)
Another Scripture that seared into my heart was Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot sere both God and Money” (NIV). In that same passage, I discovered that God’s priorities were much different from what mine had been.
Jesus said,
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? .. So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matt. 6:25, 31-33 NIV)
Other teachings of of Jesus scored direct hits upon my heart, as well: “But woe unto you who are rich, / for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6:24 NIV). “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matt. 16:24 NIV). This verse dramatically illustrated the stark contrast between what Jesus taught and what I had been teaching. I had taught that Christians could have the best of both worlds, the best that this world had to offer and heaven too. Jesus said, “Deny yourself.”
Jesus taught, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:24 NIV). Unwittingly, I had tried to explain this verse away with the help of modern scholarship. I had taught people that the “eye of the needle” of what Jesus spoke of was a low arch in the Holy Land. Supposedly, a camel carrying a heavy load had to get down on its knees to slip through the “eye of the needle.” This was the explanation that I had heard from other prosperity teachers whom I had admired and respected, so I simply passed on their explanation as fact without really examining the verse carefully, especially in the original Greek. Nor had I consulted any Bible dictionaries or encyclopedias. If I had done so, I might have found that not a shred of reputable archaeological or historic evidence supports the came-through-the-arch theory.
In prison, however, when I took time to study the meaning of Jesus’ words in the original Greek language, I discovered that Jesus was not talking about camels walking on their knees at all. The word He used was one commonly used to describe a sewing needle, not an archway. In other words, the verse meant exactly what it said: It may not be impossible for a rich man to enter heaven, but apart from a miracle, he doesn’t stand a chance!
In my cell, I studied the Bible long hours into the night. Often as the sun rose in the eastern sky, I was still poring over the Scriptures. The more I studied, the more I had to face the awful truth: I had been preaching false doctrine for years and hadn’t even known it!
Tragically, too late, I recognized that at PTL I had been doing just the opposite of Jesus’ words by teaching people to fall in love with money. Jesus never equated His blessings with material things, but I had done just that. I had laid so much emphasis upon material things, I was subtly encouraging people to put their hearts into things, rather than into Jesus.
Was Heritage USA of God? I believe it was; I believe the original concept was His and that He planted it in my heart. But as I said before, Heritage USA – with all its facilities and buildings – was the box, the package. The box was meant to enhance people’s appreciation of the true gift, Jesus Christ, but before long, many people began to worship the box … and I allowed them to do so; no, I encouraged them to do so by what I was teaching and by the manner in which I was living. I lived the prosperity message I was preaching. I should have taught people to fall in love with Jesus rather than the trappings.
I began to share some of the things I was learning with several of the Christian inmates with whom I often discussed the Bible. I was stunned by their responses. Rather than being excited that I had finally come to a knowledge of the truth, they were aghast that I was denying what they considered to be sound spiritual principles taught by sincere men and women of God.
“Yes, but doesn’t Jesus also say that He came that we might have an abundant life?” asked David, an inmate whose background was steeped in the prosperity message. We turned to John 10:10 and read, “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly” (KJV). It was a wonderful statement by Jesus Himself, so I could easily see how David had related it to material prosperity. As we looked up the words in a Greek-English dictionary, however, we found that the Greek word for “life” used in this verse was zoe, a word indicating “life in the spirit and soul” rather than the world bios which is used to refer to physical, material life. Of the two words, zoe is usually considered the more noble, higher word. Basically, Jesus was saying, “I want you to have an abundant life in the spirit, which is My highest and best for you.”
“Hey, that verse doesn’t have anything to do with material prosperity,” David said, as the light turned on in his heart and mind. “If abundant life meant having houses, cars, riches, parties and entertainment, then I guess the world is experiencing abundant life. Yet we have more hatred, disease, and pain than ever.” “Not only that, ” piped up Jorge, a Spanish guy with a big smile who had walked into my cell and was leaning up against the bunks as he watched David and me searching through the Bible reference books, “but if you’re figurin’ how much God loves you by how much money you have, or what kind of car you drive, or how big a house you live in, what happens when all that stuff is gone?” Jorge had hit the nail right on the head.
The next night after work, David and Jorge were back. David has talked to his Christian girlfriend on the telephone that afternoon and she had told him, “Of course God wants us to prosper, David. You know the Bible even says so in 3 John, verse two.” I knew the verse well. It had been my favorite “prosperity verse” for years; it was the premier New Testament verse upon which I had built my prosperity message and lifestyle. The verse reads: “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (KJV).
I had preached on this verse for most of my ministry. It said exactly what I believed – that God wanted His people to prosper, and by that, I interpreted it to mean prosper financially and materially, in other words, to get rich. Again, I never really examined the true meaning of the text, nor did I ever seriously consider why this verse, on the surface anyhow, seemed to contradict so much of what the New Testament said in other places. I simply pulled this verse out of context and took it to the bank – literally!
“First of all, let’s look at this verse, David,” I said. “We have to take the whole counsel of God’s Word, just like Jesus says in Matthew 4:4. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’” We began going through the verse, word by word, deciphering the meaning from the Greek with the help of a few Bible reference books someone had sent me. I didn’t tell David that I had been tearing this verse apart for nearly two years and trying to find where it fit with the message of Jesus.
It did not fit. No matter how hard I tried to make my former interpretation of 3 John 2 consistent with the words of Jesus, the verse as I had understood it simply did not make sense. How could John be saying, “above all things, I want you to prosper”? First, David and I looked up the meaning of the word prosper in a dictionary. The various forms of the word all had one common meaning: “to increase in wealth.”
“David, tell me something,” I said pausing and pointing to the Bible. “Jesus said that our number one concern was to love God supremely; after that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Why, then, would John say that ‘above all’ I should have wealth?”
“I don’t know, Jim,” David replied. “What do you think?”
I ignored David’s question and asked him another. “Do you think God wants you to have money above your soul’s salvation?”
“No. Of course not!”
“Well, then let’s find out what these words mean,” I suggested. I suddenly remembered one of my Bible professors warning me never to look up Biblical words in an English dictionary, because the words might have a completely different meaning than in the original biblical languages. I pulled a Bible dictionary and Greek lexicon off the shelf.
We looked up the meaning of the word prosper. We found the word translated “prosper” in the King James Version of the Bible came from a Greek word, eudoo, which is made up of two Greek root words, eu, which means “good,” and hodos, which means “road, or route, a progress, or journey.” We did not find a single reference in the Greek to money, riches or material gain from the word translated prosper in the King James Version.
The apostle John, the writer, was saying simply, “I wish you a good, safe, and healthy journey throughout your life, even as your soul has a good and safe journey to heaven.”
John was not saying “Above everything else, I want you to get rich. Above everything, you should prosper and make money.” That is not even implied in the true meaning of the verse. Yet I had based much of my philosophy at PTL and even before that on this one verse that I had totally misunderstood!
Just to make certain that we were not unfairly placing too much emphasis upon the words in this passage, I began looking up other places where the same words were found in the Bible. I found eudoo again, for example, in Romans 1:10. The apostle Paul wrote, “Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you” (KJV). Paul often took special care to make sure that his motivation could not be misconstrued or maligned because of money. It would be unthinkable for the apostle to say, “Please pray for me that somehow or other I might obtain wealth by coming to preach to you,” or “Please pray that I will make a lot of money on this trip.” Yet that is how Romans 1:10 would have to be interpreted if we took the King James Version translation of eudoo to mean wealth or material gain. Clearly, that was not the intent of the apostle Paul. He was saying simply, “I sure hope God grants me an opportunity to visit you soon. Please pray that I will have a good journey on the road as I travel to see you.”
The apostle John was saying something very similar when he said, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” It was a greeting, a prayerful desire of the apostle’s, not a principle suggesting Christians should be wealthy.
David reluctantly agreed that to base a prosperity doctrine on this verse would be shaky indeed, but he was not yet ready to abandon his belief in the prosperity message with which he had been indoctrinated. He took some of the notes from our study sessions and wrote to several leading “prosperity preachers,” some of whom were close friends of mine. Day after day, David was back, armed with more books sent to him by prosperity teachers.
“Jim, look at this!” David said as he pointed to a passage in the Old Testament to see that he had been referred by some of my friends to Deuteronomy 8:18. I had used the verse myself in countless messages and appeals for money. The verse reads, “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore unto thy fathers, as it is this day” (KJV).
At first glance, the verse did seem to support the idea that God is the one who gives us the power to get rich. When David and I read the verse in context with the entire passage of Deuteronomy 8:1-18, however, it took on a different meaning. We realized that what God is actually saying to His people in this passage is, “When I bring you out of Egypt into the Promised Land and you are enjoying the blessings I have given to you, don’t think that you have been successful in your own strength. Don’t say that it is your own power, that you did all this yourself.” The Lord then warns His people to remember that He is the one who deserves the glory. All God was saying was “When you get into the Promised Land, don’t forget who brought you there and gave to you everything that you have.”
David and I dug into the words in the passage, looking especially at the word translated wealth. By looking up wealth in a Hebrew lexicon, we discovered that it comes from the Hebrew word chayil which is used 232 times in the Old Testament. In almost every case, the word is meant to imply, “might, strength, power, ability, virtue, valor,” and, oh, yes: “wealth.” It is used most often to describe valiant men and women and armies.
As David and I read the passage with new understanding, we concluded that God was not saying, “I am the one who gives you riches.” What He really was saying was: “Remember, it is God who has given you the power to receive everything you have. He is the one who has given you strength. He is the one who has given you a house, land, or other possessions.”
I admit, in the past I had used this verse to make it sound as though it was God’s will to make everyone wealthy and if any of His people were poor it was probably due to lack of faith or not applying the biblical “formulas” correctly. That was an improper interpretation of the passage. Yes, it is God who gives us the power to receive all that we have, but to assume that He wants all His people to be wealthy based on this Scripture is an illegitimate extension of that truth.
As David and I studied the Scriptures concerning material wealth, he became convinced that the Bible does not teach that God wants us to be rich in material possessions. “But Jim, doesn’t God want to bless His people?” David asked. “Of course He does,” I replied, “but we don’t have to twist the Scriptures into saying something they don’t mean. There are plenty of passages in the Bible that tell us that God will provide for us, and as we honor Him by using the resources that He gives us for His glory, He will continue to pour out even greater blessings upon us.” (Bakker then cites Mal. 3:10-11, 2 Co. 9:6)
God has promised to bless those people who put Him first in their lives. That principle has never changed. I still believe that God blesses His people and will meet their needs. The sin is falling in love with and seeking after money and material things. He doesn’t want us to equate mere money with godliness. In fact, the apostle Paul said that “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness .. supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:3, 5-6 KJV).
For the first time, I began to really understand what Paul meant when he wrote:
But they that will be rich (which I discovered meant: “they that want to be rich”) fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lustss, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. (1 Tim. 6:8-11 KJV)
For years I had glossed over that passage in Scripture. I ignored it, made excuses for it, or tried to explain it away. I refused to accept the obvious interpretation. I now see that the message was right there all the time, so plain that even a child could see it and understand it. I was wrong.
I knew I could not keep this newfound information a secret. I had influenced so many people to accept a “prosperity message,” I now felt that I had a responsibility to tell my friends what I had been learning from my studies in the Bible. I wrote a simple, straightforward letter and sent it to some of the people who had written to me in prison. The letter was not meant to be published to the world. I didn’t know how The Charlotte Observer got a copy of the letter, but the paper ran portions of it on the front page .. Soon I began receiving mail from all over the country concerning the letter. Some people were appalled that I – a person they considered as a primary propagator of the prosperity message in the twentieth century – had disavowed my former teaching. Others wrote to me were delighted that I had “finally seen the light.”
Frankly, I was not greatly concerned what the critics or the skeptics had to say about my speaking about against the prosperity message. I knew what God had clearly shown to me from His Word. I had studied every word of Jesus over a period of two years, and I was convinced that the prosperity message was at best an aberration and at worst “another gospel” contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Although I still believed God blesses His people, the prosperity message I had preached for years was wrong.
In retrospect, one of the main reasons I slipped into believing and preaching a distorted doctrine was because of my lack of understanding of what it really means to allow Jesus to be Lord of my life.”
And now in 2008, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch documents Jim Bakker’s slow slide back into the grip of money.
“This is even more than Jim Bakker promised them. For months they had heard Bakker on his TV show touting his impending move here. Bakker, the disgraced TV minister of PTL-and-Tammy-Faye fame, said the day was coming when he would no longer broadcast his bare-bones show from inside a converted restaurant in nearby Branson, as he had for five years. He talked about moving to a sprawling complex being built for him as the new headquarters for his television ministry, the heart of a 600-acre development named Morningside.
But this time will be different, Bakker’s supporters say. He has changed. Morningside will prove it. And inside these walls, at least, the doubters are few.
CONTINUING FAITH
Visitors stream in, and Darylene Howard eagerly greets them.
“Welcome to Heritage!” she calls out. She realizes her mistake and laughs. “Oh my, I mean Morningside!”
Howard, who also works as a Wal-Mart greeter, is a chipper woman with a quick smile and bright blue eyes. She has been a fan of Bakker’s since his glory days with the Praise The Lord ministry. And she, like many people here, lost money when the PTL collapsed. She and her husband each paid $1,000 for “lifetime partnerships” granting them limited free lodging at Heritage USA. Bakker spent almost five years in prison for diverting millions of dollars in partner fees for his personal use and promising more free lodging than the PTL ever could have provided.
But Howard dismisses Bakker’s conviction as “a miscarriage of justice.” And when a court settlement granted each of the 165,000 lifetime partners a check for a paltry $6.54, she and hundreds of others signed those checks over to Bakker in a show of support.
“There’s a lot of love left for Jim Bakker,” Howard says between greetings. “There is.”
Bakker could not have gotten this far without these supporters. They have forgiven him — or argue his prosecution was unfair. Bakker has admitted that he made mistakes while heading the PTL Club, which at its peak claimed 13 million viewers on 180 television stations and 1,300 cable outlets across the nation. He even wrote a book titled, “I Was Wrong.” He has renounced the “prosperity gospel” he once preached. He claims a change of heart.
Beyond the front door, a woman samples the pink Spikenard Magdalena hand cream being sold to support the ministry. Rubbing her hands, she remarks how excited she is to be here. But her husband is cautious.
“We invested our money with them and lost everything,” he grumbles.
“Oh, don’t say that!” she says.
“Well, we did.”
“I don’t feel that we lost anything,” she responds, walking ahead to find a table.
“Norma is head over heels on this thing,” her husband whispers as he follows behind. “I tell her, ‘Tread easy.’”
A few tables away, Rex Lorence acknowledges that he was slower than his wife, Wanda, to warm to Bakker.
“I still have some resentment for his past actions,” Lorence, 75, says. “But I’ve pretty much forgiven him.”
SHOWTIME
More than 150 people sit at tables scattered in front of the show’s stage.
Each table is decorated with a spray of plastic flowers and a framed photo of Jim Bakker posing with his wife, Lori, and their five adopted children. There are two white envelopes for cash and check offerings. Five TV cameras are stationed around the stage. A show manager runs around closing doors to the unfinished shops, hiding interiors of wood studs and insulation.
The show’s announcer, a heavy-set man with a quick wit named Kevin Shorey, reminds the audience to smile. “If you don’t have teeth, just gum it for God,” he jokes. He then turns solemn. “Remember we are here to do one thing and one thing only — glorify the Lord.”
Then he lets loose.
“Live from the Morningside Studios in the heart of the Ozarks, it’s ‘The Jim Bakker Show’,” Shorey shouts, yet barely audible over the rapturous applause.
Jim Bakker bounds from behind the portico’s doors with his wife and children.
“Wow,” he says, scanning the crowd. “Welcome to Morningside!”
Bakker is 69 now. He looks fit. His large head is smooth with TV pancake makeup. He is partially bald, the graying hair along the sides dyed brown. He sports small gold, rectangular eyeglasses. He wears blue jeans and a black T-shirt under a khaki blazer. He bears the informality popular with evangelical preachers today. The PTL suit and tie are long gone.
Lori Bakker plays his sidekick, a role once held by Jim Bakker’s first wife, Tammy Faye, whose heavy mascara and self-deprecating humor made her a pop culture icon before her death from cancer last year. Tammy Faye Bakker divorced Jim Bakker in 1992. Six years later he married Lori.
On stage, Lori seems to take her stylistic cues from Tammy Faye, with a leopard-print blazer, black pants and blouse with a strand of pearls dangling.
But fans of the show see differences between the two.
“This lady he’s got now, she’s not like Tammy,” says Dave Shaffer of Girard, Pa., a longtime fan who watched the PTL in the mid-1980s and drove to the taping with his wife. “I know Tammy loved the Lord and all, but she was — what do you call it? — flamboyant.”
A few minutes into the show, Lori Bakker turns to her husband.
“This is your dream,” she says. “You never stopped dreaming, and I want to thank you for not giving up on your dream. It would’ve been so easy to give up.”
They hug. The audience applauds. The show plugs along with a variety-show mixture of singers, guests and religion-flavored banter.
In the coming weeks, this episode will be beamed out across two satellite networks and 36 stations across the nation, plus one in Canada.
‘I DON’T OWN THIS’
Bakker is too busy for interviews, his staff says. He declines repeated requests to talk with the Post-Dispatch.
But in his debut show, Bakker acknowledges the interest in his return to the limelight.
“I don’t own this,” Bakker says, gesturing to the building. “Don’t let anybody say I own this. There are reporters here, I understand. Don’t you say I own this.”
Almost nothing is held in his name these days. He has no registered ownership interest in Morningside. Bakker’s name is nowhere to be found on his church and TV show nonprofit registrations with the state. (They were registered by Lori Bakker’s mother, Charlene Graham.) The Bakkers rent a house in Branson. Public records show the Bakkers own two vehicles: a 2006 Dodge Durango and a 2006 Chrysler 300.
Bakker still owes the IRS more than $6.1 million, accumulated income taxes and penalties after his PTL ministry was stripped of its tax-exempt status, according to court records. He completed his federal parole in 1997, so there are no restrictions on his activities. The financial details of his church, including how much he earns, are not public record. His staff declined to provide that information.
Ole Anthony, founder of the Dallas-based nonprofit Trinity Foundation, which monitors TV ministers, says he is surprised to hear Bakker had been set up with a project such as Morningside. “All those people giving him money again,” Anthony says with wonder. “I hope they don’t get taken.”
BIG PLANS
The man behind Morningside is Jerry Crawford.
Crawford credits a PTL seminar he attended in the 1980s with saving his marriage. He has supported Bakker ever since. In 1987, after Bakker resigned as PTL chairman because of an affair with a church secretary, the ministry auctioned off the outlandish items accumulated under Bakker’s term, such as gold-plated bathroom fixtures. Crawford, a housing contractor then living in California, bid $4,500 for one of the most notorious items: the Bakkers’ air-conditioned doghouse. Crawford then donated it back to be resold.
Crawford kept tabs on Bakker for years, finally meeting him face-to-face at a revival in Branson, where Crawford had moved. The Bakkers were living in Florida at the time, trying to develop property there. That deal fell apart. Crawford suggested they do something together. In 2003, Crawford bought a restaurant in Branson and bankrolled Bakker’s return to television. They began talking about doing a bigger project together.
Crawford is a large man who cuts a gentleman cowboy figure, favoring cowboy boots, blue jeans, a blazer with leather shoulders and a Cadillac Escalade pickup. He says he is foremost a businessman. He brushes off any suggestion he is being suckered by Bakker. In fact, he says, he is using Bakker by making him Morningside’s main attraction.
Crawford estimates he has invested $25 million in the project. The development has its own sewer and water treatment plants. The main building, with the domed sky, is 200,000 square feet of mixed retail and housing. It holds 115 condos, going for $80,000 to $350,000. About 40 condos already have sold, Crawford says. He also is building single-family homes and small apartment buildings nearby; many are near completion. He hopes to have 2,000 families living here one day.
Crawford says the parallels between Morningside and Heritage USA are no accident. “It was modeled a whole lot on that. That model worked.”
Bakker is expected to move into a 2,500-square foot, 3-bedroom condo just behind the portico. Crawford plans to sell it to Bakker at cost: about $250,000. Crawford says he wants the ministry to be supported by donations, paying its own rent on its 40,000 square feet inside the Morningside complex.
“The purpose of this place is to minister to people, to make affordable living for people, for people to come for fellowship and seminars,” Crawford says.
Harriette Hursh, a retired nursing director from Wisconsin, purchased a three-bedroom home at Morningside for $300,000. Hursh, 71, was attracted by the chance to live in a Christian community. She has faith things will work out.
“A lot of people said, ‘Oh, you’re going to lose your money,’” she recalls. “I’ll trust God with that.”
A FAMILIAR PLEA
Jim Bakker waits 41 minutes into his one-hour show to make his plea.
He begins by noting they have been off the air for six weeks.
“We have really gotten behind financially,” he says, fingering a crease in his khakis. “So we really need a miracle. The cost of moving, just to get the stuff you need — and we needed to get a few more microphones, we didn’t even have enough time to get the bugs worked out of things. It just takes a lot of money.”
He is talking directly to the camera now. He says he has a music CD for “a love gift of $30″ and a DVD about marriage for a $55 donation. He decides to offer a recording of his sermon about prison, just $20.
Off to the side in the audience sits Gloria Elliott. Few people have stood with Bakker longer. A singer, she began working with Bakker in 1969 when he was on “The 700 Club.” She was there when Bakker was on top of the world, when Heritage USA was a place of “total class from the moment you pulled onto the driveway.” She was there when Bakker tumbled. She now sings on his TV show once a month.
She knows there are skeptics. “Some folks say he’s doing the same old thing again,” she says.
The show band begins playing louder, forcing Elliott to nearly shout.
“But I’m telling you — and you don’t have to believe me — his heart is right,” she says. “It is in the right place.”
“The Rev. Robert H. Schuller removed his son Saturday as preacher on the syndicated “Hour of Power” television show less than three years after handing over to him the ministry he began more than 50 years ago.
Schuller announced the removal of his son, Robert A. Schuller, in a statement read to some 450 Crystal Cathedral congregants by Jim Coleman, the church’s president.
“It is no secret to any of you that my son, Robert, and I have been struggling as we each have different ideas as to the direction and the vision for this ministry,” his statement read.
“For this lack of shared vision and the jeopardy in which this is placing this entire ministry, it has become necessary for Robert and me to part ways.”
Schuller said he was bringing in several guest pastors from around the country to preach during the show, which has been cut to half an hour in some markets since summer.
The decision marks a surprising reversal of the emotional moment when Schuller turned over the church ministries and the television program to his son during services at the Crystal Cathedral in January 2006. The two men hugged and the elder Schuller fought tears as he addressed his congregants.
At the time, though, he made it clear: “I am not retiring.”
Robert A. Schuller’s major challenge was attracting younger congregants and using the television program to build membership. It is unclear whether he achieved that.
He will remain as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, a spokesman said, though there was no word on whether he will continue to preach.
Despite the wording of the statement, it remained vague Saturday what prompted the schism between the father and son who have been the face of “Hour of Power,” which is syndicated worldwide.
“I wish I had an answer for you. I just don’t know,” said John Charles, a church spokesman. “I tried to get that question answered today and there’s really no answer. The two principals would have to explain that, and they’re not.”
In the statement, Schuller said he will continue to be the host of a weekly church service and preach occasionally.
But “no longer will the ‘Hour of Power’ be the voice and face of just one or two individuals,” he wrote, adding that the show would now “serve as a platform for the greatest preachers in the world.”
Robert A. Schuller, known to congregants as Robert II, had been groomed to take over for his father since 1996.
He had followed in his father’s footsteps almost exactly, attending the same college, Hope College in Holland, Mich. He also founded his own Orange County church, in San Juan Capistrano, before coming to the Crystal Cathedral seven years ago.
Like his father, he also writes religious books — 13 at last count, according to the church’s website. In recent months, however, the younger Schuller had disappeared from the television program, replaced by reruns featuring his father.
In chats on the church’s website, participants wondered what happened to the younger Schuller.
“Has he been on a missionary trip or something?” one chatter wrote.
“Enough already. Where is RAS?” wrote another. “All administrators and pastors — please be open with your church members.”
“The investigation into the alleged financial misdeeds of Rodney McGill, radio talk show host and pastor of New Hope Outreach Center, and his wife, Shalonda, has been expanded to include real estate dealings in Orlando.
The couple are being held in the Martin County Jail on more than $730,000 bond each on four charges of racketeering, conspiracy and mortgage fraud.
More charges are expected to be filed as a result of the new complaints, Alex Sink, Florida chief financial officer, said in a news release Friday.
Sink said the state Department of Financial Services has received about 65 complaints as a result of news reports of their arrests and subsequent hearings before Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer in Martin County Circuit Court. The new complaints involve an Orlando condominium complex and other central Florida land dealings.
The McGills are accused of persuading individuals to buy property with the intent of flipping it to get a higher return on their money, without informing the investors that the property being transferred belonged to the couple or one of their enterprises based at the New Hope Outreach Center at 2110 Arch St., Jensen Beach.
State investigators served a second search warrant on the center Wednesday but did not say what they obtained from that search. What was found in the first search after the couple were arrested earlier this month has not been made public.
Jeffrey Weiner, Miami attorney representing Rodney McGill spoke after a hearing earlier this month. He said McGill had done nothing illegal but had been caught in the unexpected financial crisis involving mortgages.
“There are just some people who lost money because of the market, and they are unhappy,” said Weiner.
Weiner also argued in court that the people filing complaints against the McGills might also be guilty of fraud because they signed mortgage loan applications they knew contained incorrect financial information about them.
Weiner and attorney David Ham of Vero Beach, who represents Shalonda McGill, said that even though the bond had been reduced from $1.4 million each to $730,000 each, their clients could not make bail.
On Friday, Sink urged anyone who has had business dealings with the McGills to contact the state.
The McGills allegedly garnered victims through various companies they operated, including the Young Millionaire’s Group Inc.; RSM Investment and Mortgage; and New Hope Outreach Center Inc., which all operated out of the same Jensen Beach facility.”
“Hillsong Church celebrating 25 years…..we invite you to join us November 2nd
THE MEAT & WINE CO, Darling Harbour Open 12pm till late
Bookings Essential
www.themeatandwineco.com
Celebrate this special occasion at The Meat & Wine Co – Darling Harbour with a complimentary glass of wine, beer or soft drink with any main meal purchased. Mention Hillsong when placing your order to take advantage of this offer. Valid on the 2nd November 2008. KINGPIN BOWLING Open 10am till late
www.kingpinbowling.com.au
Mention the codeword “Hillsong” and receive the following offer
Bring in 6 friends to bowl and 1 person plays for FREE
M9 LASER SKIRMISH Open 10am till late
www.m9.com.au
Mention the codeword “Hillsong” and receive the following offer
Bring in 6 friends to play laser skirmish and 1 person plays for FREE
IMAX Open 10am – 10pm
IMAX is pleased to offer attendees a 20% discount when they mention “HILLSONG”….”
“Neulan Midkiff, the Forest Lake man who was convicted in a multi-state, multi-million dollar fraud case, will spend the next 15 years in federal prison.
Midkiff, 66, was handed the prison sentence Thursday morning by U.S. District Court Chief Michael J. Davis in federal court in Minneapolis. Midkiff will have 10 days to appeal the conviction and sentence. He remains in federal custody.
On August 1, Midkiff, a one-time key figure in the Shiloh Church in Forest Lake, was found guilty of defrauding 519 people nationwide out of approximately $30 million in a Ponzi investment scheme.
Midkiff was found guilty of eight counts of mail fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and four counts of failure to file tax returns.
Midkiff was indicted in December 2006 in connection with the scheme. A second defendant named in the indictment, Atlanta resident Travis Correll, pleaded guilty in Georgia in connection with his participation in the scheme and was sent to prison for 12 years.
A third defendant, Jerry Watkins of Forest Lake, pleaded guilty Jan. 9, 2007, to five criminal counts for his participation in the scheme. He testified against Midkiff during the trial.
Court records indicate that from April 2004 through December 2005, Midkiff devised and intended to devise a scheme to defraud and to obtain money by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, and did knowingly cause to be sent by the U.S. Postal Service and interstate commercial carrier various mailings for the purpose of executing the scheme.
It was part of the scheme to defraud that Midkiff fraudulently obtained money from individuals by falsely representing that the individuals’ money was being invested and that other investors were obtaining high rates of return on their investment, when in fact, he knew that the investment was not producing interest payments.
In the spring of 2004, Midkiff and Watkins began soliciting investors using the name “Central Financial Services of Minnesota,” and promised a return on investment of 6-8 percent per month. In May of that year, Central Financial Services entered into an agreement to invest money they had collected from the investors with West Wing Financial.
The agreement called for Midkiff and Watkins to provide West Wing $1 million, and in exchange, West Wing promised to pay a minimum of 8 percent interest per month for 14 months.
“We believe today’s sentence was fair and appropriate,” said U.S. Attorney Frank J. Magill in a statement. “It sends a strong message that those who attempt to defraud others will be prosecuted. I want to thank our law enforcement partners – the IRS, the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service – for their efforts in bringing a successful outcome to this case.”
The sentence
In addition to the 15 years in prison, Midkiff was ordered to pay $18.97 million in mandatory restitution to the victims of the fraudulent financial scheme.
Judge Davis said he would recommend to the federal bureau of prisons that Midkiff be incarcerated in Rochester where the Federal Medical Center would be available to deal with Midkiff’s serious heart ailment.
If Rochester is not assigned, Midkiff will likely serve his time in federal correctional facilities in Duluth or Sandstone which would keep him near family.
The sentence was a departure from federal sentencing guidelines that could have sent Midkiff to jail for life.
Comments from court
Doug Olson, Midkiff’s public defender, argued for a reduced sentence in light of Midkiff’s health condition, age and the fact that Correll, the mastermind of the Ponzi scheme, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
While the prosecution argued in the case that Midkiff used his position as a minister and a man of the cloth to draw in investors, Olson argued there was more to the story. Most investors were more interested in the 7 percent monthly return on their investment, he said.
“It wasn’t because he was a preacher,” Olson said.
In his allowed time for remarks to the court, a tearful Midkiff apologized to the court and the victims of his actions. More than 30 friends and family members, some openly sobbing, listened from the audience, as did a handful of the victims.
“Yes, I made some stupid decisions,” Midkiff said, point to a “moment of vanity.” He asked those he wronged to forgive him.
“I am so sorry for the church,” he said. “I’m not angry because they are angry. I ask them to forgive me. I’ll never live this down.”
Midkiff said it was never his intent to defraud anyone. He blamed Watkins for the crimes tied to the $1 million payment to West Wing in 2004.
Midkiff said he was out of the country at the time of the payment. “That was not my program,” he said. “I thought I was helping a friend,” he said of Watkins who lived with Midkiff after returning to Minnesota from Israel in 2001.
“It’s not how I spent my life,” he said.
Olson, too, said Midkiff’s conviction was not emblematic of the life Midkiff has led helping people. He described it as a “life of good deeds.”
Judge speaks
In handing down the sentence last week, Judge Davis expressed some empathy for Midkiff, but not to the degree sought by Olson.
Davis discounted the defense claims that Midkiff was not a good businessman. “You knew that the money was not going to Europe,” Davis said.
During his involvement in the financial scheme, Davis said Midkiff was able to go from living in a trailer home to a $1.3 million lake home in Forest Lake. “That’s someone who is not a bad businessperson,” the judge said.
Judge Davis also had criticism and questions for Timothy Rank, the assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case. Davis questioned the contrasts between the cases in Atlanta and Minneapolis. Is the U.S. Justice Department out of control, Davis asked?
“I disagreed with the sentencing,” Rank said of the Correll decision that came after Correll entered a guilty plea to avoid a trial. That was not the case with Midkiff, he said, pointing to the fact that in trial more details come to the surface that impact the final sentence.
Rank countered that while there were connections between the two cases, the Midkiff case was separate from Correll. He said Midkiff used his position of authority with the church and was smart enough to skirt an earlier Minnesota Department of Commerce probe, hire people as his agents and move the company to Nevada.
If Midkiff had been truly interested in preventing fraud, he could have come forward during the commerce probe in 2003, Rank said. “Maybe none of this would have happened,” Rank said.
Judge Davis on multiple occasions on October 16 drew parallels to white collar crimes of schemes like Midkiff’s to the much larger Enron and World Com frauds. While the level of the crimes varied wildly, the level of punishment did not have a wide gap, the judge said.
“The more you steal, the better off you are,” Davis said, adding that many large corporations are “getting away with murder.
“Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility yesterday for the murder of a British aid worker in Kabul, accusing her of spreading Christianity. Gayle Williams, 34, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle as she walked to the office of the Christian charity Serve.
Aid organisations in Afghanistan were last night assessing the security risks for their staff in response to the murder. So far this year, 29 aid workers, either foreign or Afghans employed by one of the 100-plus agencies in the country, have been killed.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the shooting. “This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan,” he said. “Our [leaders] issued a decree to kill this woman. This morning our people killed her in Kabul.”
The street where the killing took place is wide and dusty, with few shops and many villas surrounded by high walls. The area is popular with NGOs and foreign companies.
“After I heard the shots I came and she was lying there,” said a police officer, Dei Agha, pointing at the pavement. “She was covered with blood, we put her in a police pick up truck and took her to the morgue.”
Mullah Azizullah, imam of the nearby Shir Sham Mina mosque, called last Friday for the people to stop missionaries and proselytising activities. “We know for sure that the foreigners are proselytising Christianity in Afghanistan, some of them do it in daylight and others undercover,” he said. “I took a list of their institutions to the intelligence, the police and the ministry of religious guidance but they didn’t do anything. The sharia calls for the killing of those who convert and the people who proselytise should be killed too.”
A resident, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian he had informed local Islamic organisations that “this NGO and specifically this woman are involved in converting Muslims. She has been living here for a long time and everyone knew what she was doing”. Williams, who worked with disabled people, had recently been pulled out of Kandahar in the south, where she had been running a community project, because it was judged to be too dangerous.
Mike Lyth, the Carlisle-based chairman of the board of Serve (Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises), said Williams had been working with the group for two and a half years, helping to rehabilitate disabled people into the community. He said that she would have changed her route to work or the time of the journey every day.
He dismissed the Taliban’s claim that Williams was killed because she was spreading Christianity. “That’s just an opportunistic jumping on the bandwagon,” he said. “It certainly has no truth to it at all. We are Christians – that is what gives us the motivation to go into a dangerous and difficult country to try to help but she was not involved in proselytisation.” He said Serve had a strict non-proselytising policy. Some Taliban claims of responsibility for killings in Afghanistan have turned out to be inaccurate in recent years.
Lyth paid tribute to Williams as “the life and soul of the party”. He added: “She did find it difficult [in Afghanistan], because women find it difficult there anyway, but she loved what she did and she had a love for the Afghan people.”
Serve employs 200 Afghan staff but will now take a “long, hard look” at its operations, he added. “Each time something like this happens, you wonder – do you go on exposing people to unnecessary risk? Yet at the same time you have got the cry of many, many of the Afghans saying: ‘Please help us’. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Louise Gearing, a friend who met Williams when the charity worker led a weekly discussion group for Christian worshippers, said: “She was an amazing lady. She was loving, she was caring, and she was willing to want to make a change for the better.” Williams was brought up in South Africa but lived in Britain for some time before going to Afghanistan. She had dual nationality and had been an active member of the evangelical Hillsong church in London, where her mother lives.
Other aid agencies expressed concern. “We are worried about the deteriorating security situation,” said Sarah Wilson of Christian Aid. “We are known for not proselytising and we don’t have a sign on our door. We have pulled international staff out of Iraq but we will continue to work in Afghanistan, although we take the security situation very seriously.” The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, said: “It was with great sadness that I heard about the death of Gayle Williams … To suggest her killing was a religious act is as despicable as it is absurd.”
*I have submitted to the authority of a pastor and opened up this thread for comments
Melbourne’s City Life Church pastor Mark Conner blogs…
“This last weekend, Nicole and I had the privilege of ministering at two churches in the city of Perth, Western Australia – Riverview and Generations Centre.
Riverview is led by Phil and Heather Baker, good friends of ours over many years. They are creative leaders with a real heart for people, and for reaching their local community. Phil heads up an informal network of pastors and leaders in Australia and New Zealand with churches 500+ in size. We really enjoyed sharing at their weekend church gatherings. We spoke Saturday evening (Mark), Sunday morning (Nicole), and Sunday evening (Mark).
Generations Centre is co-led by Andrew and Sharon Shaper and Kevin and Sally Mackay. Their church is 50 years old and they have been involved in leading it through a number of changes over the last decade or so. They have a passion for evangelism and outreach. We enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm of the church gatherings over the weekend. We spoke Friday evening (Nicole), Sunday morning (Mark), and Sunday evening (Nicole). I also spoke at a leadership seminar on Saturday morning. [I was booked to speak at this church just over two years ago but I had to cancel last minute due to a sudden appendix operation!]
As you can see, Nicole and I kind of played musical churches – but we had a lot of fun and God did some great things over the weekend, for which we are really thankful.
Perth is a beautiful city with some great churches. There is excellent unity in the city. One expression of this is the annual Church Together event where churches from all of the city meet together.
I (Lance) have added the following comment to Mark Conner’s blog post.
“Hello,
I was at the Saturday night service at Revenue (Riverview) Church.
I’m a blogger who looks at exploitative aspects of the Christian church, with a particular focus on the ‘contemporary’ church.
I was formally involved in Revenue (Riverview) church many years ago, and since then I’ve been keenly tracking the development of what I term the ‘love offering circuit’.
As you’d know, this is the reciprocal – sometimes formal, sometimes informal – arrangement between churches of like kind and mind to take-up a collection for a visiting speaker.
Pastor A receives a ‘love offering’ from Church C; Pastor B receives a ‘love offering’ from Church D; Pastor C receives a ‘love offering’ from Church A;….etc.
The ‘love offering’ of course is quite a reasonable concept. A visiting speaker receives funds to cover their travel, accommodation, and a little bit extra as a ‘thank you for coming’.
Which is fine in a smaller church.
But the arrival of the megachurch has prompted the arrival of a cynical abuse of the ‘love offering’ for the personal gain of already well-reimbursed pastors.
I’d like to pause here, and quote the words of Melbourne-based pastor Mark Conner. You may have heard of him.
“Leadership is a gift from God, as is influence, and when anyone uses that platform for personal gain it is an abuse.”
I’m sure you were aware on Saturday night when you preached at Revenue Church..that you would be receiving a love-offering at the end of the night, and probably more love offering/s over the weekend.
Just as I’m sure Phil Baker would receive a ‘love offering’ at your church, as he did during a recent appearance at Christian Shitty Church, Oxford Falls, where he received as many as four ‘love offerings’ in one weekend.
Another pastor tells me they received close to $3000 from a ‘love offering’ at Revenue Church a few months ago, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that you received at least a four-figure sum, and possibly a five-figure sum this last weekend for just a few hours work.
I want to take you back to Saturday night, and a few points you made in your preaching before you received your ‘love offering’.
You warned people against saying that they ‘just’ worked in the children’s church, or ‘just’ worked in some other church ministry. You made the point that those roles were just as important as those more ‘prominant’ on-stage roles.
Using that measuring stick, then you would have been entitled to nothing at all for your time speaking, or maybe $12 an hour, the same as the person running the cafe up the back of Revenue Church (the people below pastoral level at Revenue church don’t share in the revenue)
So either you should have received $24 for your night’s work ($12 per hour X2), or the people serving in the cafe or children’s church should have walked away with $3000 for a few hours’ work.
Secondly, you got people to engage in an exercise where they held their hands out in front of them, and clenched them shut and open, shut and open, to signify a ‘take, take, take’ mentality that should be avoided by Christians, and instead they should ‘give, give, give’.
You laboured the point to the extent that I had a gut feeling that you were softening up the congregation for an imminent ‘love offering’ for yourself..
And it turned out I was right.
It’s not difficult to work out why this reciprocal ‘love offering’ shell game operates. Were you to be paid excessive compensation by your own congregation, then everyone would be up in arms. So you get the excessive compensation, aided and abetted by fellow pastors who are in on the same rort. And of course, what happens on the road, stays on the road.
Of course, the usual defence of pastors is that it is a ‘free-will’ offering, but we all know the kind of emotional, spiritual and peer pressures that are applied in churches to get people to toe the line, and in this case, give you money, because giving is God’s will right? And you wouldn’t want to be outside God’s will by not having a giving heart? Eh?
You spent many minutes on Saturday night underlining the importance of giving to the congregation. You just forgot tack-on to the word giving….’to you’.
I saw the piles of ten dollar notes in the ‘love offering’ basket as it passed by. I know you did very well out of the weekend at Revenue Church, and that you do well many times a year as you speak at various churches on the same circuit as yours.
I’m not suggesting or inferring that you’re knowingly rorting church people for your own personal gain.
I’m stating it as a fact that you’re knowingly rorting church people for your own personal gain.
It’s a rort that’s been going on for years involving many of the members of the Australian Pentecostal Ministers Fellowship, which appears to be the common thread for the ‘love offering’ circuit.
It’s well-established, is becoming global, and makes Guglielmucci’s deception look like small potatoes, maybe even baby potatoes.
Because it’s such a firmly-entrenched system though, I’m not silly enough to think that by merely exposing the rort that pastors would do a Goog and ‘fess up.
You’ve all got too much to lose by acting morally and not exploiting the human ATM’s whose buttons you like to push with your preaching so you can withdraw money. I get that.
The purpose of this post is to pose a question that’s intrigued me.
What internal rationalisations/internal logic does a pastor use to justify ‘taking, taking, taking’ right after preaching a message on the importance of ‘giving, giving, giving’.
For your message to have had any credence, shouldn’t you have walked away from Revenue Church $3000 out of pocket, instead of with enough ten dollar notes to sew together matching patchwork doonas?
The only thing I’ve worked out is it’s a cultural Pentecostal thing to do in a megachurch service, but that doesn’t answer the question of what mental processes you go through to justify to yourself the shameless exploitation of people, struggling to afford to fill the tank to get to church.
So feel free to give, give, give me some kind of answer, although I should warn you, I don’t have any tenners on me right now.”
“Members of a Chattanooga church say they’re being treated unfairly, after the Chattanooga Beer Board rules the convenience store next door can sell beer.
This situation has a lot of people in the Orchard Knob community fired up, but some say a bigger concern is the precedent the beer board’s decision sets.
Inside a cooler sits one of the hottest controversies in the Orchard Knob community.
“We’re not trying to rip anybody off,” explained Tammy Allizam, owner of Z and J Grocery. “We’re just trying to be a decent neighborhood grocery store and help out people.”
But Allizam’s decision to open a beer-selling convenience store has members of the church next door furious. They say she’s breaking the law, with the help of Chattanooga’s Beer Board.
“It’s like 184 feet from our church,” said Rev. Evan Settles, pastor of Pentecostal Church of God. “We just can’t have beer going on in our community.”
Chattanooga city code says beer can’t be sold within 200 feet of a church. These pictures were taken when Allizam applied for her beer-license in June. At the time, members of the beer board believed it was vacant.
“We’ve not seen anybody until two weeks ago at this supposed to church,” said Allizam.
Chattanooga police back those claims up. Officers say the church failed to pay its power bill numerous times, and has no known phone number. Eyewitness News asked Rev. Settles to explain.
“You can get anybody to tell lies, it all depends on what you give em,” said Settles. “And that’s what happened. They lied.”
Thursday, the Beer Board upheld its original ruling, saying Allizam can continue to sell beer. It’s a decision the store owner says they won’t regret.
“We strictly enforce our rules,” explained Allizam. “They know. You come in buy what you want and leave. You do not hang around. We don’t stand for that.”
At the end of the meeting, Councilman Jack Benson came in and voiced his concern about the separation of church and state. He says city government should never have to define what is or is not a church.
Reverend Settles says he’ll appeal the beer board’s decision.”
……which were the exact words of Duane Dixon during a manipulative, approximately 4 minute long offering talk at Phil Baker’s Riverview Revenue Church last (Saturday) night.
And Lionfish, you’ll be pleased to know that Duane used the phrase ‘tithes and offerings’, despite Baker’s lie claim that tithing is no longer part of Revenue Church teaching.
When I get time, there’ll be posts to come about Revenue Church guest speaker Mark Conner and my Friday night encounter in Perth’s Murray St mall with an arrogant (Calvinist) street preacher.
“Sydney’s Metropolitan Community Church has splintered and is without a pastoral leader following former interim pastor Karl Hand’s last sermon on Sunday.
Rev Hand and some members of the congregation’s Crave contemporary service have separated to start a new church in the charismatic style some have labelled a “mini-Hillsong”.
“We want to outreach to a different audience, people moving past fundamentalism but still want that Pentecostal experience,” Rev Hand told Sydney Star Observer. “I expect a large part will still be gay and lesbian.”
MCC Sydney’s board of directors resumed the search for a permanent pastor on Tuesday night, a process that had been underway since Rev Greg Smith left for Cambodia in 2005.
Church co-director Alan Maurice told SSO there were seven or eight candidates being considered from the US, India, Caribbean and Australia, but he didn’t want to preempt the short-listing process.
“How long it takes will depend on who the pastoral selection committee selects,” Maurice said.
“If we select someone from the US, given the process we had to go through last time, it could take anywhere up to a year.”
Los Angeles-based Rev Pat Langlois had originally been selected to replace Rev Smith, but withdrew after she was unable to obtain confirmation from immigration officials one year after applying.
The board of directors asked Rev Hand to explain himself after he appeared in the national media supporting the NoToPope coalition protests in June.
One congregation member told SSO it was not the first confrontation between Hand and the board, and many of the congregation with a Catholic background were concerned Rev Hand’s support of the coalition was an attack on Catholic faith.
“Couple that with dissatisfaction from members from church and from the board, Karl and others representing Crave — the simplest analogy is a mini-Hillsong — decided to form a new church.”
Another member of the congregation told SSO the number of people attending Sunday evening services had dropped by more than half since Rev Hand took over at the Petersham church.
“At least 48 people have left the Sunday night service in the last 18 months — and they have gone nowhere or to MCC Good Shepherd at Granville,” they said.
“Last Sunday night there were only 24 people at the service when we used to be getting 70 or 80.”
Rev Hand said, “NoToPope was a factor in realising MCC wasn’t the place for me. I hadn’t intended that to cause a problem for members. But it wasn’t the reason for starting the new church.”
Since Rev Hand’s resignation four weeks ago, the congregation formed two committees for congregational support and worship that will oversee the pastor functions until a permanent or interim replacement is appointed.
“I’ve written to [Hand’s group] and asked that we meet and talk about how to move forward in a positive light. They haven’t got back to me as yet,” Maurice said.
He added that the Crave service was working well and would continue.
“Most of the Crave team have remained with MCC Sydney, and it’s very much the board’s intention that nothing change.”
Established in 2005, Crave was run as an alternative to the traditional Catholic/Anglican services that MCC Sydney had been known for under Rev Smith.
The Crave MySpace page describes it as “dynamic/contemporary music, multimedia, guest speakers and interactive discussion to engage people”.
“Kenya urgently requires laws to govern church operations, say clergymen.
They say the lack of regulations made it easier for the mushrooming of denominations for use by their founders as centres of corruption and avenues to quick riches.
Father Vincent Wambugu, the secretary-general of the Catholic Church’s Kenya Episcopal Conference, says: “We are guided by certain rules right from the top to the grassroots. You just do not get someone diverting church money to personal coffers.”
Since it is the faithful who contribute money to finance church projects, he says, they should question when things go wrong. “The faithful are cowed and never ask questions. Church leaders must be held accountable by members.”
The Presbyterian Church in East Africa (PCEA) also advocates accountability and transparency in its affairs. Dr David Githii, the moderator, says 70 per cent of the new churches are used by those who start them as a source of income.
“There is a lot of money for church affairs and structures must be put in place to check expenditure. It is unfortunate some pastors abuse the congregation when the tithes are little,” says Dr Githii, who is also a researcher in religious matters. “Most of the splits you see are about some members not benefiting financially.”
The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK) is alarmed by some of their members who are in the business of “making money through the gospel”.
The umbrella body that brings together 210 Pentecostal, charismatic and neo-conservative denominations calls for an elaborate self-regulation programme.
Prosperity gospel
EAK general secretary Wellington Mutiso says: “We are aware some pastors are charging for special prayers and sell some ‘water from Israel’. This is not godly.”
But some of the prosperity gospel preachers say they do not break any biblical teachings.
Pastor Stephen Keitany of Vision Ministries in Eldoret says there is nothing wrong with the prosperity gospel.
Others feel the gospel has been commercialised because of misinterpretation of biblical teachings.
Mr Philip Warutere, the pastor in charge of Nyahururu Bible Baptist Church, says some churches thrive on social programmes that never exist. “We have people in our church who run the programmes. No individual can misuse the money.”
Any church, he says, should have a system where the congregation is the final decision-maker.”
Regular readers of whatever-this-site-is may have noticed a dropping-off in the frequency of posts of late and also an absence of withering rants.
I have had a bit of writer’s block. I haven’t been to a church lately, and there’s been very little in the media or on the net to get the juices flowing (apart from the Guglielmucci fraud)
So I thought I’d better take a dose of the Group Sects equivalent of smelling salts, and pay a visit to a ‘contemporary’ church.
And it was just what the doctor ordered (a real doctor that is, not a Pentecostal preacher with a fake doctorate)
This was my second visit to Sunset Coast Christian Life Centre in the northern Perth suburb of Joondalup.
It’s senior pastor is Gerard Keehan, who was previously one of the key people at Hill$ong.
As you’d expect in just about any church, the people who came in and sat next to me were wearing their pyjamas. The lady next to me had multi-coloured stars on her PJ’s.
I wasn’t mystified for long, because I deduced that they were probably part of some Bananas In Pyjamas-style deal for kid’s church.
And I was right, because I turned around, and standing up the back – as you’d expect in any modern self-respecting contemporary church - were a pair of bananas and they were in their pyjamas.
Which is interesting, because churches are normally a bit Talibanish in policing the whole music/entertainment copyright area.
This was a blatant breach of the ABC’s copyright, and yes, I’ve checked, and ABC Legal do go after people doing their own rip-offs of Bananas In Pyjamas.
Meanwhile, up front was the Chief Banana, Pastor Gerard, and his crew.
The offering message was about 3 minutes long and made no sense.
It was based on the passage ‘Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever’. There was reference in the talk to God always being our provider, but no attempt was made to link the passage back to giving to the offering (probably because there was no link) I think it was based on the Pente ‘you put money in, and God will give you back more money’ teaching, but there was nothing in the offering message to suggest that. I suppose it’s all self-evident to those steeped in the deep mysteries of the (false) prosperity gospel – the ‘in’ crowd.
There was no need to guess though about church teaching on money when Pastor Gerard later grabbed the microphone with gusto.
‘Repentance starts with your wallet’, declared the Big Banana.
‘You can tell where a person’s heart is by what goes in the offering’, Pastor Gerard enthused.
This was after he boasted at length of the Keehans’ recent church-funded travels to the Mediterranean. Along for the ride were fellow love-offering-circuit devotees Steve Kelly, Paul DeJong, Michael Murphy, and their wives.
We were even treated to some happy-snaps from the trip. ‘Here’s Maree and Valarie in Ephesus.’
I again failed to get out of Sunset Coast without being collared by a pastor who tried to tell me how everything the church did was measured against the bible’s teaching, and that they could raise any issue at staff meetings.
I ventured, ’so you could say at a staff meeting that you thought the love offering Pastor Gerard received at another church was a bit excessive’?
Hmmm, didn’t think so.
The highlight of the night, was the discovery that the prince, no, the king of the love offering circuit himself, Brian Houston was coming to Perth on October 23 to appear at Sunset Coast’s swish black-tie ball at the Perth Convention Centre.
$125 a head, no less.
Pastor Gerard revealed that Uncle Brian and Auntie Bobbie are flying in to Perth on the day of the ball, and flying out again straight afterwards.
Gee, I wonder how much of that $125 a head is going to Brian ‘I only earn the equivalent of a high school teacher’s salary’ Houston?
“An articulate letter was forwarded to me today via email …
…It was described as an open letter to the ACC National Executive [AOG Australia's top leadership], and was attributed to young pentecostal worship leader Ben Manusama (of Manifest Youth) – If someone can find the original source, I’d appreciate it – I couldn’t find it myself.
It clearly articulates some key points that have also been raised about Planetshakers leadership on this blog, as well as the wider pentecostal leadership in Australia and worldwide elsewhere in the light of Mike Guglielmucci’s fall, as well as the fall of Todd Bentley.
To the members of the National Executive,
I’m writing to you in response to the events of the last week regarding the confession of Mike Guglielmucci. I write as a young person directly impacted by his actions and wish to present for discussion a number of issues it has raised within the community of young people in the ACC.
To begin with, my church was quite removed from Mike’s ministry – I had only met him for the first time when he spoke at our youth meeting a few weeks ago. I say this with the hope that you can see the objectivity of my observations as I had no emotional attachment to the man or his ministry.
As I’m sure you’re aware, everyone’s talking, everyone’s speculating, everyone’s processing and trying to come to terms with what has happened and what the consequences are.
I don’t presume to speak on behalf of anyone other than myself but after posting a respectful blog containing some of my initial observations, I’ve had quite an overwhelming response of people who have read it. Some enthusiastically agreeing, some confused, some still undecided. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you there are many profoundly affected young people and they’re not all directly connected to him or his ministry (as you might assume).
I have grown up in the Pentecostal movement with parents whose itinerant ministry saw me and my family visiting churches all over the nation. I’ve been able to observe the changes of culture within our own movement and our observations have always been grounded in our family’s core values and passion for the Body of Christ.
This now is my assessment of these recent events.
What Mike has done is catastrophic not only in the geographical reach of the scandal but also because it has struck at the foundation of much of the methodology of our movement.
The questions being asked are not only about how a man ‘falls from grace’ but people are asking what this says about ministry, the Holy Spirit, human character and the capacity for a regenerated man to commit such wickedness.
The actions and official statements made thus far by the ACC and the Guglielmucci family seem to be dealing with some of these issues although that will need to be an ongoing process (certainly in a church-by-church fashion).
My concern is that the conversation will only go so far – that the issues surrounding ‘the man’ (which must certainly be addressed) will be resolved but that there will be no engagement with the broader problem.
Is it too simplistic to view this as just another case of a man ‘falling from grace’? I think to leave it at that is not only simplistic but negligent.
A person like Mike Guglielmucci is not born but created.
I say this not to negate Mike’s responsibility or guilt for his actions but to draw our attention to how the culture of the contemporary Pentecostal church has allowed and accommodated for somebody like Mike to thrive.
WHAT IS THIS CULTURE?
One of the strengths of Pentecostalism has always been its ability to become culturally relevant to all peoples – and particularly young people. This is seen in our ever evolving forms of communication, media, music and the content and delivery of our message. These things are important when they are the natural side effect of being creative human beings in a changing world, however when they become the mechanism by which we build the church there are dangerous consequences.
What began as a move to bring the church out of the dark ages and into the realm of popular culture has had devastating side effects: Praise and worship has become a music industry (complete with it’s very own rock stars), preaching has become motivational speaking (with little expectation to know or engage with the text) and ministry has become a desirable and lucrative career choice.
Against this background, the value system of church seems to have changed.
I came across an article by an American minister named Dutch Sheets. I am unfamiliar with his ministry but his response to the events surrounding Todd Bentley seem all too appropriate to our situation.
The following is a quote from him:
“We, the leaders of the charismatic church, have built on hype, sensation, innovation, programs, personality and charisma. This has produced: shallowness; false movements; novice leaders— gifted but immature and untested; a deficient understanding of God’s word; the building of man-centered rather than kingdom- centered churches and ministries; competition rather than cooperation; humanistic, self-centered Christians who don’t understand sacrifice and commitment; Christians without discernment; superstar leaders; a perverted and powerless gospel; prayerless and anemic Christians; a replacement of the fear of the Lord with the fear of man; and a young generation that is cynical of it all.”
As a young person in our movement I honestly believe that this almost summarizes the state of our predicament.
I look around and see so many insecure church leaders who are too eager to jump on trends and exploit new talent and ideas as a way to keep up with the Joneses/Houstons.
It is within this environment that a talented, charismatic, gifted, articulate, charming, yet-untested, son of a well respected preacher managed to not only slip through the process of accountability but then exploited the system to get to the top.
Our movement that seems to have become so obsessed with a man’s talent, gifting and ability to draw a crowd was the perfect environment for such a man to exploit. No matter what Mike’s motivations, regardless of the driving force behind his actions (whether he was psychologically sound or not), he has demonstrated that there is a ladder to be climbed and it can be done apparently with no help from the Holy Spirit.
Worse still, not only did he make a complete mockery of Pentecostal rhetoric but he was ultimately endorsed by the leaders of our denomination – which is you guys.
Even at the end there were churches (including my own) who were unsure about his ministry but finally accepted based on the endorsement from the national executive.
QUESTIONS.
In closing there are some burning questions and challenges I would like to put forward.
1) For a denomination that is supposed to be led by the Holy Spirit instantly one asks where was the discernment of our leaders? Is it too much to expect that our spiritual fathers and shepherds will be led by the Spirit to protect their flock? Granted everyone’s saying that he hid this from his own wife and family but surely God would try to forewarn and thus prevent such a catastrophic deception that has ruined so many lives.
2) What system of accountability allows such a man to get so far? Amidst the excitement over his ministry and his ability to draw a crowd – was there anybody in his life to challenge his behaviour? And if so, if someone actually knew even in part about his struggles, why were measures not taken to limit his reach of influence until those struggles were resolved? Surely some of the reports coming out about his methods as youth pastor at Planetshakers City Church should have raised a red flag. Was everyone too quick to celebrate his role in growing the church, and too hesitant to question or check a rising star?
3) Who takes responsibility? In the official statements released so far – no one has taken ownership. Words like ‘illness’ and ‘professional help’ deflect attention from the real underlying cultural problems and the role played by leadership in allowing this to happen. What’s to prevent another Mike Guglielmucci from happening?
It just seems like it would be too easy for somebody else to come through and exploit it all over again.
I don’t think it’s enough for our leaders to say they don’t condone what has been done – this whilst separating themselves from ‘the man’ does not acknowledge their role in the greater problem. Nor is it enough for them to say they had no idea what was going on – that they didn’t know. It was your job to know (surely even just on a practical level regardless of your theology).
Just as a father is responsible for what happens to his kids, aren’t you in some way responsible for what happens to our generation?
The statement from Dutch Sheets in regard to the Lakeland scandal is, I feel, an inspiring example of leadership being transparent and taking responsibility (www.dutchsheets.org).
My concern is that the next few weeks will be about damage control and no discussion or admission of the greater underlying issues.
We don’t expect for you guys to be perfect but we expect honesty and openness. Perhaps if our leaders were willing to be transparent about their weaknesses, we would be less inclined to hide ours.
4) What are you going to do to change it?
__________
There’s a multitude of young people looking to you now. We’re hurt, confused, bleeding and angry.
You’ve spoken to us at meetings, conferences, youth alive retreats and through DVDs. Speak now.
You’re always so quick to let us know you’re leading us.
So lead.
I agree wholeheartedly with Ben Manusama’s sentiments.
While I’ve said previously that I believe Manifest had their heart in the right place, I would encourage Ben Manusama and others at Manifest to also reflect on their actions placing Mike Guglielmucci on stage when they did. Perhaps they were complicit of some of the same failings?
However, I also believe that the questions Ben Manusama asks are apt, and deserve to be answered – by the AOG National Executive, Planetshakers, Hillsong and even Manifest:
1) What happened to the discernment of leaders?
2) How did the lie slip through any accountability, and get so far?
3) Who will stand up and take responsibility?
4) What will happen to ensure this doesn’t happen again?
“Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”
Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.
Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.” In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.
But Walton suggests that a decade’s worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity’s bloodstream. “The economic boom ’90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message,” he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. “Narratives of how ‘God blessed me with my first house despite my credit’ were common. Sermons declaring ‘It’s your season to overflow’ supplanted messages of economic sobriety,” and “little attention was paid to … the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations.”
With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants’ fortunes. Says Walton: “You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology.” But he predicts they will persevere, since God’s earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.
A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer’s note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. “Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”
And pray that the credit market doesn’t tighten any further.”
On Brian Houston’s blog, a ‘feedback form’ is now available.
I’m thinking about giving some ‘feedback’ to Brian, summarising the years of information that has flowed-in about the behind-the-scenes goings-on at Hill$ong, via the Signposts, Signposts2 and now Group Sects blogs.
If you had the opportunity to say what you always wanted to say to Brian Houston, what would it be?
“Sarah Palin appeared transformed in last night’s [US Vice-Presidential] debate. There may be an unearthly reason. If God is listening, he cannot be missing the passion that evangelical voters are investing in her.
Only a few days before her first and only command performance before the voters, we stood with over 100 Pentecostals in Crossroads Church just outside Wasilla, Alaska, and heard the pastor proclaim that Sarah Palin would be the ambassador of God from righteous believers.
“We do know Sarah personally and she knows we pray for her,” the Rev. Dennis Hotchkiss told us when we called him hours after the confrontation between the beautiful and bold heroine from the farthest frontier of the country and the seasoned lion of the Senate. That night, pastor Dennis had gathered some of his flock in the church — not to watch the debate: “We didn’t want to be distracted” — for 90 minutes of intense intercessory prayer, including speaking in tongues. Then he went home to watch the videotaped debate. He was well pleased.
We had spent the crazy week before the debate in Wasilla. While the economy was falling like a mountain into the sea, and Palin was quarantined from what she and the McCain camp believe is the toxic “filter” of the press, we visited three churches close to Palin, talked to half a dozen Pentecostal and evangelical pastors, and watched the Obama-McCain debate with a family of her closest supporters.
“In my heart of hearts, I believe God’s favor is on her,” Kathy Moffitt told us, as her sister and children brought us sloppy Joes and homemade brownies in the new lakeside home built by her 75-year-old mother, Janet Kincaid. “You’re here, you see how common this place is, how rustic. She [Palin] wasn’t schooled to be a politician, to be famous or important, and yet she has gone every step of the way.”
The Kincaid family tipped us off to something new afoot in the world, what sounded to us like a new national Jesus movement. Kathy told us to look at how 40 days of prayer and fasting had been organized for Sarah. When we went to the Call Web site, we found the current focus was two initiatives on the California ballot for November, concerning gay marriage and parental consent for abortion. Pastor Dennis explained to us that Sarah’s adherents fold prayer for her into that movement. We asked if he thought Roe v. Wade could be overturned in his lifetime.
“I think it’s possible,” said the 50-year-old cleric. “I believe, with another conservative judge, it could be overturned.”
Dennis Hotchkiss and his Crossroads congregation are not a bunch of old stiffs. They gather in a high school auditorium with no religious “icons,” to call the spirit of the Lord through Christian rock ‘n’ roll, a reaching up of arms, waving of flags, spontaneous utterances (speaking in tongues), and a sermon that included cheerleading for “our Sarah” and assurances to one another, “You are righteous.” The pastor, a handsome, silver-haired man who preaches in a sport shirt untucked over jeans, was eager to educate us.
We asked him. “If Sarah Palin becomes vice-president, would she be the most committed Christian we’ve had in that office?” Yes, he said. “She’s not politically motivated to the extent most politicians are. It’s the positions she’s going to stand on. She would want to bring morality to the nation.” In the debate, Palin again professed her love for Israel. We asked pastor Dennis if this is related to the Pentecostal belief in Revelations and the end times, when Israel has a chance to be saved before the Rapture. He gave a further interpretation.
“The Bible is pretty clear … the Lord has said nations will be judged according to how Israel is treated. So a country that is trying to assure Israel a peaceful life is going to be blessed by the Lord.” In effect, he said as long as the U.S. protects Israel, we, in turn, will be protected by God.
For those who worry and wonder why religious conservatives aren’t concerned about Palin’s lack of foreign policy qualifications or economic sophistication, pastor Dennis had the answer:
“When it comes to economic policy, to God it’s not that important, because He is our provider,” the pastor said in his most reverent voice. “Our trust is in Him, not in economic policy.” He emphasized that this is an overriding issue for the evangelical faith community, “because we believe when the country puts its trust in God — and not in man’s systems and man’s reasoning — but makes their decisions more based upon God’s word, we’re going to find our economy, our nation, being healed.”
The most important revelation of the debate was Palin’s declaration that she would go beyond Cheney in expanding the powers of the vice-presidency, including a stronger legislative role.
“Our Founding Fathers were very wise there, in allowing, through the Constitution, much flexibility there, in the office of the vice-president … we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda. I do agree with him [Cheney].”
Biden shot back, “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice-president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he’s part of the legislative branch is a bizarre notion, invented by Cheney, to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us.”
“Biden jumped all over that,” scoffed Janet Kincaid. “But if you’re a leader, you’re a leader. You can use your skills to lead people to the Lord or to hell.”
But if different Christians are praying for conflicting things, how does God sort it all out? we asked.
Brian Houston blogs (just before his laptop is raptured)…
“Can you ever remember a week for international headlines like those we experienced in the past week?
Here are just a few attention grabbing examples:
• John McCain: halts presidential campaign for economy crisis talks
• U.N. Head: “Global Financial Crisis Threatens Fight Against Poverty”
• Bush: “Our entire economy is in danger”
• Warren Buffett: “bail out economy or face meltdown”
• Iran’s Ahmadinejad Addresses United Nations, Declares ‘American Empire’ Reaching ‘End of Road’
• EU Warns Iran Nearing Ability to Arm Nuclear Warhead
• North Korea Removes Seals From Nuke Plant, Bars Inspectors
• Russia arrived with its Navy in Venezuela for exercises today; AND
• Russian President Medvedev announces the large scale production of nuclear vessels to begin immediately
Add to these headlines:
· The terrorist bomb and fire in Pakistan’s Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
· The recent terrible hurricanes that ravaged the Gulf Coast which give us another example of the raw destructive power of storms and natural disasters. It was declared by many news reporters and government officials that the USA’s, Gulf Coast’s infrastructure cannot take much more of this!
Of course, in Australia, we are facing many of our own deep spiritual, social and economic problems. Many people are hurting.
It is easy to see that we are truly living in perilous times, and isn’t that what Jesus warned? That in the last days, “perilous times will come?”
Without attempting to give answers to all this, or attempting to place blame, I believe it is time for Christians to get serious!
• Serious about our relationship with Jesus and our commitment to put Him first in every aspect of our lives.
• Serious in our prayer for friends and family who do not know the love of Christ.
• Serious in our prayer for our national leaders and for those with influence over world affairs.
• Serious in our commitment to learn from the fallout that ‘the greed of a few’ has produced on Wall Street, and to set our own priorities right.
• Serious in our determination to trust God with our everyday affairs, and in our expectation to see His miraculous power at work in our personal circumstances.
Here is a good Psalm to remember:
“I would have been without hope if I had not believed that I would see the loving kindness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong. Let your heart be strong. Yes, wait for the Lord.”
(Psalm 27:13-14, NLV)
I love the faith adventure! But I am also very mindful of the urgency of the hour.
God bless you as you commit to living your life reliant on His great grace and power.
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 »
