Archive for May, 2009
Rushin’ to judgement
In Uncategorized on May 30, 2009 at 5:35 pmRIA Novosti reports…
“Russia has seen a colossal number of sects and fringe religions throughout its long history, from the 18th-century self-castrating Skoptsy to the modern-day doomsday cult whose members threatened to burn themselves alive in the Volga Region last year.
In this six-part series, RIA Novosti takes a look at the history of some of these groups and their leaders, and also asks why Russia has proved such fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs.
Up until the mid 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed complete spiritual authority. However, in 1666, Patriarch Nikon decided to bring the Russian Church in line with Greek Orthodoxy, and ordered the rewriting of ecclesiastical tomes.
His move, in a country where dogma and tradition had always played a large role in religious life, caused an uproar.
Nikon’s assertion that Orthodox believers should use three fingers instead of two to cross themselves led to him being labeled the Antichrist by opponents of his changes. Pious Russians had long feared the year 1666, with its satanic associations, and Nikon’s actions seemed to them to be a sign that the Apocalypse was fast approaching.
The Old Believers subsequently fled to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia to escape persecution and await the end of the world. Some of the groups cut themselves off so effectively that isolated communities that knew little of developments in the modern world were still being found in the 1960s and 1970s by Soviet geological expeditions.
This 17th century rejection of the Church’s authority laid the roots for a subsequent explosion of sects and cults, many of them fixating on a single piece of scripture, or an interpretation of scripture, and basing their entire belief system around it.
The two most notorious of these cults were the Khlysty and their offshoot, the Skoptsy.
The Khlysty believed that the way to salvation lay through the repentance of sins. The greater the sin, the greater the repentance, the Khlysty reasoned, and following this logic they rejected conventional doctrines of “right and wrong,” indulging in actions that they could later confess to.
Grigory Rasputin, the mysterious monk who had a major influence on Tsar Nicholas II prior to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, is also thought to have had links to the group, which was active from the 17th to the early 20th century.
“I whip myself, I seek Christ” (“Sebya khlyschu, Khrista ischu”) the Khlysty chanted, while flagellating themselves. They were also famed for their dervish-like dances, during which they believed they were communicating directly with the Holy Spirit.
From the Khlysty came the Skoptsy, who believed that Adam and Eve were created sexless, and that reproduction organs only appeared after humanity had been tempted by Satan. Accordingly, in order “to avoid sexual temptation and sin” the group’s men castrated themselves. Just to be on the safe side, they also cut off women’s breasts.
The sect also distorted biblical texts, referring to Christ not as the redeemer (iskupitel) but the castrator (oskopitel), and stated that Jesus had himself been relived of his sexual organs by John the Baptist.
The late Russian academic Andrei Sinyavsky claimed in “Ivan the Fool – Russian Folk Belief” that the Skoptsy believed that anyone who castrated twelve people was guaranteed a place in heaven, irrespective of any other sins he may have committed. Soviet dissident Sinyavsky, in his quite remarkable study of Russian religious history, wrote that they even went so far as to pay peasants to let them “strike off the serpent.”
The sect’s leader and founder, Kondraty Selivanov, considered by his many followers to be a castrated Tsar Peter III, despite the latter’s assassination in 1762, was granted an audience with a curious Tsar Paul I towards the end of the 18th century. Predictably, the Russian leader turned down Selivanov’s proposal that he castrate himself and establish the Skoptsy belief as state religion, packing him off to an insane asylum instead.
Despite Paul I’s unwillingness to embrace the group’s teachings, the influence of the Skoptsy grew and by 1863 official state statistics showed that the group was some 110,000-strong. The Khlysty were also said to boast similar numbers.
While the Khlysty and the Skoptsy were the most notorious of the new sects, they were not the only ones. Other sects included the Molokans (known for their habit of drinking milk on fast days), the Dukhobors (Spirit-Wrestlers) and the Beloritzy (who only wore white), to name but a few.
Although these groups have largely ceased to exist, their rejection of the mainstream Church had a massive influence on Russian religious life, and paved the way for the appearance of the myriad modern-day sects and cults that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.”
The Farting Preacher – where is he now?
In Uncategorized on May 29, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The Dallas Morning News reports…
“Notorious televangelist Robert Tilton left Dallas in disgrace more than a decade ago and has been quietly rebuilding his life in Miami.
Call it an attempted resurrection.
An indication of just how far below the radar he flies nowadays came in February when a masked gunman invaded Tilton’s beachfront mansion, and the Miami news media didn’t even bother to report the incident.
In the go-go 1980s, after his evangelistic star had risen, a dramatic and potentially violent crime against Tilton would have made national news.
Tilton and his third wife, Maria, were not physically harmed and nothing was stolen. The Miami Police Department characterized the incident as a botched “robbery” that ended when the suspect got spooked and ran from the home.
But it also could have been an attempted kidnapping. The Tiltons’ twin toddlers – daughters Elijah and Rebekah – were at home with their nanny when the man barged into the home.
Or perhaps the incident sprang from a glitch in Tilton’s labyrinthine network of business dealings, which includes for-profit companies as well as worldwide church activities involving millions of dollars.
“To date, no one knows why [the incident happened] or for what reason,” said Brooke Asiatico, a Richardson attorney who represents Tilton. “We want to be careful.”
Police haven’t made any arrests in the case. Asiatico said the Tiltons were traveling and were not available to be interviewed.
After the home invasion, the Tiltons moved out of their 8,000-square-foot Miami Beach mansion and into a South Beach high-rise with 24-hour security. They put the house on the market for $6.9 million.
Longtime Dallas-area residents will remember Tilton’s Word of Faith Family Church in Farmers Branch. From the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, the church occupied a warehouse-sized building on the east side of Interstate 35E near the Valley View Lane exit.
Just north of the church, a towering grain silo became a landmark for interstate travelers. It was festooned with a colorful rainbow overlaid with the words “Jesus is Lord” and a permanent invitation to attend Tilton’s church.
Today, Tilton plies his trade on a Web site called streamingfaith.com. On the daily one-hour program called Robert Tilton Live! he promotes his patented Success N Life gospel, which generally postulates that God will reward donors with blessings that far outstrip the amount of the check they send to pastors such as Tilton.
Like any minister, he says he will pray for his donors and ask God to relieve their problems. But he is careful not to promise that their donations will work a miracle such as curing a loved one’s illness.
Mr. Tilton, whose Web site says he has authored 25 books, currently is offering a free edition of How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally.
Tilton still appears on cable’s Black Entertainment Network, or BET, at 3 a.m. Mondays with reruns or new editions of Success N Life.
Ole Anthony, an East Dallas preacher who has watchdogged Tilton for years, said he is not surprised the old television warrior climbed aboard the Web.
“It’s just another way for him to keep making those outlandish promises,” said Anthony, founder of the Trinity Foundation and archenemy of Tilton. “And to replenish his mailing list with fresh names and addresses.”
Tilton, who will turn 63 on June 7, also continues to reinvent his personal life in Florida. He and his 49-year-old wife became the proud parents of Elijah and Rebekah in January 2008.
The couple presented the girls on Tilton’s Web site in April and let viewers watch them scuttle around the television studio for a few minutes before launching into their “prosperity” sermon.
“Yes, Bob changes diapers,” Maria told viewers.
Lower hair, profile
Tilton’s style is subdued compared to the old days when he spoke in tongues and once talked about rats eating his brain.
He’s toned down his evangicoiff; he’s a little grayer; his tanned face a little craggier. But he still dresses well in suit and tie. He and his wife drive a black Range Rover, a black Mercedes Benz and a blue Bentley when in Miami.
Asiatico, Tilton’s attorney, said last week that the home invasion has not driven her client into hiding. The Tiltons still fly around the country to preach at various churches and take care of their ministries, she said.
Tilton is senior pastor, president and chairman of the Word of Faith World Outreach Center Church in Las Vegas and holds the same title at a church of the same name in Miami, according to public records.
Anthony and his Trinity Foundation said they have obtained records showing that the Tiltons may have earned salaries totaling more than $1.2 million as church pastors in 2003. In a written statement, Asiatico said, “None of this information is accurate.” But she didn’t offer a specific salary number in rebuttal.
In addition to their church work, Tilton also owns a publishing company and several other for-profit businesses.
Records filed with the Nevada secretary of state’s office in 2006 list Tilton as president, secretary, treasurer and director of Stella Vita International, a multi-level marketing operation that sells nutritional supplements.
Stella Vita appears to blend Tilton’s prosperity message with network marketing. He has held a series of meetings to attract potential investors in Stella Vita. The “Prosperity Opportunity” meetings took on the flavor of tent revivals.
“I’m not so sure I see the difference,” Tilton was quoted as saying in a 2006 news release. “Ever since I got rid of religion, I’ve had a party with God! And now we’re all going to have a party with Stella Vita” – a quote that would make his lawyer wince.
Asiatico said Tilton has sought legal counsel and abided by all laws to ensure that tax-exempt church entities are not promoting Stella Vita products.
“It is not unusual for pastors to have investments and other sources of income separate and apart from their compensation as ministers of the Gospel,” she said.
Prayer requests tossed
Word of Faith was a megachurch before the term was invented.
And by the late 1980s, Tilton was flying high as its leader. More important, his Success N Life television program and his satellite outreach to churches throughout the world were producing so much revenue that he was able to buy television airtime in at least 200 of the nation’s 235 television markets.
Tilton’s list of names and addresses, gold to mass marketers, swelled into the hundreds of thousands.
Anthony and his Trinity Foundation investigators estimated that Tilton and his enterprises were bringing in $70 million to $80 million a year in gross revenue. Then, in the space of one hour, Diane Sawyer and ABC News blew him away.
The evening of Nov. 21, 1991, ABC News aired a dramatic hidden-camera report that lifted the veil on Tilton’s “fulfillment” operation in Tulsa, Okla.
Video showed workers opening donor letters and setting aside checks and cash for deposit. They entered donor names and addresses into a computer, which then spit out a form letter saying Tilton had received their prayer request and was now asking God to help them.
Investigators found many of the donor prayer requests in a Dumpster, according to the ABC report.
Marte Tilton, the evangelist’s first wife, with whom he had four children, recalled watching the broadcast and described the experience in a memoir published in 2000.
“We sat motionless and speechless through the entire program,” said Tilton’s former wife, whom he divorced in 1993. “Overnight, we became objects of public ridicule and a flurry of lawsuits.”
The television report was devastating because Tilton had promised his viewers he would prayerfully ask God to help them with specific problems.
The revelations prompted more than a dozen disgruntled donors to file lawsuits alleging that Tilton had engaged in fraud.
Tilton migrated to South Florida, where he had maintained a vacation home. After a short second marriage, he found Maria Hortensia Rodriguez, 13 years his junior, and embarked on his third marriage.
They built their dream home in 2003 – a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom, oceanfront palace on San Marco Island with a fabulous view of the Miami skyline.
Birthday terror
Tuesday, Feb. 3, was Maria Tilton’s 49th birthday. She and her husband had returned home after a dinner out and were sitting in their backyard drinking wine, according to the police report.
At 9:20 p.m., a masked man dressed in black and wearing gloves confronted the couple with a large semiautomatic pistol.
He ordered them to go inside the house, placed them facedown on the floor and bound their wrists with plastic “flexi-cuffs.”
The Tiltons’ nanny was at home at the time.
The intruder became worried about the family poodles making noise in the backyard and ordered the nanny to bring the dogs indoors.
He followed her toward the door and Maria Tilton, noticing he had left the room, jumped up and ran screaming out the front door.
Police believe a second intruder may also have been in the house.
After Maria Tilton escaped, the gunman “called out the name ‘John’ twice” before running from the home, the police report said.
A passer-by found the hysterical woman running down the street and called 911.
Later, police found a ski mask and a plastic grip that appeared to have come loose from a handgun. Robert Tilton later told friends that he believed the gunman’s pistol had been equipped with a silencer, but the police report made no mention of it.
A person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified, said police observed that Tilton – who is no stranger to adversity and hardship – seemed to be calm after the incident.
“This wasn’t Bob’s first rodeo when it comes to big events,” the person said.”
Secret footage of a Hill$ong car park attendant playing silly buggers with his torch
In Uncategorized on May 28, 2009 at 1:15 am
‘Tolerance Room’ has clear benefits – Fred Nile proved wrong again
In Uncategorized on May 28, 2009 at 1:07 amThe ABC’s Religion Report on 12/05/1999 reported…
“Fred Nile: A shooting gallery is not a solution or a caring, compassionate approach to anything. You must heal the addicts. Get the addicts off the drugs.
Toni Hassan: You want the Wayside Chapel closed; you want the injecting room within the Wayside Chapel closed?
Fred Nile: Yes, certainly.”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s24950.htm
And from 18/05/2009…
“The following speech was given by Professor Alex Wodak at an event to mark the 10 year anniversary of the opening of Australia’s first safer injecting facility. Currently, eight countries around the world have drug consumption rooms.
“The group which established the Tolerance Room ten years ago had only one intention: to establish, as suggested for consideration by the Wood Royal Commission, a place in Kings Cross where people determined to inject illegal drugs could do so safely. Of necessity, they would also have to be able to inject their drugs without fear of being charged and arrested. In the year that the Tolerance Room was established, 1,116 young Australians died of a heroin overdose. Let us remind ourselves that these 1,116 young Australians were somebody’s son or daughter, somebody’s brother or sister, somebody’s mother or father. We wanted a medically supervised injecting centre right here in Kings Cross because one in ten heroin overdose deaths in this country occurs within two kilometres of where we are right now. A NSW Parliamentary Select Committee had recognised in 1998 the strength of the arguments in favour of, and the weakness of the arguments against, an injecting centre. Yet all lawful ways forward on this issue at that time were blocked. Our last resort was civil disobedience. About 30 people came together from all walks of life to establish the Tolerance Room here in a basement of a church at the Wayside Chapel. There were parents of drug users, some drug users, nurses, doctors, a former politician and a businessman.
I will never forget the words of Gwen Owen, a member of the Older Women’s Network and incidentally, many years earlier, a former school teacher of Bob Carr. When I met her, Gwen was an elderly lady shrouded by magnificent white hair. She said at a meeting I attended ‘Why should an old woman like me, when I go to the supermarket to buy a packet of cereals, have to see someone injecting drugs hiding between the aisles of the supermarket? The alcoholics have a place where they can go to drink alcohol. It’s called ‘the pub’’. Why can’t people who inject drugs have somewhere where they can go to take their drugs that is not a park, toilet or supermarket?’
We have to remember that when Justice Wood suggested this in 1997, there were then almost a dozen places in Kings Cross where people were able to inject drugs in rented rooms or cubicles. Kings Cross has been Australia’s biggest illicit drug market for most of the last half century. But these rooms and cubicles were run by criminals. The Wood Royal Commission documented that police corruption linked to these illegal injecting centres was extensive. And the many drug users who could not, or would not, rent rooms or cubicles injected in public places. Many people then injected drugs in the parks, laneways or toilets of Kings Cross. Kings Cross residents hated having to see that just as much as Gwen Owen did. The MSIC has spared Kings Cross residents from having to see that and that is why more than 70% of local residents have continued to support the MSIC.
On 26 June 2008, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, called on member states “to ensure that people who are struggling with drug addiction be given equal access to health and social services”.
“No-one” he said “should be stigmatised or discriminated against because of their dependence on drugs”.
Ban Ki-Moon made similar comments in early 2008 in the context of HIV prevention when he said there “will be no equitable progress so long as some parts of the population are marginalized and denied basic health and human rights”, including “injecting drug users”.
The International Narcotics Control Board, which has in the past said that it ‘will not discuss human rights’, declared in 2008 that a lack of respect for human rights can undermine drug control efforts. The Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Dr Antonio Maria Costa, has acknowledged that a lack of focus on health and human rights has been an ‘unintended consequence’ of the current approach to drug control.
Two weeks ago in the UK Observer, Professor Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the GFATM, called for drug decriminalisation so that better progress could be made in reducing the spread of HIV among injecting drug users. Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, recently made similar comments. AIDS is now the sixth major cause of death in the world and 30% of new HIV infections outside Sub Saharan Africa are associated with the sharing of needles and syringes.
After the MSIC was opened in Kings Cross in 2001, the British Columbia government opened a similar centre, called ‘Insite’, in Vancouver, Canada. When the Federal government attempted to close Insite, pro bono lawyers took out an injunction.
The matter came before Justice Ian Pitfield of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, who ruled in May 2008 that ‘the blanket prohibition contributes to the very harm it seeks to prevent. It is inconsistent with the state’s interest in fostering individual and community health, and preventing death and disease.’
He said the proposed intervention by Ottawa, when applied to Insite, threatens a person’s constitutional right to life and security because “it denies the addict access to a health-care facility where the risk of morbidity associated with infectious disease is diminished, if not eliminated.”
Pitfield pointed out that people who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco to excess aren’t denied treatment and those who are addicted to illegal drugs should not be denied a form of health-care treatment.
‘I do not see any rational or logical reason why the approach should be different when dealing with the addiction to narcotics … Simply stated, I cannot agree with. . . Canada’s submission that an addict must feed his addiction in an unsafe environment when a safe environment that may lead to rehabilitation is the alternative.’
The group decided to call their injecting centre a ‘Tolerance Room’ because this conflict was fundamentally about a difference in values. The group who established this impromptu injecting centre supported the values of tolerance, compassion, respect for autonomy and a reverence for human life. For this group, keeping people alive was the highest priority and the permanent achievement of abstinence, if that happened later, a welcome bonus. For critics of the injecting room, the only thing that mattered was enduring abstinence. But dead injecting drug users cannot become abstinent from drugs.
The MSIC has now been open for eight years. Rigorous independent evaluation has demonstrated clear benefits without significant negative consequences. The MSIC has also been shown to be cost-effective. Yet for political reasons, after eight years, the MSIC still remains a research trial. We call upon the NSW government to recognise that the MSIC is just as much a part of the health care system as other harm reduction measures, such as needle syringe programmes and methadone maintenance treatment, which were also controversial when they were introduced. The MSIC is just as much a part of the health system as emergency departments, hospitals and GPs. We call upon the NSW government to say ‘it’s time.’ We call upon all governments to apply the same standards when evaluating all interventions for illicit drugs – whether these are intended to reduce the supply, demand or harms resulting from drugs.
Finally, I would like to thank the many people who supported the Tolerance Room, especially the people who came alone to the meetings and attended the Tolerance Room itself. I would especially like to thank the Reverend Ray Richmond for his leadership and the Wayside Chapel.”
Professor Alex Wodak, speaking on 6 May at Wayside Chapel, Kings Cross, Sydney, Australia.”
From http://www.ihrablog.net/2009/05/ten-year-anniversary-for-sydneys.html
Prime Minister at prayer
In Uncategorized on May 27, 2009 at 3:19 pmChristian Today reports…
“Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd revealed that he starts each day with spiritual meditation.
Rudd told the Salvation Army’s War Cry that his daily devotionals were derived from ‘My Utmost for His Highest’ and that he tries hard to “reflect on that before I get stuck into the day.”
Scottish-born World War I AIF chaplain Oswald Chambers is the author of the best-selling book that features everyday reading for the complete year.
“I work out of that and the scriptural readings upon which each day’s devotions are based,” he said.
Rudd also revealed that his Catholic mother helped solidify his Christian faith. “She instilled in me a deep sense of the importance of faith”.
“The value of church for me is to be grounded on a regular basis,” he added.
Rudd further when asked on his advice to couples with marriage troubles said he suggests them to see their local pastor or priest.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s staff also follows suit by spending time in prayer at a “reflection room”.
According to sources, there exists a cosy prayer room in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which is used as a quiet space for staff to meditate, pray or reflect.”
The War Cry interview with Prime Minister Rudd is at http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/warcry/default.asp?contentID=1341
Past and present Hill$ongers on being gay and Christian
In Uncategorized on May 27, 2009 at 1:56 amFrom ABC Radio Sunday Nights program…
“If there is a vocal strand of resistance to homosexuality to be found in the community today it tends to come from conservative Catholic and Evangelical protestant traditions, groups who have strangely found they have more and more in common through the years of the culture wars.
Right now we are going to meet several Gay Christians whose spirituality has, for both good and ill, been profoundly affected by Evangelical Christianity. It is a pleasure to welcome Iaian Scott-Wallace, author and curator of “Walking between Worlds”, Penny Davis, and Ben Gresham a practising Pentecostal Christian, who has been through several attempts at re-assignment of his sexual orientation.
It is also a pleasure to welcome one of Australia’s most respected Baptist leaders who has been challenged by experience to think through the issues not only theologically but pastorally. Rev. Rowland Croucher of John-Mark Ministries.”
Whatever happened to angry young Christian men with permed hair and pink shirts taking the Kingdom by force?
In Uncategorized on May 26, 2009 at 1:55 am
$ale of the 1st Century
In Uncategorized on May 26, 2009 at 1:43 amThe Charlotte Observer reports…
“As Easter approached, the ad ran repeatedly on the Inspiration Network: David Cerullo, clutching a Bible, told viewers they, too, could receive prosperity, physical healing and other blessings God gave the ancient Israelites.
All they had to do, the televangelist said, was send $200 or more.
“Go to your phone,” he said. “Sow your Passover offering and watch God do what he said he would … Call now.” Pitches like this have transformed the Charlotte-area cable network into one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian broadcasters, beaming into more than 100 countries on five continents. They’ve also helped turn Cerullo, Inspiration’s CEO and on-air host, into a wealthy man.
He brings home more than $1.5 million a year, making him the best-paid leader of any religious charity tracked by watchdog groups. His salary dwarfs those of executives leading far larger religious nonprofits.
David and Barbara Cerullo live in a 12,000 square-foot lakefront home in south Charlotte — complete with an elevator and an 1,100-square-foot garage. Their grown children also receive handsome salaries.
His network, with a budget of nearly $80 million last year, sprang from the remnants of Jim Bakker’s PTL Club. Cerullo and his colleagues have raised much of the money by repeating this on-air assertion: God brings financial favor to those who donate.
Cerullo says he’s heard from many people who’ve “reaped a harvest” after contributing.
But some donors are disillusioned. Rebecca Mills, 54, of north Mississippi, gave about $400 two years ago. Money was tight. But it was a time when she was recovering from breast cancer and trying to get closer to God.
The more she read the Bible, the more she wondered why she’d written those checks: “I could just … tell that what they were saying wasn’t right.” Much of the money sent by people like Mills is now funding the City of Light, a 93-acre campus in northern Lancaster County, S.C., where the network’s plans include a sophisticated training and broadcast center.
Taxpayers are also helping to pay for it. Eager to bring jobs to a county with 19 percent unemployment, South Carolina offered the network incentives worth up to $26 million to land the campus — a deal that has been questioned by economic development experts.
Cerullo said he works hard for his salary and has turned down recommendations that he be paid more. He said his appeals to donors are based on God’s promises in the Bible, and that 80 cents of every dollar donated is spent to spread the Gospel.
“Ours is an organization based on accountability, based on integrity, based on trust,” the 56-year-old minister told the Observer. “We’ve proven that in the last 18 years over and over again.”
The son of a well-known evangelist, David Cerullo didn’t grow up wanting to follow his father’s path.
As a teenager, he planned to be a doctor. But, at his parents’ request, he agreed to try Oral Roberts University, a Christian school in Oklahoma. There, he said, he began to feel God point him in another direction.
“In that still small voice in my spirit,” Cerullo said, “I felt God suggest to me, ‘Look, change your major to business, and I have other plans for you.’” After graduating with a business degree, he joined his father’s ministry and eventually helped run it. He was ordained in 1974 by the Assemblies of God, but said that even today, “I am probably more comfortable in a roomful of CPAs and lawyers and bankers than I am in a roomful of preachers.” His father, Morris, grew up in a Jewish orphanage in New Jersey and converted to Christianity at age 14. Later, Morris Cerullo staged worldwide crusades in which, his Web site says, “the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear.” The Inspiration Network launched in 1990, when Morris Cerullo paid $7 million to buy the assets of PTL’s cable television network out of bankruptcy. David Cerullo became president.
Throughout most of the 1990s, the network differed from many other religious TV stations: It didn’t ask for donations on the air. Instead, it generated revenue by selling advertising and airtime for programs produced by other ministries.
That changed in 1999. David Cerullo decided Inspiration should create its own programs to spread God’s word. “We started to put a face on the network,” he said.
That required money, so the network began soliciting donations from the public. Increasingly, it came to rely on “prosperity preachers” — guest evangelists who told viewers that God favored those who donated.
The gifts grew rapidly, from about $200,000 in 1999 to about $40 million last year.
The influx of money has created a powerhouse of religious broadcasting.
The ministry’s flagship Inspiration Network carries a variety of programming, from shows featuring controversial evangelists John Hagee and Benny Hinn to Christian hip-hop videos and an adventure show for children. Twice a day, the network airs its homegrown “Inspiration Today!” show, in which Cerullo and other evangelists ask for contributions.
As their networks grew, David Cerullo and his wife built a comfortable life. Their home, in a gated south Charlotte community, is valued at $1.7 million, real estate records show.
Few nonprofit leaders are paid more than Cerullo. In 2007, he received roughly $1.52 million in base pay, along with other compensation totaling about $69,000, according to the ministry’s IRS filing.
Guidestar, which monitors nonprofits, compiles a database on thousands of charities — including 13,000 religious organizations that filed IRS returns for 2006, the last year with complete records. None of the faith-based groups paid their leaders more than the Inspiration Network.
Even religious nonprofits with vastly larger budgets pay their presidents substantially less, the Observer found. The Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by Pat Robertson, has a budget roughly four times larger than Inspiration’s. Compensation to CBN’s president totaled $344,000 in 2007.
Concern about Cerullo’s salary prompted Wall Watchers, which monitors religious charities, to issue a “donor alert” to caution people about giving to the Inspiration Networks.
“That amount of salary is outrageous and out of sight,” said Rodney Pitzer, research director for the Matthews-based group.
Cerullo declined to discuss Wall Watchers’ warning.
His family is also on the payroll. His wife, Barbara, received about $198,000 in total compensation in 2007, according to Inspiration’s IRS return. Son Ben, daughter Becky and their spouses, who also work there, received a total of nearly $400,000, according to a network spokesman.
Barbara heads Inspiration’s women’s ministry. Ben, ordained by his grandfather’s ministry, oversees youth efforts. Becky is starting a network aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds. Becky and Barbara are not ordained ministers.
IRS rules prohibit nonprofits from paying “unreasonable compensation” to officials. But the agency examines the returns of fewer than 8,000 of the 1.8 million tax-exempt organizations each year.
A paid independent consulting firm recommends the salaries of Inspiration’s executives, including Cerullo, according to spokesman John Roos. The board of directors makes the final decision.
Cerullo said he and his wife, both of whom sit on the board, recuse themselves from discussions about his salary and abstain from the votes.
For a while, though, that arrangement apparently left just one board member to decide his salary. From late 2005 to 2008, the board consisted of only three members, including Cerullo and his wife.
The board expanded to four members last year and to six members this year, officials say. Today, the board is chaired by Cerullo and includes a fundraising expert and a neighbor who helps run a communications firm.
Cerullo says he earns his pay, typically working 60 to 80 hours a week. He oversees four cable networks, a ministry and a television production company, all while playing a key role in developing the City of Light complex, he said.
The board received a recommendation that he be paid “substantially” more, Cerullo said, but he turned down the additional money because “I am blessed beyond my imagination … I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I won’t take it.” He said he knows of other religious nonprofits that pay their CEOs more, but he wouldn’t identify them. He also declined to share a salary survey used to set his pay. But he said that study looked at compensation for cable network CEOs, church pastors and ministry leaders.
Cerullo said the “average preacher” probably would not have the business know-how to do what he does, and that his salary is still below what his peers earn at cable networks such as Discovery and CNN.
Cerullo’s staff is also well-paid. More than 25 of the network’s 330 employees collected over $100,000 in 2007, the IRS filing shows.
Roos, Inspiration’s senior vice president for marketing, said the network examines national salary averages before setting any employee’s pay.
“This is a high-tech, very specialized (operation),” he said. “…That comes with a price tag.” Still, two larger religious broadcasters, Trinity Broadcasting Network and CBN, had fewer employees earning six-figure salaries, records show.
Inspiration has chosen not to join the 1,385-member Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), which sets standards for governance and fundraising by Christian charities. “I don’t believe in organizations that set themselves up to create burden with very little benefit,” Cerullo said.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is investigating the finances of six other televangelists, questioned why any religious nonprofit would decline to join ECFA, which he likens to a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
Grassley would not comment specifically about the Inspiration Network, but told the Observer that leaders of religious nonprofits should be careful not to use viewers’ donations to adopt “filthy rich” lifestyles. Grassley wants to know whether some nonprofits are violating the spending rules that allow them preferential tax treatment.
“I saw (PTL’s) Jim Bakker treating his organization like a personal ATM,” said Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which helps shape the nation’s tax laws. “Any religious organization ought to get away from that impression.”
Emotional on-air pitches generate much of the money used to pay network salaries. In March, Morris Cerullo appeared on Inspiration’s “camp meeting” with a message to fire up prospective donors.
“Is anybody ready for the greatest financial breakthrough you’ve ever experienced in your life?” he asked.
The elder Cerullo, a Pentecostal minister, at times appeared to speak in tongues. His gravelly voice periodically rising to a shout, he urged members of the audience to fill envelopes with $900 donations.
“When you sow for your financial anointing, the windows of heaven are going to open for you,” he said. ” … In the next nine months, you are going to experience more financial blessings than you’ve ever experienced in your life! 100 fold! Debt cancellation!” Soon, these words appeared on the screen: “Call now with your $900 offering and receive God’s debt cancellation.” Until about four years ago, the elder Cerullo had served as an unpaid member of the network’s board.
Like other prosperity preachers who raise money for INSP, Morris Cerullo has been criticized for his fundraising methods. In 2005, he was indicted in California for tax evasion, but the charges were later thrown out.
David Cerullo says he believes in his father — and that good things will happen to donors. He said he has gotten many letters and e-mails from contributors who “received what I would call a harvest.” He declined to name them.
“I don’t back off … the concept that seeds produce harvest,” he said. “It’s naturally accurate. It’s biblically accurate. It’s spiritually accurate…. The Bible says give, and then what? Then it will be given unto you.” Laura Gamble is among those who believe her seeds have yielded fruit. The 69-year-old Easley, S.C., resident said she’s a regular viewer and contributor. She believes her donations have had something to do with improvements in her health, she said.
“I just got out of the hospital, and I’m having a good recovery,” she said. “It’s God looking out for me.”
Texas televangelist Mike Murdock, Morris Cerullo and the other ministers raising much of the network’s money adhere to a much-criticized brand of evangelism called prosperity gospel, which holds that God rewards them and their faithful donors with financial prosperity. With the Inspiration Networks and other broadcasters spreading their messages around the globe, those prosperity preachers have in recent years watched their audiences swell.
The financially desperate are among those most likely to be drawn to such pitches, experts say.
Janet Gibbens, 60, of northern California, was holding down odd jobs and barely making ends meet about five years ago when she saw Morris Cerullo on the Inspiration Network. She’d been reading Cerullo’s books and listening to his preaching for years. When he called himself a prophet of the Lord, she believed him.
On the air, the elder Cerullo urged viewers to donate to the network — and then prepare to receive “financial blessings that would stagger the imagination,” she recalled.
“I wanted to have something more than this poverty,” she said. “If I coughed up the $200 … He was God’s emissary, you know. If you did that in obedience, the sky was the limit.” So she sent about $200 — all that remained in her bank account, she said.
But her financial situation never improved. About three years ago, she began reading information that caused her to doubt the claims of the people she had trusted. Her faith in those ministers evaporated and was replaced by rage. She now wonders why she ever believed Cerullo’s claims. “It’s almost like a brainwashing, that they can convince you to give all your money,” she said.
In recent years, the debate over the prosperity gospel has been the subject of cover stories in national magazines, theological conferences and Grassley’s Senate inquiry. Critics say preachers who espouse it — from PTL’s Jim and Tammy Bakker in the 1980s to Missouri-based Joyce Meyer today — distort the Bible to justify their luxurious lifestyles.
“If that was Christ’s message, then I want to know why he wound up on the cross. That’s not prospering,” said the Rev. Mike McDonald, pastor at Broad Street United Methodist Church in Mooresville. “He warned against seeking material gain — often quite explicitly.” Rev. Michael Horton, a California theology professor who edited “Agony of Deceit,” a book that examines the claims of fundraising televangelists, said such appeals lead to “a kind of Ponzi scheme.” “Certainly it works out very well for whoever’s at the top,” he said.
One former Inspiration employee, who asked not to be named, said many of the network’s donors were elderly people of limited means who hoped that giving to the network would help them “turn their own situations around.” She said she valued the network’s mission of saving souls, but was troubled by the growing number of on-air promises that God would bring good things to donors.
“That teaches people that the things of God are for sale,” she said. “I just have a problem with that. That stuff’s not for sale.”
Hill$ong not a cult says Houston
In Uncategorized on May 24, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Hill$ong Brisbane Opening 24/05/09 Picture:Twitpic
The Courier-Mail reports…
“Celebrity evangelist Brian Houston has defended his Hillsong ministry against allegations it is a “cult-like” organisation as the Sydney megachurch opened a “campus” church on Brisbane’s southside yesterday.
He also denied Hillsong had misspent Commonwealth grant money or recruited students in NSW schools.
Mr Houston and his wife Bobbie were installed as the new senior pastors of one of Brisbane’s largest Pentecostal churches, the 1000-member Garden City Christian Church.
The church’s governing board is now dominated by Mr Houston… and Hillsong appointees, and the church has been rebranded with Hillsong logos.
In an exclusive interview with The Courier-Mail, Mr Houston, credited the dramatic growth of the 21,000-member Hillsong to a need for fellowship and “the grace of God”.
“It’s also because people want answers to life,” he said.
Criticism that Hillsong is overly focused on money, flashy entertainment and fund-raising, were rejected.
“We’re big and because we’re big people wonder what all this is about,” he said.
Hillsong critics, including politicians who have been contacted by former Hillsong members, have accused it of cult-like behaviour, including psychologically abusing people who questioned the church’s practices.
“Recruitment and fundraising is what it’s all about,” said Tanya [Levin], whose book People in Glass Houses exposes her experiences with Hillsong.
“Fundamentalism is not open to free thought and questions.”
But Mr Houston said Ms Levine was only a spectator.
“There’s 21,000 people who attend Hillsong on Sunday in Sydney and I would say 20,500 or 20,800 have awesome things to say,” he said.
Former ALP leader and long-time MP Carmen Lawrence, now teaching at the University of Western Australia, said there was not proper scrutiny of $600,000 in federal grant money Hillsong received for indigenous employment and hundreds of thousands more for other programs.
“One thing that worried me was whether they were using funds to recruit members for their church,” she said.
Mr Houston said “absolutely 100 per cent” of the allegations were false, blamed people with “an agenda” for prompting the reports, and gave assurances the ministry had strict accountability for grant money.
Students in NSW were not being recruited by Hillsong in schools, he said, although Hillsong was active in schools, as other churches were.
He also said Hillsong members giving 10 per cent of their pre-tax wages to the church were not asked directly to do so.”
From http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25530532-3102,00.html
Field Of Dweebs
In Uncategorized on May 24, 2009 at 9:09 pmField of Dreams Church, Adelaide, South Australia
Merciless Ministries
In Uncategorized on May 24, 2009 at 10:52 amReuters reports…
“The Serbian Orthodox Church ordered the closure on Saturday of a treatment centre for drug abusers after a video showed a patient being beaten with a shovel, punched and kicked as part of supposed treatment.
The Holy Synod, the church’s top body, asked Bishop Artemije, the head of the local diocese, to order an immediate shutdown of the facility and “launch proceedings against those responsible in line with church’s laws and regulations.”
A video posted on the website of Belgrade’s Vreme weekly (vreme.com/view.php?id=865307) showed one of the centre’s employees repeatedly beating a man with a shovel, kicking him and hitting him with a knuckleduster — brass knuckles — in the face inside a room decorated with icons.
The video also shows another two men holding the victim.
A man with the shovel hits the victim several times and he screams in pain. The victim is then positioned upright and repeatedly hit karate style in the head, elbow and feet with brass knuckles.
The victim, whose head hits religious icons on the wall during the beating, eventually falls unconscious
“We are asking state bodies to undertake appropriate measures,” the Holy Synod statement said. “We are expressing our deepest regret to all victims of the violence.”
The statement came a day after the Serbian Health Ministry said it would investigate methods used at the rehabilitation centre near the southwestern city of Novi Pazar and after government human rights watchdog Sasa Jankovic announced he had filed criminal charges against the centre and its lead priest Dejan Peranovic.
“The video footage and public acknowledgement of the clergyman in charge are testimonies to violence which is in contravention to the evangelical spirit of the church and its mission,” the church statement said.
Peranovic told TV’s B92 that the beatings were a “hard and unwanted, but necessary part of treatment.”
“I don’t like beatings … sometimes they are necessary,” he said, saying patients’ parents approved of the violence.”
From http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLN145509
Warning – below is the video of the beatings. The video shows violent acts and is disturbing.
The video is confronting and should not be viewed if you find footage of violence to be emotionally overwhelming.
Houston to Garden City Church members – ‘you must adjust’
In Uncategorized on May 23, 2009 at 12:24 amThe Courier-Mail reports…
“Hillsong evangelist Brian Houston has defended his takeover of the Garden City Christian Church, saying “we are all part of the same church”.
Hillsong logos have already replaced Garden City Christian signs in preparation of Mr Houston’s installation as senior pastor tomorrow.
In an exclusive interview with The Courier-Mail today, Mr Houston said the board of the re-branded church would be governed by three Hillsong members, three GCC members and himself.
“We’re all Australian Christian church, so we’re all part of the same church, so were already part of the same greater movement,’’ he said.
The Mt Gravatt church is one of Brisbane’s oldest and largest pentecostal churches.
More than 70 per cent of registered members voted that he and wife Bobbie should be senior pastors of the church.
Mr Houston said while the Garden City Christian church will still exist, “it essentially will be like a campus of Hillsong’’ and will be called Hillsong Brisbane Campus.
Garden City Christian members who fear the loss of their church’s autonomy must adjust to change, he said.
The church’s constitution, which will be reviewed by Mr Houston, will still control the operations of the church.
“The members of Garden City control the assets, and are the ultimate decision-making body,’’ he said
Changes to the constitution require a 75 per cent vote of registered members.
Mr Houston said he felt the changes to the church were biblical.
“I absolutely do. In the new testament church, there was a real sense of cooperation and working together, town by town, village by village, city by city.’’
Sydney-based Hillsong, with a membership of 21,000 and assets estimated at $150 million, is considered Australia’s largest and wealthiest single congregation.
It has a television audience in the millions, and churches through Europe, but Garden City Christian is its first interstate campus in Australia.
Mr Houston said there were no plans for other interstate moves, but “I’m not saying we would never ever do another thing somewhere else,’’ he said.”
From www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25522653-952,00.html
Hill$ong pressures the unemployed to give 10% of what they’re not earning
In Uncategorized on May 22, 2009 at 1:29 am
(Hill$ong pastor) “Welcome to church. This is the part of the service where we come around our tithes and offerings.
So, there’s envelopes there below your seats, so, if that’s the time you do that, in this time of [inaudible] tithes and offerings…we do that weekly…if you could start doing that now…
Also under your seat there’s a welcome card……and that card pretty much…….if you want to fill out the details on that. One reason to do that is you get on our database which means that you can get correspondence from us when we send texts out. Also if you want to join one of our teams…joining one of the teams out there…or a connect group….which is a small group of people that get together….mid-week, every fortnight in small homes…then we eat together, pray together, do life together. If you want to find out about that then you can fill that in, pop that in the offering container as it goes past…and one of the pastors will give you a phone call in the next few days. Would you do that? Also there’s hosts now coming to the aisles with pens, and if you need a pen…everyone hasn’t got a pen I know …especially skinny jeans ..it can be a problem carrying a pen around.
So I want to encourage you in this time tonight ….from today. Last week I was talking about Jacob..if you remember from Genesis 28…and pretty much ..to sum that up really quickly, he went on a journey to find a wife and on that journey ..he had a dream and God spoke to him in that dream ..and God really just said for quite a few verses…how much He loves him……how much He wants to bless him…His heart for him…and what He wants to do with his descendants and his family….wants to bless him financially and build his life……..and Jacob believed God..which is amazing isn’t it? He went ‘wow…oh that’s amazing’..and he believed that in his heart. And from that revelation he started tithing. He gave back to God 10%. It says ‘he gave to God 10%’ because he was like ‘wow what an amazing revalation, I’m just going to give back to God what He has given to me’. So that was awesome.
This week I want you to turn to Malachi Chapter 3, verse 6. Because I think it’s one thing to believe about tithing…you’re commited to do that ..another thing…..you know …it’s part of your heart…it’s part of your expression of how you see God. But tonight, my challenge is..what about the different seasons of life?
It’s easy to do it when things are going good, but what about in different seasons. That’s why a lot of the scripture….it’s one of the most encouraging scriptures in the bible and it’s pretty simple. but that’s good…and this is what it says in verse 6. ‘I am the Lord and I do not change.’ What a great scripture. ‘I am the Lord and I do not change.’ Meaning that whatever the circumstance, whatever the situation, maybe you’re in transition now, which is in between jobs. That’s what we call it in the life of the church…you’re not unemployed…you’re just on your way to a better job, than you were. You know, maybe that, or maybe there’s other things happening in your life, other challenges, that you have….well tonight I want you to look at that scripture, write it down…read it to yourself. ‘I am the Lord, I do not change’….and be encouraged that God….every single promise in here is for you.
And it’s not as if God does it ….ohhh….when He’s feeling good, when He has a good day …No, no His promises are eternal. It says He is the same God yesterday, today and tomorrow. And if you look at Jacob’s life …he’s a testimony to that. You know, he goes to find a wife, and if you read on, he gets tricked into marrying the ugly sister…and he works seven years and he …….yeah..he got tricked …it’s quite a funny story …and then he marries the right girl and they can’t have children…and then it says his wage fluctuates ten times within that season of his life but he stayed faithful…and if you look at the end of his life…he lived a blessed life and a big life…and he stayed true to what God spoke to him….so I hope you’re encouraged tonight? (congregation:‘yeah’) Great.”
Amway’s fingerprints on the church
In Uncategorized on May 22, 2009 at 12:39 amThe Grand Rapids Press reports…
“Amway co-founder Rich DeVos’ legs may be weak, but his mind and heart are going strong.
Even at 83, as the $8.2 billion company he co-founded with the late Jay Van Andel marks its 50th anniversary, the philanthropist billionaire still thinks big.
How big?
During a wide-ranging interview Monday, DeVos said his next project is to bring the long-separate Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church in America back together.
Calling the 1857 secession one of the things that has “bugged me all my life,” DeVos said he hopes to undo the Reformed Church split that has divided families (including his grandparents) and weakened each church’s ability to be a “witness for Christ.”
DeVos arrived for the interview at Amway’s headquarters Monday walking with a cane but appearing sharp and mentally spry.
Nearby were pictures of Amway’s co-chief executives — youngest son, Doug, who also is president, and Van Andel’s oldest son, Steve, who is chairman.
The lifelong Republican also spoke about his opposition to gay marriage, passing the torch at Amway, why his name is on so many buildings around West Michigan, and the heart transplant that, so far, has given him 12 extra years of life and a chance to fulfill his dream of seeing his grandchildren grow up.
Q: Is there anything else you want to do before you’re gone?
A: Right now I’m working on trying to reform the Christian Reformed Church, put them back to one.
I’m working through the seminaries and I’m working some through the churches, so that we get to the proper bodies to try to move on it. I think that they’ve been separate for too long, and not with any good reasons anymore. Sometimes, it’s time to rise above the pettiness of those things and move on.
Q: How soon do you think you can make that happen?
A: I have no timeline on it. I’m just planning it and saying it’s time to get on with it, guys.
“It’s not maybe unlike what goes on in Detroit. There are too many little things that get in the way of people moving on to support each other and help and have a stronger message.
If the auto plants in Detroit would just sit around the table and say, ‘What do we gotta do to make this thing work?’ Instead of, ‘I want this and I want that.’ They might make it.
If these two church denominations can find out what little differences they have, which the average person in these churches doesn’t even know about, maybe we can get it done. I think it’ll be a stronger witness for Christ.
Q: Sounds like you’re putting some of your personal influence in it. I imagine you’re putting some personal resources in it as well?
A: I’ve talked to a few people and I’m hiring somebody to start to work on it. It’s just a little cause. You asked me what I wanted to do yet. That’s one little thing I’d like to do yet.
Q: You gave $100,000 to the effort to defeat the recognition of gay marriage in Florida. Why did you choose to put money behind that cause?
A: Because I believe in it. That’s just a sacred issue of respecting marriage. It was not an anti-gay thing.
I have been hung in effigy by the gay community for a long time, from when I was on President Reagan’s first AIDS commission.
Q: How does that tie in with the gay marriage issue?
A: From that point on, that’s when they were hanging me in effigy because I wasn’t sympathetic to all of their requests for special treatment. Because at that time it was always somebody else’s fault. And I said, “You are responsible for your actions, too, you know. Conduct yourself properly,” which is a pretty solid Christian principle. You’ve got to take responsibility for your actions. It went from there to a series of requests for special treatment.
I would say, “I understand who you are. I accept who you are. Live your life. I will respect you. But don’t keep asking for favors.” Don’t ask for a concession on the marriage issue, which is not vital to them, in my opinion. They’ve made it a vital issue because they want to.
Q: Is there a solution? A compromise you would support?
A: Call it something else. Call it anything you want to. But marriage is a sacred document, OK? A sacred sacrament in the church and in the world. Don’t mess with it.
Go do something else. I deal with a lot of wonderful gay people. I hire a lot of them. I use a lot of them. I respect them. They’re terrific. I am good friends with them. But you live your life the way you want to live and I’ll live mine and I won’t stick my nose in yours. But don’t keep trying to change things. That’s all.
Q: Do you think it’s a winnable fight, long term?
A: For them? They’ve won a lot of fights. They’re a tough bunch. They keep asking for concessions all their lives. I don’t put anything past their ability to adjust things to their way on some equality basis. That’s all fine until you start dealing with sacred issues.
Q: How is your health?
A: My mind is OK. They tell me it is. My legs aren’t good, but otherwise I’m fine.
I’m getting around. I’m chasing the ball games. The kids tell me I’m doing too many things. I spoke at Grand Rapids Christian High this morning to a bunch of little kids. I said, “I wonder what these kids think about when they think a millionaire or a billionaire? What image do they get?”
Q: What image do you think they have?
A: They always send me thank-you notes by the hundreds. The image was always of dollar bills and 10 million dollar bills. I said, that’s a bad image.
I want to go and show them what I really look like, tell them about how I struggled to get through this school so they see that those things don’t just happen, and here I’m some rich old guy who counts his money every day.
Q: What do you hope those kids tell their kids about you?
A: That he’s a nice guy, and that he went to this school and he didn’t get all A’s and he struggled. But he turned out to be good. The Lord blessed him and he can bless me if I do that. I hope they go out with an image that they can do good things too. That’s my goal. “You can do this.”
Q: You have had 12 extra years you would not have if not for a woman in England who was able to give her heart when she received a heart-lung transplant.
A: She passed away recently, last year. So her heart goes on. And she’s passed on. Isn’t that something?
I met her on our 10th (transplant) anniversary.
I was in London. She was there for a check-up as well. My doctor said, “You ought to go see her. She’s over in the hospital because there’s some blood problem we’re working on with her.” So we went over there and saw her and we reminisced and we laughed about her heart and how it was going on and how she was doing, what she was doing, and so forth.
She sang, so she wanted to make a little disc. So we underwrote the cost of a disc of her songs so they would go on. They do now. Her family has those.
Q: There were a lot of people who thought: “Well, here’s a billionaire and he went over to England and bought a heart.” The average person who is in his 70s would not be able to afford to do that and may not have been able to have that same opportunity.
A: That’s true.
Q: How do you respond to those people? How does that make you feel?
A: I guess my quick reaction, my cute reaction, is: “That’s the benefit of making money, isn’t it? That’s the benefit of being industrious.”
I look at that as the hand of God. What happened in my case, there’s no other explanation for it. There are too many little things that occurred.
Q: What do you feel you’ve accomplished in these 12 years that is something you’re really proud of, that you’re glad you were here for beyond some of the family accomplishments.
A: I don’t know what I accomplished in the last 12 years. Whatever I accomplished was before that. I’ve enjoyed the fruits of it the last 12 years. I’ve watched all these kids come out. We had done our work a long time ago.
It was the joy, however, of seeing things get transferred over successfully, to watch the next generation take charge.
Q: Amway has been accused of being a pyramid scheme, of tax evasion and a host of other things. How much of the problems Amway has had over the years can you attribute to the decisions that you made or Jay Van Andel made?
A: We failed to come down hard enough, quick enough, to stamp that sort of thing out. That was a sin of omission. We failed to discipline the organization.
Our concept is square that people would all understand this and they would observe these things. But the power to make money quick is in all of us.
But oddly enough, Jay and I used to talk about this, we never had a goal of making a lot of money. We had a goal of having a business of our own.
And there were many times we could have sold out and had a lot of money. Billions. We just put it in our pocket and go home, OK? But that was never our goal.
Q: Do you think the Rich DeVos of 50 years ago would have believed what this has turned into?
A: There’s no way to dream even that all this would come out like this. The battles we fought to get here, though, were all symptomatic of our commitment to the cause.
It was all worth fighting for. We won in all of them emotionally. We paid in some cases because maybe we were derelict. We didn’t pursue something. We didn’t watch something quite quickly enough which happens and it happened with us. We made our mistakes but the Lord overcame them with us and allowed us to move on.
Q: Looking back on on some of the major events in the company’s history, what would you do differently now?
A: I would maintain better control on the business. I would have better and clearer rules. I’d have more police and enforcement-type things. We believed so much that people would do these things in the right way because they were right.
But the normal greed of all of us and a lot of these people just overcame them. They wanted to make more money now.
Q: Did you ever find yourself getting greedy?
A: Yeah, I’ve always been greedy. But never to the point where I corrupted the system. The normal desire to make money is always there. But it was never so powerful in the building of the business that it overcame those things.
Q: Do you see a third generation running the company?
A: I’m just beginning to train them. We’re just beginning to hold meetings with them. It was Doug and Steve’s initiative that we should meet twice a year with all the grandchildren to prepare them for not working here or, if they want to work here, what the conditions are going to be. That’s all spelled out now.
Q: If at some point the second generation want to sell?
A: They can’t sell. They can sell to each other, but they need approval of the company and so forth. The idea is not to let this thing be kicked around.
Q: You read the letters in our paper. Rich and Helen DeVos and the family’s name are on a lot of places …
A: That’s not my problem. I kind of laugh about that. A lot of these buildings have the name on it not because I demanded it. I did not demand the name go on DeVos Hall, which is where it began. But (Old Kent Bank President) Dick Gillette asked if he could put the name on the building.
We finally said, “We’ll give you the money but you don’t have to use the name.” He said, “I want the name.” He said the name tells the world that the next generation of leadership in this community is giving to the arts. He said, “I want that message out there all the time.”
He said, “I think it will set the pattern for the future if you do that.” He was right.
My grandson, Rick, didn’t like it either, by the way. He said, ‘Oh, Grandpa, I’ve gotta explain all that away.’ Well, he’s gotten over that now. But he didn’t like his dad (Dick DeVos) running for governor, either. He just didn’t like that public.
Q: How do you think President Obama is doing?
A: I don’t like a lot of what he’s doing. He’s a little scary to me. He’s terrific. I watched his Notre Dame speech yesterday, and I’ll tell you, he’s good. He can take a controversial issue and handle it very well and you know, there’s a lot of merits to what he’s talking about. You can’t compromise the sacredness of the unborn child either from our belief that God created them, too. That’s a sacred issue. Just like the marriage issue. Those are sacred things now; we’ve got to respect that.
Q: What scares you about what he’s doing?
A: The way he spends money. Throwing it around. I know what a billion dollars is around here. I remember when we first reached a billion.
I realized what a billion dollars was and what it took to take care of it and try and protect it. And so, when they throw billions and billions around, it’s just going to get lost. It’s going to get stuck in fingers. It’s just going to disappear because it isn’t just something you can spend like that and spend it responsibly.
Let’s slow up a little bit. Let’s make sure what we’re doing is worthwhile. Before it all gets dissappated and we say, “What happened to all that money?”
That’s what happens when money is treated so casually. If it isn’t your money it’s easy to spend it.
Q: Do you consider the Forbes list (ranking him 91st among the 400 Richest Americans) accurate?
A: I don’t pay much attention to it. But Forbes is pretty accurate. But I don’t count my money that way. I don’t really know what I’m worth. Because the worth is what this company is worth. What is this company worth?
Well, count up all the pieces around here. If you sold this company, what is it worth? Well, that’s a different number. Multiply whatever it’s worth times 10, or whatever it makes times 10, and that would be what it’s worth. But it’s not being sold so it’s not worth that.
They work on that estimated number, what it would be worth if it was sold, but it’s not sold. It’s not traded, so it has a different value. So their number is a nice number, but it’s an irrelevant number to me. But if people want to play games with the number, it’s OK. It’s just how you count.
Q: Will the Orlando Magic (which DeVos owns) be able to handle the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals?
A: We have beat the Cavs eight out of the last 10 games we’ve played. I think we can be successful.
“I understand LeBron (James). He’s the most driven man to win this championship that I’ve seen. He’s driven. And that’s great, so he’s going to be tough.”
Q: Is it pretty fun to be Rich DeVos?
A: It is fun to be Rich DeVos. It’s great fun.
Q: What do you want your legacy to be?
A: I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. But I would like to have them think I’m a life-enricher, that I’m a guy who, while I made a lot of money, I spent my life helping other people do better, helping other people accomplish their goals.”
From http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/05/at_83_amway_cofounder_richard.html
Pastor accused of laundering money for cocaine dealers
In Uncategorized on May 20, 2009 at 7:44 pmThe Miami Herald reports…
“A Miami Gardens pastor, his wife and his firefighter brother — all Broward residents — were indicted on conspiracy charges of using cocaine profits in a mortgage fraud scheme.
The mortgage fraud and money-laundering racket was a family affair, prosecutors say, led by a Miami Gardens pastor with support from his wife — a mother of three — and his brother, a Miami Fire Rescue captain.
An indictment unsealed Monday charged pastor Garry Souffrant, 33, wife Yvonne Souffrant, 33, and brother Gamaliel Souffrant, 43 — all Broward County residents — with conspiring to defraud banks and launder drug traffickers’ profits to buy more than a dozen residential properties in South Florida and Georgia from 2002 to 2008.
The 59-count indictment also charged Garry Souffrant, pastor of God First Ministries in Miami Gardens and a former supervisor at Boca Raton Fire Rescue, with conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine.
Prosecutors say the family’s total haul from the fraudulent activity was $7 million.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael ”Pat” Sullivan said the alleged conspiracy grew out of a Northwest Miami-Dade cocaine organization headed by Ali Adam and Graylin Kelly, who have been convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Sullivan said all three defendants — using a brokerage company called Progressive Real Estate of Broward as a front — accepted large sums of cocaine profits from the drug dealers and their associates to buy homes and luxury cars, including a 2004 Rolls Royce Phantom.
According to the indictment, the defendants acted as straw buyers on behalf of the traffickers, allowing them to use their cocaine profits to purchase homes and lease automobiles while hiding the source of the dirty income.
In addition, the defendants allegedly diverted several million dollars in mortgage loan proceeds to continue to fund the scheme for their personal use — including buying new homes in Davie and Pembroke Pines.
”They used drug money to obtain loans,” Sullivan flatly declared at the defendants’ bond hearing Monday.
He argued that Garry Souffrant should not be allowed any bond before trial, and that his wife, Yvonne, and brother, Gamaliel, should pay bail of $100,000 — saying they were a danger to the community and flight risks.
Defense attorney Larry Handfield, representing Garry Souffrant and his wife, tried to downplay the alleged drug connection, arguing there was no direct evidence, only the words of convicted traffickers seeking lower sentences. The couple, arrested by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service last week, are scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
Attorney Herbert Walker III, representing Gamaliel Souffrant, made the same case and also entered a not-guilty plea for his client. Souffrant, who left Haiti for South Florida as a boy and attended public schools, is a lawful permanent resident. He was in New York for his son’s graduation from Fordham University and returned over the weekend to surrender on Monday.
Magistrate Judge Ted E. Bandstra denied bond for Garry Souffrant, but allowed a $100,000 bail for his wife and a $50,000 bail for his brother.
A spokesman for Miami Fire Rescue said authorities informed the department of the charges against Souffrant on Monday. Fire Rescue Lt. Ignatius E. Carroll Jr. noted that the charges have “nothing to do with his position as a fire captain.”
He also said that Souffrant would be placed on administrative leave with pay pending the outcome of the investigation.
Two of his colleagues from Miami Fire Rescue showed up at the bond hearing to support Souffrant, a firefighter for 19 years who works at headquarters.
Assistant Fire Chief Allen Joyce described Souffrant as a dedicated worker responsible for buying supplies and other services for fire stations.
”I was glad that I was here to represent him as a great worker,” Joyce said, declining comment about the charges.
If convicted, all of the defendants face up to five years in prison on the mortgage fraud conspiracy count; 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy; 20 years for mail fraud; and 10 years for receipt of stolen bank funds.
Garry Souffrant also faces up to life in prison on the drug conspiracy charge.”
And if he weighs more than a duck…
In Uncategorized on May 19, 2009 at 1:51 amCNN reports…
“Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy’s care.
“I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear,” said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett, 76. “One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. … Nigerian witches are terrified of brooms.”
From that day two years ago, Christian, now 14, was branded a witch. The abuse intensified.
“They would take my clothes off, tie me up and beat me,” he told CNN in a telephone interview.
The teen is one of the so-called witch children in Eket, a city in oil-rich Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria.
They are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to “cleanse” them of their supposed magical powers.
“Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession,” said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.
Many of those targeted have traits that make them stand out, including learning disabilities, stubbornness and ailments such as epilepsy, he added.
The issue of “child witches” is soaring in Nigeria and other parts of the world, Foxcroft said.
The states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he said.
Christian ran away from home and wandered around for two years with other children similarly accused. He said they stole, begged for food and performed menial jobs to survive.
The plight of “child witches” is raising concern among aid organizations, including the United Nations.
“It is a growing issue worldwide, among not just African communities, but in countries such as Nepal as well,” said Jeff Crisp, head of policy development and evaluation for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “We are trying to see whether it is a neglected protected issue.”
Belief in witchcraft thrives worldwide. About 1,000 people accused of being witches in Gambia were locked in detention centers in March and forced to drink a dangerous hallucinogenic potion, human rights organization Amnesty International said.
In 2005, relatives of an 8-year-old Angolan girl living in England were convicted of torturing her for being a “witch,” according to the Times Online.
Pastors have been accused of worsening the problem by claiming to have powers to recognize and exorcise “child witches,” sometimes for a fee, aid workers said.
But some are true believers, such as one minister in Lagos, Nigeria. He pinpoints children affected by witchcraft for free, he said.
“Sometimes, we get a dream that shows us a certain person is suffering from witchcraft,” said the Rev. Albert Aina, a senior pastor at Four Square Gospel Church. “Sometimes, you have a child who has inexplicable body marks because of struggling in the night. They are easy to identify, but why charge when you have been given a gift by God?” Aina said.
Once a child is branded a witch, the stigma can last forever.
Christian was reunited with his grandfather, a former theater instructor at a university in Nigeria. Eshiett said he let his son’s child return home because he loves him and he advocates for youth education.
But, he added, he does not think Christian has been or can be freed from witchcraft.
“When you are possessed, you are possessed; no one can deliver you from Satan,” Eshiett said, adding that his grandson is a witch because he still exhibits unruly behavior and does not take education seriously.
Aid organizations acknowledge that the belief is acceptable and popular in some communities.
“It is not the belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about,” Foxcroft said. “We acknowledge people’s right to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to child abuse.”
Foxcroft, whose documentary, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” was broadcast last year, spoke to a U.N. panel on the issue in April.
The aid worker said he is planning a global conference in 2010 and public awareness campaigns, including addressing the issue in Nigerian movies. The nation’s film industry, dubbed Nollywood, is a popular form of entertainment in African countries.
Government officials also have joined the fight.
Akwa Ibom recently added a clause into the Child Rights Act, saying that anyone found guilty of branding a child a witch would get up to 12 years in prison.
“This is groundbreaking, and Stepping Stones Nigeria applauds the Akwa Ibom state government for this,” Foxcroft said.
But, he added, there is more work to be done, and other groups, especially churches, have to team up to resolve the problem.
“The role of the international Christian community in this cannot be underestimated,” Foxcroft said. “Unfortunately, the fact remains that this belief system is being spread by so-called Christians………..”
From http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/18/nigeria.child.witchcraft/
And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand
In Uncategorized on May 18, 2009 at 11:25 pmThe Telegraph reports…
“Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, provided George W Bush with top secret intelligence briefings on the Iraq war that featured cover pages adorned with Biblical quotes.
According to a report in GQ magazine the religious texts were imposed over pictures of the US armed forces engaged in the war.
Shown to only a small circle of senior advisers, the pages were first used on the eve of the 2003 invasion and were designed to provide support and encouragement to Mr Bush, a Christian who often cited the Bible while in office.
Some Pentagon officials feared that if the documents were leaked at the height of the conflict, the use of Christian language to justify the invasion of a Muslim nation would cause a furore in the Islamic world.
One official told GQ that the damage done to America’s image would have been as bad as that caused by the release of photographs showing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
On April 1, 2003, as US troops were heading for Iraq, and casualties were beginning to be taken, Mr Rumsfeld’s “World Intelligence Update” featured a line from Proverbs 16:3: “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed”. Beneath was a picture of a machine-gunner on the road from Baghdad to Hilla.
Two days before Saddam Hussein was toppled on April 9, 2003, the cover sheet showed a picture of the Iraqi leader and a quotation from 1 Peter 2:15: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”
The Biblical passages were reportedly the idea of Maj Gen Glen Shaffer, a senior military intelligence official, and a Christian, who told colleagues that his “seniors” including the president, were grateful for the cover pages.
You’re headed for hell for being a liar and a thief, but I trust you to insure my caravan
In Uncategorized on May 18, 2009 at 2:56 amWales Online reports…
“An Evangelical Christian claims he was denied insurance for his caravan – after preaching the gospel to the saleswoman who was serving him.
Devout Michael Greenhaf, 52, was trying to get cover over the phone for his holiday caravan with East Sussex-based Park Home Insurance Services.
The minibus driver, of Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, says he was told insuring his brand new four-sleeper Adria Altea caravan would cost just under £230 and provided his credit card details.
But towards the end of his conversation with the sales assistant Jo Orson he asked whether she could spare a few moments of her time and he began to ask whether she was abiding by the 10 Commandments.
He was then called back the next day by customer service manager Toni Hodd who told him they would not be able to be process his insurance as a result of the conversation. Mr Greenhaf, who attends the Gurnos Pentecostal Church four times a week, said: “I was gobsmacked. I feel as though I’ve been victimised as a result of my faith.
“I think it’s disgusting. If you can’t talk about God freely without being punished, there’s something going wrong.”
His wife of six months Myra, 49, a registered childminder, then called back to see if she could secure the insurance – but she too was refused.
Mr Greenhaf received a letter from the company on Thursday confirming he would not be allowed the insurance because of the nature of the phone call.
The letter said: “I regret that I have reviewed the telephone call and find that the content of the call was not appropriate to a business call.
“I have therefore voided the payment you made, so we have not taken the payment for and we will not be offering an insurance policy to insure your caravan.”
Ms Orson confirmed she had taken the call from Mr Greenhaf.
She said: “It was out of order. He was calling me a liar and a thief. To be honest, the whole conversation was completely inappropriate.
“My manager called him back. The whole conversation wasn’t related to caravan insurance.”
But Mr Greenhaf, who has three children from his previous marriage and regularly preaches in the streets of Merthyr, said he had simply asked her questions and wasn’t concerned whether the conversation had offended.
He said: “Some people may be intimidated by it but that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter who you offend.
“Nobody is going to stop me preaching the word of God.”
The company’s managing director William Tuke said: “We are unable to make any form of comment because any information about clients is confidential and we won’t discuss it.”
The scariest school in Australia – Lighthouse Christian College, Keysborough
In Uncategorized on May 16, 2009 at 12:50 amDanny Nalliah blogs…
“Dear Family & Friends in Christ,
Lighthouse Christian College in Keysborough, Victoria, Australia recently held its ‘Year 11 Blessing Night!’ This Secondary College is one of the best Christian schools in Australia with more than 500 students and an excellent team of Christian teachers, who are totally dedicated to rising up a godly generation of future leaders to impact every sphere of society.
Lighthouse Christian College is a 100% Christian school which makes every effort to properly educate and to instill godly values among the students. The school comes under the direct covering of the Lighthouse Christian Community Church, with Senior Pastor Richard Warner.
Pastor Danny Nalliah, who is a council member of the school, was asked to address the year 11 students and pray for them at this celebration, held at the Grand Hotel in Dandenong, Victoria.
More than 300 people were in attendance, including students, parents, friends, teachers and school council members. The night was full of action, with students displaying their God-given talents and giving Jesus the glory!
Pastor Danny’s Daughter, Shannen Nalliah, the girl’s school captain, first challenged the students ‘to stand up for Jesus, be counted, and keep Him as the centre of their everyday activities.’
Then Pastor Danny spoke to the students and challenged them not to give up in a hurry, but to stand and fight to see God’s purposes and plans fulfilled in their lives, generation and nation.
He stated, “The Israelites crossed the Red Sea into security, but a whole generation perished in the desert because they were not willing to cross the Jordan River. They settled for second best rather than fighting to inherit the Promised Land.”
He challenged the students not to settle for second best but to go for the best in life! He stated, “fight to be a doctor not a nurse, to be a director not a clerk, to be a fleet owner not a driver. Aim high, do your best, and give it a good go!” He greatly encouraged the students to be what God wants them to be, leaders in society, not just mere followers! He also challenged the parents not to let their children work part time jobs in year 12, as it takes away time from studying at home, greatly effecting their potential to get good entrance scores.
He stated, “We as parents should do our best to encourage our children to spend time studying at home particularly during the most crucial years of school. We cannot depend on the school to do everything for us. We need to monitor what’s happening at home and give them the needed encouragement to excel.”
He also prayed for the students to rise up and fulfill God’s destiny for their lives, generation, and nation.
The highlight for the night was Principal Tim Roger’s speech. The following is the transcript of his speech.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Orientation to Blessing Night – Principal Tim Roger
In times past boys knew when they were men and girls knew when they had become women. For girls the biological capacity to become a mum meant ancient and tribal societies began ceremonies and rituals to separate the girls from the boys and formalize their new status.
Boys too would have set time when they would go out and perform a feat like kill their first gazelle or hunt their first kangaroo or seal.
Both boy and girl went though preparation and testing to qualify. Sometimes there were pains to endure in the initiation.
Boys would join the army and go to boot camp or commence an apprenticeship. These marked the start of a new life. In Jewish homes the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, signaled the onset of adulthood.
Today Lutheran, Catholic and Anglican churches still continue with confirmation and other Protestant churches are rediscovering its importance. I recall waiting in line for the bishop to come to me and put three doctrine questions my way and then to strike me on the face. I am not sure which I feared most, it happened before a packed church. I must have passed as I recall no shame. Maybe the questions were easy and the symbolic hit to my face to prepare me for the struggles of manhood was benign.
With no rite of passage and blessing ceremony like tonight, youth turn to smoking, excessive drinking, drug use, fighting, reckless driving and losing their virginity as the start of sexual promiscuous behaviour–all to create self made rituals. Instinctively teenagers want to mark their transition into adulthood.
Tonight we are providing an alternative to the destructive things just mentioned and remind you that a tattoo or pierced tongue or risqué dress are unnecessary.
Your peers provide good support but lack wisdom. The entertainment industry lies to you and says adults are irrelevant and the aged even more so. The sirens of freedom, self fulfillment, materialism and sensuality call you towards shipwreck and despair.
Tonight we want to bless you and your future. We want to affirm you and to contribute as a community to your passage into adulthood and leadership roles in the school.
This is not to usurp the role of the church or your home but to complement it. We will be praying for you and blessing you with gifts and words of encouragement, letters and notes from significant friends, and prophetic words.
We want you to leave tonight feeling blessed, appreciative of your family, church and school and confident that you have begun the walk into adulthood, a journey of challenge and adventure that continues till you die.
I can promise you that life won’t come to you handed on a plate. You will have to struggle to achieve your destiny. Pain, disappointment, and loss as well as success and joy await you in adult life. You will need the fuel provided from the prayers of friends and the church. You will need friends and mentors. You will need adults like your parents and teachers.
So tonight fill up to the full with encouragement, affirmation, and the words spoken over your future.
Resolve to follow your God given dreams and not to trade out to cheap sex, drug and alcohol abuse and wasting your days.
Each and every day you have is precious and a stepping stone forward. Get out of the junior classes in God’s university of hard knocks-learn the lessons, forgive yourself your short fallings and press forward using the resources and people God sends you way now.
Don’t wait for your ship to come in. There is no ideal time. Recession or boom-who cares-not you! You are drawn forward by a vision and calling. The fairy tales were right. Cinderella or the poor woodsman you seem but-
You are special. You are a princess or prince, a member of the royal household of the tribe of Judah.
Your life counts. You are significant.
You are a crucial part of God’s answer to the cries for help from the humans on this planet. You are a supernatural being-not just flesh and blood.
Be encouraged, feel affirmed.All of us here believe in you and trust you.
We are very proud of you.
Tonight is your night, enter fully into all the ceremonies and activities and let the memory of them nourish you all the days of your life.
Godspeed the year 11 class of 2009″
Australian Teacher reports…
“The topic is Australia’s gold rush. The Year 5 students sit attentively at their desks. Upon instruction, they open their books and recite a passage American televangelist Joel Osteen has made famous.
“This is my Bible. I am what it says I am; I have what it says I have; I do what it says I should do. Today, I will be taught the word of God. I’ll boldly confess. My mind is alert; my heart is receptive; I will never be the same.”
So begins the character development class at Lighthouse Christian College, a coeducational kindergarten to Year 12 school in Keysborough, Melbourne. Although the lesson will integrate studies of the gold rush, the subtheme is: “God’s wisdom is better than being rich”.
In a nearby Year 9 English class, principal Tim Rogers discusses recent events with students, including the global recession. Proverbs are scrawled on the whiteboard. “Do unto others as you would want others to do to you,” reads one quotation from the Bible. “What goes around, comes around,” says another, attributed to Hinduism. Rogers moves onto an excerpt from a John Donne poem. “No person is an island,” Rogers says. “What does that mean?”
“What you do affects others,” a student says.
“What you do affects others,” a student says.
“That’s right, we’re all interconnected,” Rogers replies, drawing on the theme of interconnectedness throughout the class.
These lessons are indicative of the importance of faith at Lighthouse Christian College. The school of 450 students is among a growing number of small, faith-based schools that focus on integrating a biblical or Christian worldview into the state curriculum. In fact, Christianity permeates the school’s entire culture: all teachers are devout Christians and at least one parent must be a practising Christian for their child to enroll.
Some of these schools are affiliated with a local congregation, as is the case of Lighthouse Christian College, while others are controlled by a board of parents. Christian Schools Australia (CSA) and the Australian Association of Christian Schools, which includes Christian Education National schools, are the two largest Christian lobby groups representing about 255 Christian schools.
The number of students attending these schools has grown significantly in recent years, from nearly 30,500 students in 1991 to 83,500 students in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. That represents an increase of more than 100 schools in 14 years. “There is no evidence to suggest that this increase will not continue within the Christian school sector,” CSA chief executive officer Stephen O’Doherty writes in a submission to a Senate inquiry last year.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data, meanwhile, shows there are 574 independent Christian schools nation-wide, catering to more than 213,000 students from a wide variety of denominations, including Seventh Day Adventist, Assemblies of God, Lutheran and Baptist. Many of these schools are not academically selective; their Year 12 exam results would be comparable to many public schools. The parents are middle or lower middle class and working class families. Revenue from state and federal governments account for 55-70 per cent of the cost of educating students at CSA schools, with parents paying about $2000-$5000 a year in fees, O’Doherty says.
It is the spiritual focus, an alterative to “materialistic, wealth driven” culture, that attracts parents to these schools, he explains. Many parents tell O’Doherty the values espoused in Christian schools are similar to those from their public school upbringing decades ago. But something has changed since then, he says.
“In a secular school setting there’s an assumption the spiritual is relegated to a private domain… In a Christian school, and other faith-based schools, people are deliberately saying the spiritual is as much a part of the development of a child educationally as is the academic, the social, the cultural and physical. We want that integrated into the whole life of the school,” he says.
Avril Howard, assistant principal of Lighthouse Christian College, says parents like the values, discipline, uniform standards and behavioural approaches of the school. “We’re a safe school. Bullying issues are very small, as we have strong policies against such behaviour. They like that Christian teachers role model Christian values and behaviour.”
But Christian schools are not without their critics, some of whom say the schools indoctrinate students or shelter them. The teaching of abstinence education and religious views on homosexuality are two controversial issues. In the 150th year of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, the teaching of evolution has had a particularly high profile.
The NSW Board of Studies, for example, investigated a complaint late last year against a school in Sydney that taught the biblical view of creation in science class. The board ultimately found Pacific Hills Christian School in Dural had not breached the state requirements for teaching the science syllabus.
But public education advocate Chris Bonnor, who filed the complaint, told Australian Teacher he is still concerned. “I still want to know whether it is appropriate for a science teacher to exhort his or her students to consider ‘what God’s revelation through his scripture shows you, so that you can come to some clear understanding about your view’ of evolution,” he says.
Although Bonnor has visited Pacific Hills CS and says it’s “highly likely” the science program reflects the syllabus, he is concerned with the precedent the ruling may have set. “Is it now acceptable for a science teacher to advise or instruct students to develop their understanding of science through any of their belief systems and philosophies? At what point does this contradict the spirit and purpose of an evidence-based subject?”
Bonnor is concerned there is a lack of monitoring of some faith-based schools, particularly smaller ones. He hopes the National Curriculum Board will be “properly resourced” to monitor all schools. “Somebody has got to wear the hat of checking syllabuses and compliance,” he says.
Greens MP John Kaye says public funds shouldn’t go to schools that don’t conform to the state curriculum or “undermine the teaching of science”. “Those schools which teach creationism or intelligent design as science are definitely restricting the capacity of their students to join the economic, cultural and social lives of our society,” he says.
But the principal of Pacific Hills CS, Dr EJ Boyce, is adamant his school prepares students in a “broad range of understandings so they can come to their own conclusions”, including on controversial topics such as evolution and euthanasia. Developing students who are constructively critical is part of being an educated person, he says. “We are providing a much more comprehensive and balanced education by the way we do it than a lot of schools that ignore or deride a lot of information that’s out there in the marketplace of ideas.”
Harry Burggraaf, deputy principal at the ecumenical Donvale Christian College in Melbourne, says Christians have “widely divergent views concerning origins theories” and thinks people focus too heavily on the issue. Teachers at Christian schools regularly challenge students’ beliefs on a range of issues and teachers resist pressure from parents to teach a certain way, he says.
No one teaches from a neutral perspective, Burggraaf says. All teachers have a set of values that come across in their teaching, he says. “We need to be upfront about what that is. I think [the state system] is fantastic, but there are a lot of presuppositions and assumptions working, but they’re not declared.”
Robert Johnston, the executive officer of the Australian Association of Christian Schools, says there is a “great deal of ignorance” about many faith-based schools. “There’s no benefit at all in our kids being narrowly indoctrinated. We want them to be able to go out and be able stand on their own two feet and really make a contribution,” he says.
Christian schools do subscribe to a particular worldview, Johnston says, but they’re kept accountable. “These differences should not be caricatured as ‘fringe’ or ‘divisive’, but rather celebrated as part of the rich diversity of the nation.”
The Lighthouse Christian College Teacher Application Form asks in part…
| BELIEFS AND IDEAS | |
| There are some areas where Christians differ in their beliefs. While the school does not demand uniformity in all these areas, we are interested in what you believe because it has some impact on the way you are able to relate to the school community. Please make a brief summary of your ideas and beliefs in the following areas: | |
| 1. Miracles Today: | |
| 2. Charismatic Gifts e.g.: speaking in tongues | |
| 3. The authority and historical accuracy of the Bible? | |
| 4. The theory of evolution and its relationship to what the Bible teaches: | |
| 5. The use of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana: | |
| 6. Homosexuality: | |
| 7. How does a Christian understanding of life and Biblical thinking relate to the way you do your job? | |
| 8. What do you think is unique about a Christian school? | |
| 9. Why do you want to work in a Christian School? | |
From http://www.lighthouse.vic.edu.au/documents/LCCTeacherApplication.doc
And there’s no let-up from the AOG indoctrination for the kids when they get home.
“The College has set the following guidelines for the amount of time that students should spend on their homework each weeknight:
-
Prep, 1 & 2 Specific set tasks (usually not more than 30 minutes).
-
Grades 3-5 30 – 60 minutes
-
Years 6-7 45 – 90 minutes
-
Years 8-9 90 – 120 minutes
-
Years 10 100 – 150 minutes
-
Years 11-12 at least 180 minutes
Daily homework assignments and longer term tasks are written in the students’ diaries.
Parents are asked to check and sign their children’s diaries each day. This process will assist parents to keep abreast of the academic and personal self-discipline issues that their children are facing.”
From http://www.lighthouse.vic.edu.au/docs/curriculum.pdf
NB – Group Sects has a zero-tolerance policy towards bullying kids by making them do at least 180 minutes (gee, 180 minutes doesn’t sound quite so long as 3 bloody hours) of homework per night.
Group Sects is also now more grateful for my solid, if somewhat pedestrian education at Geelong High School.
But it is now my great pleasure to formally declare the Christian Schools can of worms, open.
Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Because it might lead to d*ncing
In Uncategorized on May 15, 2009 at 8:16 pm
The Telegraph reports…
“Officials at Heritage Christian School in Findlay, Ohio, had warned 17-year-old Tyler that he would be suspended and prohibited from attending his graduation if he went to the dance over the weekend with his girlfriend.
Tyler said he didn’t think going to the dance was wrong even though his fundamentalist Baptist school forbids dancing, rock music and hand-holding, a situation reminiscent of that depicted in the 1984 movie, “Footloose.”
However, he signed a contract at the beginning of the school year promising he would refrain from the activities, and it came to haunt him when he asked his principal to sign a permission slip to let him attend the prom.
“(Word I might be suspended) kind of caught me off guard,” Frost said. “I was kind of shocked that he was going to take that drastic of a measure.”
Tyler’s principal, Tim England said: “When the school committee … set up the policy regarding dancing, I am confident that they had the principle of fleeing lustful situations in mind … should a Christian place themselves at an event where young ladies will have low-cut dresses and be dancing in them.”
Tyler told his principal that he doesn’t feel any less of a Christian for attending the prom.
“I still feel I’m a Christian,” Frost said. “I believe in the morals they’ve taught me.”
But, he will not be permitted to take his finals on-time or receive his diploma at the school’s official ceremony.
“It’s kind of sad that it has to end this way,” Tyler said. “I was kind of looking forward to graduating with my class, you know, that’s why you put in 13 years of school – to graduate. And to just, you know, show up one day and just have it taken from you.”
Despite the punishment, Tyler says he has no regrets.
“It was worth it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to prom, and I’m glad I went. Looking back, I think I made the right decision.”
Tyler’s stepfather, Stephan Johnson, has hired a lawyer and is considering suing the school. He believes the contract doesn’t cover what students do in after-school activities.”
(Bonus video enticing youth into sin)
A summary of today’s church theology
In Uncategorized on May 15, 2009 at 11:35 am
“Good times come to me now
good times come to me now.
I ain’t lying ‘cos there ain’t no time
no city.
It’s a pity ‘cos I dress divine
city smokes – people choke.
Big meanie he’s a genie und we ain’t got a hope.
No chance – no chance.
Well
I feel fine
no it ain’t no crime.
I was dreamin’ of a demon and I ate a dime.
The dime floats
the colonel boasts -
Send ‘em up the hill boys, this ain’t no joke
.
No chance – no chance – no chance – no chance.
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
Shiny shiny sha-na-na-na.
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Your sure look fine your shoes they shine.
I taste your face your love is mine
Mercury dan with a spikey hand.
I’m a hot retard
Marquis de Sade.
No chance – no chance – no chance – no chance.
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Saw a cop on the line
machine gun shine.
I was dreaming not believing that I was alive.
My mind broke
the cop he choked.
Get out of here, boy, or I’ll use the colt
.
No chance – no chance.
You sure look fine your shoes they shine.
No heat can compete with this blue-eyed liar.
The child spoke – ‘We ain’t got a hope
Press the button
press the button – it’s all remote’.
No chance – no chance – no chance – no chance.
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. ..
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me
. . .
Shiny shiny bad times behind me”
And no, it’s not you. Like the contemporary church, there is a loose collection of thoughts and ideas, but no cohesive narrative and overall it doesn’t make sense.
Todd Bentley’s ‘healings’ – follow up
In Uncategorized on May 15, 2009 at 12:50 amRick Hiebert blogs…
“Canadian preacher Todd Bentley will rue the day that he learns that a reporter at the U.S. magazine World has a long memory.
Mr. Bentley, whose claims to take part in spectacular healings were a feature of his revival in Lakeland, Florida last year, will no doubt be dismayed to hear that that two of the people that he claimed at the time to have helped have since died of the grave illnesses that were ”healed” at his meetings.
The faith-healing evangelist has had problems with documenting his healings for many years now. When I first wrote on Mr. Bentley for the Report magazine(s) back in 2001, I asked for some proof that he had been able to help heal people through his prayers. All that Fresh Fire Ministries was able to send me were a couple of vague notes. One was from a doctor that noted that his patient “felt better”, but nothing indicating that there was anything that would be visible to a third party.
Last year at Lakeland, there were indications that Mr. Bentley was stretching things a bit. Robert Ricciardelli, another charismatic minister, urged Bentley to stop saying that people were being raised from the dead, when they were unable to substantiate any of them. (He repeated his concern on a Seattle christian radio program as the revival was continuing.)
Mr. Bentley’s inclination to run with accounts that would help hype the revival once blew up in his face. One enterprising YouTube user, suspecting that Mr. Bentley would say anything from the pulpit to hype his revival without checking out the truth of his statements first, decided to conduct an amusing test that Mr. Bentley fell for, being reeled in like a fish. It’s still on YouTube in two parts. Part one is here. Part two is here.
Those who watched the ABC News program Nightline on July 9 of last year will recall reporter Jeffrey Kofman trying to pin down Mr. Bentley on the amount of people that he had helped to heal. The exchange starts at 3:33 of the video portion saved here where Mr. Kofman asked for proof that would be conclusive for a third party that the revival had healed someone. Mr. Bentley talked about “thousands” of healings while Mr. Kofman observed “We just want three.” ABC News, however, was disappointed, as their staff was unable to substantiate any of the accounts of healing that Mr. Bentley provided.
Which leads me to the latest story in World, which hits newsstands in the U.S. as I write. (Warning to my readers–I’m told that apparently you can only get the full version of the online story the first time that you access it. Blogger P.J. Miller at Sola Dei Gloria, however, has copied most of the relevant details in a blog post here.)
World reporter Warren Cole Smith wrote a critical story on Mr. Bentley last year and recently decided to follow up on a list of 13 people that Mr. Bentley’s ministry provided, at the time, of people who had been healed at Lakeland.
Christopher Fogle, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was suffering from cancer when he was at Lakeland. Mr. Smith adds:
Fogle was No. 12 on the list, along with this note: “Healed through the Outpouring and is back to fishing.”
That was on Aug. 8, 2008. There was just one problem. Two weeks earlier, on July 22, Christopher A. Fogle—according to his obituary in the Keokuk (Iowa) Daily Gate City, “left this life . . . after a courageous battle with cancer.”
Mr. Smith carries on with his adept reporting spadework:
When I called Phyllis Mills, of Trinity, N.C., on April 22 [2009], to hear the testimony of her healing, a polite family member said, “Phyllis passed away a few days ago. In fact, we’re on our way to her funeral now.”
Mills, 66 at the time of her death, had lung cancer and was undergoing aggressive treatments when she was, according to the list, “healed at the revival.” Mills “was taking radiation, but was sent home,” according to notes on Bentley’s list, with “no trace of cancer in her body.”
Mr. Smith writes that some of the people on Mr. Bentley’s list that he spoke to do feel better. However, they tend to either have no medical proof of the healing, or their recovery may be due to other reasons than their Lakeland visit.
Praying for someone to be healed, I would say, is one of the kindest things that a Christian would do, so I want to encourage it. Even if it only shows caring and offers emotional comfort to the patient, prayer is worth doing. However, we do need to recognize that prayer for the sick should be done with honesty and integrity, recognizing that sometimes people may not be healed. Christians should exhibit Christlike behaviour and character when trying to be kind to the ill.
Playing fast and loose with the facts is not a sign of integrity. Mr. Bentley needs to be honest, even brutally so, if he hopes to truly help the sick through what he does. If he is not honest, the resulting fruit of Mr. Bentley’s ministry will definitely be wormy.”
Full World Magazine story on Bentley at http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15373
Hill$ong London – theatre meets slapstick
In Uncategorized on May 14, 2009 at 12:21 amMontalk blogs…
“On Sunday I attended Hillsong Church. I was unaware that this church is world renowned for its new age style worship.
The Hillsong organization is based out of Sydney, Australia. The worship center in London is located in the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Rd. It is about 2 blocks from my flat.
I went with a few girls from the FSU group and we got a seat near the front. I wanted to discuss the view of this new faith as entertainment. The Religion course I took in the spring discussed how several early leaders of the faith in America used popular media to spread their message quickly. Newspapers and pamphlets in the early days and radio when it was invented (look up Aimee Semple McPherson and the Angelus Temple), and now churches around the world are using the internet. Our discussions in class led us to think deeply about how the pastors and leaders of the church were able to recruit so many members. They were first and foremost enthusiastic and charismatic. Broadway and Hollywood were condemned by most church leaders as places of sin. Yet, their sermons included many dramatic elements. They acted out scenes from the Bible and led their congregations to have “enthusiasms,” or being violently taken over by the spirit.
As a Catholic, I have observed that my expression of my own faith is done quietly. It involves silent prayers, and hymns in church. The only place my faith is expressed loud and clear is my actions. “And they’ll know we are Christians…” Anyway, I have been to contemporary Christian services before but this one was by far the most contemporary.
I had reservations about what I was getting myself into when they said it was held in the Dominion Theatre. Curently this theatre has a giant statue of Brian May from the group Queen standing on top of the entrance. Google the image of the Dominion Theatre and you will see why this is not my idea of church. Maybe this would be a different kind of church/worship.
There were so many young people. I saw a few young families but the congregation was mainly young people and students. The theatre looked like it was set for a production of great scale. The stage was set for band. The lights went down and everyone took their seats. There was a noticeable energy in the people around me as we waited in the dark for the show/service to begin.
Flashing lights and smoke filled the stage and 6 dancers/singers with microphones skipped their way into center stage. The first song began and everyone jumped to their feet. The giant projection screen behind the dancers illuminated with the words of the songs so that we could follow along. The 2 levels of the theatre were packed with people. As I looked around. Everyone was really focused on the stage and they were singing and dancing in their seats. The mood was fun. I participated, I could not even help it!
After a few songs, a pastor walked out and said a few words about the power of prayer and read some of the prayer requests that had been submitted before the service began. We sang another song and another pastor came and talked about the football (soccer, for us Americans) game the church group had conducted the previous weekend. He talked and joked with everyone for about 20 minutes and during that time we were encouraged to fill out “new member” cards so that members of the church could contact us and help us get involved. Along with our new member cards, we were told we could place our donations for he church in the baskets coming around.
There was some joking between 2 of the pastors on stage and what could be misinerpreted as slap stick occurred. The one kicked the other in the rear.
They continued to joke with each other and the congregation for several minutes and then the Sermon began. I only knew it was the Sermon because the pastor mentioned a story in the Bible and proceeded to offer short stories and anecdotes that mildly related.
We sang more songs and then with a final prayer, we were sent forth to be peaceful, loving people. We were encouraged to meet at a restaurant around the corner for some fellowship.
It was all theatrical. Everything from the flashing lights to the enthusiastic dancing and singing led by the 6 “choir?” members, from the joking of the pastors to the smoke elements during parts of what Im calling a church production.
I will say that for those who want to worship with an enthusiastic and friendly crowd, this is the place. For those who need constant stimulation of all senses to pay attention, you may watch the lights, listen to the songs, clap your hands, and smell the European guy next to you. Ok, the last one was a joke…kind of.
Im still working on this idea of worshipping in a theatre. Maybe I will talk about it later.”
From http://mon-talk.blogspot.com/2009/05/entertaining-worship.html
Renting DVD’s, wearing tight pants and other devillish doings from inside the Potter’s House cult
In Uncategorized on May 13, 2009 at 1:35 pm
‘Jerrie’ writes…
“Will The Beechboro Potter’s House Survive 2009?
This year speculation surrounding the survival of the Beechboro [Perth, Australia] Potter’s House is rife. In recent months because of the unceremonious sacking of David Vicary as the Beechboro Potter’s House Christian Fellowship Senior Pastor and Executive Director of the Australian Potter’s House Christian Fellowship by Wayman Mitchell (Global CFM Leader), the Beechboro congregation has more than halved with some reports saying that attendance is down (even further than first reported) by two thirds on it’s “Vicary pre-sacking” numbers (600+) in mid to late 2008.
With mounting commitments to local daughter churches, overseas missionaries and local evangelists it has been reported that Wayman Mitchell’s Beechboro financial base has dried up and he has taken the unsustainable position (long term) of drawing money from the Beechboro building fund that was set up by the previous pastor David Vicary to “keep the Beechboro boat afloat”. Mitchell has only a couple of options up his sleeve during these times:
1. If Mitchell wants to maintain the Beechboro Potter’s House and facility as the Head Australian Church he will have to:
a. Generate more funds to sustain a head office operation by asking the Potter’s House Australian Churches to sacrifice, financially support and fill the financial gap left by the recent split
b. Install a new Senior Pastor and Executive Director of the Australian Fellowship that is loyal to Mitchell
a. Generate more funds to sustain a head office operation by asking the Potter’s House Australian Churches to sacrifice, financially support and fill the financial gap left by the recent split
b. Install a new Senior Pastor and Executive Director of the Australian Fellowship that is loyal to Mitchell
c. Rebuild the Beechboro congregations numbers to a self sustaining level”
And ‘Potter’s House Freedom’ blogs…
“……………Pastor Wayman Mitchell recently removed David Vicary as the leader of the Australian branch of The Fellowship (CFM). Wayman Mitchell has sent out a letter to fellowship pastors full of false and incriminating accusations against David Vicary. I felt it only fair to present Vicary’s side of the story. The following is a series of quotes from a letter that Vicary wrote. I believe that his letter illustrates how Wayman Mitchell runs the fellowship as a sort of spiritual dictatorship. Setting up and bringing down leaders arbitrarily. I believe Wayman is paranoid about defection within “the ranks” as exibited in this recent case with David Vicary.
To read the letter in its entirety you can go to The Cracked Pots and access their files.
“This is a letter I wrote after my meeting with Ps Mitchell and Ps Joe Campbell … I never sent it, but used it as my ‘notes’ while speaking with Ps Mitchell in Prescott, January 08.”
October 10, 2007
Pastor Mitchell,
Since returning from Prescott, Christine and I have taken some time to pray and contemplate our future. You and I both agreed that our primary concern was for the Fellowship here in Australia. While I have sincerely tried to take on board your concerns about my character and it’s outflow into the Australian Fellowship, I simply cannot see, or agree with your conclusions. Although I indicated to you that I was willing to step aside as pastor of the Beechboro church, after much prayer and consideration, I feel that it would not resolve anything, and would only serve to polarize the Australian Fellowship and the Beechboro Church and result in a severe crisis. I believe that the Australian pastors at large, the Australian Leaders, the Beechboro church and the Beechboro Church Council, are solidly supporting me and if they were offered your opinion of me, and your view of the state of the Australian Fellowship, would reject it. In October I called you and asked for a meeting to discuss our relationship. When I arrived, Joe Campbell was also present. In that meeting Joe claimed that I had lost credibility with the Australian pastors, citing Mike White, Anthony Tilli, Rob Walsh and Dave Ehlers. (I can only guess that he was mistaken in mentioning Rob.) I do not believe that I have lost credibility with the Australian pastors. The pastors he mentioned are not a representation of the Australian pastors and have issues of their own.
Anthony Tilli
Anthony’s recent foray into effeminate clothing and grooming sparked a furore in Australia. His pants were so tight when he preached in the Perth Conference in 2006, that some ladies walked out. After the Conference, I received numerous complaints about Anthony’s clothing and grooming. There is a question mark in the minds of some, in regard to his sexuality. I was also asked numerous questions about Anthony’s effeminacy by pastors in America after his appearance at the July Conference in 2006. I wish you could understand the confusion and anger that was created by the fact that, rather than being corrected or disciplined, Anthony was announced as a Conference leader in March 2007. This exacerbated a problem that remains in people’s minds to this day. When I raised this with you, it was dismissed with a laugh.
Alex Smilovitis
While I agree that Alex broke our Ministry Code in renting DVD’s, I disagree with the way you handled the situation. You did not consult me, (as Alex’s pastor) prior to confronting Alex. You did not show me the ‘print-out’ obtained from the video store, nor have you explained how you received it. (I can only assume that it was obtained illegally.) You also have not considered the precarious position we are now in legally. You can’t ‘sack’ someone in Australia for renting a video. If Alex ever received legal advice and summonsed us to court, we would have no defence. You also falsely accused Alex of renting a pornographic video. You claim that I would not have disciplined Alex, but you will never know, because I was not given the chance. I did however, follow through with your instruction, “We remove pastors for this. I’m leaving it in your hands,” by asking Alex to step aside from the Dandenong pastorate. Over the years Alex has sought to bring attention to the fact that Anthony Tilli is disdainful towards the Australian Fellowship and the local pastors that are not on his ‘band wagon.’ Alex’s frustration with the situation bubbled over when he tried to explain the situation to Mark Aulson. This was then reported as anti Americanism and as Alex being ‘anti Prescott.’ Despite his letter clarifying his conversation with Mark Aulson, the misquote was still published in The Trumpet. While I am not trying to defend every word or deed of Alex Smilovitis, you should understand that Alex is greatly respected and loved in Australia. He is not perceived as anti American or anti Fellowship. Prior to Dandenong, Alex built a strong Fellowship church in Sydney. That church has since planted out a key disciple that Alex won to the Lord. The Dandenong church has launched out, among others, Raynor Gunton and John Janman who have both served overseas as missionaries and are considered leaders in Australia. John Janman has in turn launched out churches, including one couple he has sent to New Zealand.
Pastor Mitchell’s accusations.
I have a character flaw, that I cannot see, of lying.
Kevin Foley … In January 2003 Pastor Mitchell asked to see me at the Prescott Conference.
When I came into the trailer, a number of other leaders were also present. The charge was
brought that I was anti American. Ps Mitchell read a number of statements (two or three?) and asked if I had said them. I answered that I had not. There was no context offered, no time, no person named … just, “Did you say this?” I had no recollection of the statements whatsoever … the phrases didn’t sound like those that I would use … they were not my sentiments. It was obvious that Ps Mitchell didn’t accept my denial … I was confused and intimidated. Ps Mitchell then produced a full colour, enlarged and laminated copy of the front of the Australian pastors address book. He pointed to the ‘flag’ logo and asked why there was not an American flag. I was flabbergasted! I had no plausible answer! I didn’t know having an American flag on the address book was something Ps Mitchell required or would even be concerned about. What followed was a free flowing ‘back and forth’ conversation with me saying, “No I’m not! … No I wasn’t … That’s not true … etc.”
In the midst of that, Ps Mitchell accused me of resisting Kevin Foley’s appointment to the Walthamstow church in 1997. I replied that I didn’t. That was my mistake. In hindsight, it was clearly an inadequate answer! Back to Prescott January 2003 … The morning after the meeting in Prescott, Paul Stephens came to me and reminded me of the candid comments I had made to him about not wanting Kevin Foley to take the Walthamstow church. I immediately realized the error I had made in making the simple denial I had made the day before in the trailer. I went to Ps Mitchell and apologized. Those weeks in March 1997 were a complicated, painful and extremely emotional time. I did not, and still would not, characterize that whole episode as me, ‘resisting Kevin Foley going into Walthamstow.’ In hindsight, if I had more presence of mind, I would have given a more comprehensive answer to the charge. In any case, to use the episode as proof of me being anti American is grossly unfair, untrue and belittles the greater issues involved. Despite my apology, Ps Mitchell has, over the last 10 years raised this issue constantly, as proof of a personal character flaw.
Anti American.
So … am I anti American? The simple answer is no!
I have been visiting America for the past 25 years. My wife and I (at our own expense) were
some of the first Australians to attend the Prescott Conference in America. I am invited every year to preach somewhere in the USA. This year (2007) I visited America five times. I believe this is a sign of goodwill. While in Bury St Edmunds, a large portion of the church was US military. I enjoy good relationship with many of those people even to this day. Allen Jenkins is one of my closest friends. From Bury St Edmunds, I planted two churches into the USA; the Eislers into Clearwater, Florida and the Scotts into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We sent impact teams, raised money, and prayed and fasted for these American works.
I count many Americans as friends; Allen Jenkins, Paul Stephens, Richard Rubi, Harold Warner, John Gooding, Cary Mejia are just a few.I have a constant stream of Americans preach in the Perth church; Jerry Fussell, Greg Mitchell, Alvin Smith and Artie Aragon are those who have preached just this year in Perth. Every year we will have (at incredible expense) between four and eight Americans preach. I enjoy good relationship with many others………….”
From http://pottershousefreedom.org/index.php?p=1_16_Pastor-Vicary
2. If Mitchell doesn’t want to or can’t maintain the Beechboro Potters House as the Head Church of the Australian Fellowship what
are his options?
a. Liquidate the Beechboro facility
b. Down size and move the current congregation into a rented facility and install a Australian pastor (some one like Greg Farrell)
c. Down grade the Beechboro church to a normal congregation and use the monies gained from the sale of the Beechboro facility ($ million’s) to relocate “head office” to Melbourne, building a mega facility with Anthony Tilli as the new Executive Director of the Australian Fellowship
Pros & Cons
Option 1:
Lessons from the history of the Perth Potter’s House are that every time Wayman Mitchell has been the pastor of the congregation numbers have declined. Mitchell has always seen a reversal when he pastored the Perth congregation. Men like Greg Johnson, Mike Mastin, and David Vicary have all seen numerical success in their times, the fact is that the Beechboro facility (the building of) is a direct result of all these men’s success as the churches senior pastor(s). Mitchell is a pragmatic man (to say the least) but he is not a fool. His only mission in coming to Australian is to be the “broom” that sweeps the Australian Fellowship clean after his total underestimation of the Vicary saga. I believe Mitchell is setting the stage for the installation of one of “his men” after he deals with and settles the “Vicary saga”. The scenario of “option 1″ will take many years and may not see any real results in Mitchell’s life time, adding to that he still has men like Anthony Tilli in the wings who might and will undermine any “new” leader that Mitchell installs in Beechboro.
Option 2:
As mentioned earlier, Mitchell is a pragmatic man and the option of liquidating assets of an already “detonated” church and rebuilding a new Australian head office across the other side of the country fits his method of operation. Mitchell will create a new “cause” and a new “vision” that the loyal in Australian Potter’s House can get behind. With “fellowship history” as it is, there are very few people that can stand and recount past events to why, when and how so a new direction will be just that� a new direction. With this in mind Mitchell will have to move quickly and will have to start to seed the loyal followers at this years Perth Conference. The only draw back will be time, it takes time when entering into a new building program (years) and that time could erode an ever decreasing loyalty base in the Australian Potter’s House Fellowship. The other factor is that Anthony Tilli is not well liked or trusted by his peers; rumour and conjecture have surrounded Anthony Tilli’s ministry and position in the Australian Potter’s House Fellowship for years and years.
The long and short of all this is whatever happens in the coming months and years is any ones guess but what we all know is that the Status Quo at the moment will not be maintained and Wayman Mitchell will do something radical to counter the current split of the Potter’s House Beechboro church and the emergence of David Vicary’s Eternity Christian Church in Perth and in other parts of Australia. Wayman Mitchell will have to do something and he will do something very soon.
Watch this space!
jerrie”
From http://pottershousefreedom.org/index.php?p=1_16_Pastor-Vicary
We could have told you before you joined the CDP that Nile was a nutbag
In Uncategorized on May 13, 2009 at 12:17 amThe Sydney Star Observer reports…
“Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party has expelled its only other state MP, Reverend Gordon Moyes, who hit back at the party’s anti-gay policies as unchristian.
Blaming same-sex couples for society’s problems, like the Victorian bushfires, was turning the CDP into an isolated cult, Moyes said.
“As a Christian I have no right to rule over what other people who reject Christian standards and beliefs do or not do,” Moyes told Sydney Star Observer.
“I do not believe in vilifying groups of people.”
Counselling and outreach should be offered, not vilification, he explained.
“I have conducted for many years outreach programs to help people with all sorts of personal issues including gender issues.”
Since being expelled in April, Moyes has slammed Nile’s “cult of personality” on his parliamentary website.
“Fred’s self-declared macro policies of ‘Anti-Muslim and Anti-Gay’ are not supported by any major Christian denomination,” Moyes wrote.
“In fact all mainstream Christian church bodies and councils, including the conservative NSW Council of Churches and the Baptist Union of Australia, believe the policies not to be Christian.
“Such a cult [as Nile’s] holds beliefs and practices that are not held by mainstream Christianity. Social ills are commonly blamed on lesbians and same-sex couples or Muslims, despite a total lack of evidence for these claims.”
Moyes, whose NSW Legislative Council seat is up for re-election in 2010, is considering joining Family First as its NSW Parliament representative.”
From http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2009/05/12/gay-hate-not-mainstream-mp/13069
Budget busters
In Uncategorized on May 12, 2009 at 3:40 pmThe Daily Mail reports…
“Getting married has never been cheap and the credit crunch has doubtless put many prospective weddings on hold.
But one church, St Hild and St Helen’s, in Dawdon, County Durham, has come up with the perfect something-for-nothing solution.
It is offering cash-strapped couples a virtually free wedding – throwing in an organist plus outfits for the bride, bridesmaids, bridegroom and mother of the bride.
The only condition is that couples take four pre-marital lessons before the big day – with a £50 fee payable to the registrar.
Donna Swinney, 29, and her partner of 12 years Alan Davison, 33, could not afford a conventional wedding after he was made redundant from his job as a dry liner last year.
And Miss Swinney left her job as an administrator to become a full-time mum to Jordan, eight, and Aiden, six.
But on Saturday the pair, who have been engaged for ten years, became the first to take advantage of the free wedding service when they tied the knot.
The offer saved the couple an estimated £2,000, including the £400-plus charge for the church and in total cost them less than a few hundred pounds.
Miss Swinney wore a dress borrowed from the church and saved money by making her own bouquets with the help of instruction videos and flowers donated to the church.
She said: ‘Alan lost his job, so we thought we would have to put it off for another few years.
‘It’s absolutely fantastic what they’re doing. There are so many people out there who won’t be getting married because it’s so expensive.
The couple, from Seaham, County Durham, also saved money by shopping on the internet for their honeymoon.
Many of the clothes and accessories have been donated by generous members of the public.
Pastor David Taylor, a former pitman who worked down the mines for a total of 20 years, said: ‘People really want to get married, but at this time there’s a credit crunch.
‘I think those who have taken up the offer think it’s a novel idea. They wanted to know more because it’s free and they’ve been looking for a church for a time.
‘They really want to be married and be together, and that’s as it should be. It will be a typical Christian ceremony.’
The church was built more than a century ago by Lord Londonderry to serve the mining community, but faced an uncertain future in recent years when its congregation dwindled to just 20.
Now the building, known as the Pitmen’s Cathedral, has passed from the ownership of the Church of England and has become the St Hild and St Helen Christian Fellowship, a Pentecostal church.”
Memo to pastors: Normal people who earn an average wage don’t look at your $600 000 salary package and say ‘gee, you must be blessed by God’
In Uncategorized on May 11, 2009 at 11:35 pmThe New York Times reports…
“Longstanding tensions among parishioners at the renowned Riverside Church erupted again this week as a group of congregants went to court to stop the installation of a new senior pastor whose compensation package, they say, exceeds $600,000 a year.
In a motion filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the group said that the new pastor, the Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton, and the church board that selected him last September after a yearlong search, had dismissed their calls for transparency in financial matters. They also complained that Dr. Braxton was moving Riverside away from its tradition of interracial progressivism and toward a conservative style of religious practice.
On Tuesday, a Supreme Court judge, Lewis Bart Stone, effectively denied the motion by adjourning the case to the end of May, a month after Dr. Braxton’s installation, which is scheduled for Sunday. The judge urged both sides to reach an accommodation in the case, which was reported on Wednesday by The Daily News.
The church, a Gothic cathedral built in 1930 by John D. Rockefeller at 120th Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan, stood for many decades at the most heavily trafficked juncture of religious faith and social activism in the United States. Its pastors were early civil rights advocates who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and invited him to speak in the pulpit. Its best-known leader was the fervent civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activist, the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin Jr.
By the dissidents’ account, Dr. Braxton’s compensation package includes an annual base salary of $250,000; a monthly housing allowance of $11,500; pension and life insurance benefits; entertainment, travel and “professional development” expenses; an equity allowance for the future purchase of a home; money for a full-time maid; and private school tuition for his 3-year-old daughter.
Rick Stone, a longtime parishioner who served as pro bono lawyer for the petitioners, said Dr. Braxton’s package was roughly twice what his predecessor received.
“This is a huge amount of money to be paying at a time of such economic crisis,” said Diana Solomon-Glover, a 30-year parishioner, a member of the choir, and one of the plaintiffs. “But equally of concern is Dr. Braxton’s style of governance, which is highly secretive, and the direction he has been taking the church, toward a more fundamentalist brand of religion.”
Through a spokesman, Dr. Braxton declined to be interviewed.
Dr. Billy E. Jones, chairman of the Riverside Church Council, the executive board of congregants, said in a statement that the new pastor’s compensation was “in line with other religious leaders in Manhattan who minister to congregations of a similar size and scope.” Dr. Jones said the board had disclosed details of the pay package to the full congregation, but the dissidents dispute that.
Dr. Jones also said that Dr. Braxton was not given money for a full-time maid, and that the “private school tuition” amounted to the pastor’s daughter attending the church’s day school tuition free.
Experts on American churches said in interviews that Dr. Braxton’s compensation was well above average among pastors nationwide, but was within the range of packages for senior pastors of megachurches and what are known as mainline “tall steeple” churches in major cities.
Scott L. Thumma, a sociology of religion professor at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research who has studied pastor compensation, said the average salary of 105 megachurch pastors surveyed in 2008 was about $150,000, with the highest-paid receiving about $300,000.
“With 2,700 congregants, I would call Riverside a megachurch, and measure its pastor in that pool,” Mr. Thumma said.
Discord about Riverside’s direction and priorities long preceded the arrival of Dr. Braxton. The tension between social activism and a more traditional church practice has paralleled a demographic shift in the congregation. For many years the church was predominantly white, a reflection of the Upper West Side population, but the church’s black membership grew to become a majority under Dr. Braxton’s predecessor, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the church’s first black senior pastor, who served from 1989 to 2007.
Among those who were dissatisfied by the shift, the selection of Dr. Braxton, a Baptist minister and former Rhodes scholar who described himself as “progressive evangelical,” was viewed as a confirmation of the conservative trend.
In the months since his appointment, tensions have been high. “I came here looking for a church for spiritual reasons,” said Glenn Allen, a new member of the choir who was not party to the suit, “but it has really not been a very spiritual experience.”
From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/nyregion/23riverside.html?_r=2&em
Burning Bridges
In Uncategorized on May 11, 2009 at 11:30 pmMarie Claire reports…
“Most folks drive right past the gritty stretch of downtown Los Angeles that houses University Cathedral, a former movie palace whose marquee now advertises weekly evangelical sermons. But on any given Sunday, several hundred parishioners converge here for a rousing service that has them swaying and shouting Hallelujah!, enraptured by the low, breathless calls for salvation from Melissa Scott. The unlikely stunner who leads this congregation, Scott, 40, struts the stage clutching a red-leather Bible, periodically flinging her endless chestnut locks. Her doe-eyed image is beamed to local cable stations — she is a late-night staple — courtesy of six TV cameras flanking the pulpit. “Before I found God’s word, when things got bad, what did I have? I had friends and family forsake me,” she cries, directing her followers to Deuteronomy 33:25. In unison, they bark, “Tough shoes for a tough road!” Ninety minutes later, she slips offstage and is whisked by security out of the building through a private passageway.
Scott knows a thing or two about tough roads. Four years ago, she lost her husband, Dr. Gene “Doc” Scott, the wildly popular “shock jock of televangelism” — nearly 40 years her senior — to complications from prostate cancer. In his heyday as pastor, Doc Scott reportedly collected $1 million a month in donations and amassed an empire that included two horse ranches, a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Pasadena, a private plane, and a collection of luxury cars. Shortly after his funeral, Doc Scott’s comely young wife assumed University’s pulpit. But after her first sermon, someone anonymously mailed churchgoers Easter cards featuring snapshots of a porn star named Barbie Bridges, who looked remarkably similar to Pastor Melissa Scott. One image showed the woman with her legs spread wide, Virgin Mary and baby Jesus postage stamps covering her privates. Another featured a “See you Sunday!” banner plastered across her bare chest; underneath, it read: “The Church Where You Can Do Anything … Anything.”
The mailing sparked a revolt. Scott’s Wikipedia page was so vandalized, it had to be removed; Web newsgroups devoted to the church were overrun by users posting more damning photos. (“Who else wants to bang the bejesus out of Pastor Melissa Scott?” inquired one.) Already stinging from the regime change following Doc Scott’s death, some demanded her resignation. Others claimed she was a walking billboard for the redemptive powers of faith. But Scott would cop to nothing, dismissing the incident as an expert Photoshop job, part of a sick smear campaign by religious nuts. She even trotted out a Hollywood attorney to threaten her congregants with lawsuits should any more anonymous missives materialize. It seemed as if Scott had joined the long, sordid list of disgraced televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and, most recently, Ted Haggard, ousted from his Colorado church following allegations that he solicited a male prostitute. But unlike those toppled icons, Scott clung to her denial and carried on preaching.
In the years that followed, Scott avoided answering any more questions about Barbie Bridges — until now.
I am consumed with my work,” says Pastor Melissa Scott, soothing her raspy throat with sips of warm water. She’s sitting in a private chamber at the church, decorated to look exactly like the tack room where her husband kept his saddlebred horses, replete with royal blue felt walls studded with reproductions of British foxhunts. Having wrapped up her Sunday sermon only a half-hour earlier, she’s still wearing a thick layer of makeup — a worked-over blemish on her chin cracks the otherwise pristine veneer. In person, Scott is warmer than her haranguing pulpit persona. She smiles often and broadly, revealing impeccably white, straight teeth, the product of braces and bleaching. But her cordiality can’t mask the occasional hard edges — the stern glance at a colleague who digs into his lunch before saying grace, the firm that’s-all-you’re-getting-from-me pause that punctuates her oblique answers to softball questions about her upbringing. “I moved around a lot, kind of hodgepodge, everywhere,” she says. Any brothers or sisters? “Right now I’m kind of disconnected from my family. Religion should bring people together, but sometimes it tears people apart,” she says cryptically.
It was in this room, she says, that she first met Dr. Scott — that’s how she refers to her late husband — introduced by a mutual friend after services one Sunday back in the mid-’90s. Dr. Scott asked her if she had any hobbies. Stamp collecting, she said. Turns out, he collected stamps, too. “He said, ‘I’d love to see your collection, and I’d love to show you mine.’ I’ve never been so embarrassed. He’s got these award-winning rarities; he’s showed them to the Queen, showed them internationally” — unlike the ordinary post-office stamps filling her store-bought albums. “But that was our common thing, and from there things just kind of developed,” she says. By 1998, they were an item. Dr. Scott ordained her his administrative pastor, though she had no formal theological training. Two years later, they wed in Reno. He was 70; she was 32. A month later, he was diagnosed with cancer. “I’m the fruit of his lifelong ministry. He birthed me,” Scott says, choking up.
Scott is a markedly different preacher from Dr. Scott, who was prone to off-color rants about everything from UFOs to his ex-wife (“the devil’s sister,” he called her). Her sermons are more pedagogical, often involving whiteboards crammed with Hebrew and Aramaic — Scott claims she’s taught herself 20 languages. The academic approach resonates with her supporters. “I’ve just begun listening to Pastor Melissa Scott, and it feels like I’m finally being fed real food after starving for so long,” one fan commented on a Christian newsgroup. “As for those who would criticize her for any transgressions in her past, who are you to judge her?”
Asked about the Barbie Bridges matter, Scott smacks her berry-stained lips and scoffs. “It’s definitely a freak show. I’ve seen a good portion of the stuff on the Internet, and honestly, I almost have to laugh at it,” she says, flashing the smile again. Pressed further, Scott sighs deeply, then adds, “Okay, I was never an actress in a pornographic movie. So what does that do? You defend that, what else do you start defending?”
That said, Melissa Scott really was a porn star, as confirmed by several acquaintances who knew her when she worked the adult-entertainment circuit as Barbie Bridges. Though it’s unclear when she adopted the moniker, by 1994 she’d already nabbed a title — Miss Nude CanAm Exotic — under the name. She posed nude, as Barbie Bridges, for Penthouse lensman Earl Miller and famed erotic photographer Suze Randall. At the time, Scott was married to Paul Pastore, who worked for an exotic-dancing agency called Fantasy Creations before launching a porn distribution outfit called Barbie Bridges Enterprises. (Among its titles: Backdoor Diaries and Heidi’s High Heeled Hookers.) “If she doesn’t want to talk about [her past in porn], then I’d rather not talk about it. Whatever she wants to do and say, that’s fine with me,” says Pastore, reached at his West Hollywood office, where he still works in adult entertainment.
Scott didn’t cultivate her relationship with Dr. Scott in church, say former associates, but at his California ranch, where the fiery televangelist frequently entertained nude models like Penthouse Pet Chloe Jones and Playboy Playmate Elke Jeinsen. Congregants dubbed them his “pony girls,” because he often filmed them riding his stallions in thong bikinis and broadcast the footage during televised sermons. (“Now that you see what I got waitin’ for me at home,” he told the audience, “you should all be extra nice to me for comin’ down here to talk to ya.”) “Melissa was there, always dancing for Doc topless, showing her tits right away,” recalls Jeinsen, now a swimsuit model and sometime actress.
Doc often paid his pony girls to attend church, where they acted as a kind of cheerleading squad. “[Melissa] sat in the front row in skimpy outfits. When she came around, I just thought, gold digger,” says Christian Shaw, son of Playboy bunny Christine Shaw, a longtime girlfriend of Doc Scott. He says Melissa’s life in porn was an open secret. “Doc was big on forgiveness, and he wasn’t tripping on her past. She was absolutely Barbie Bridges.” Before long Melissa was singing on Doc Scott’s broadcasts. Then she relaxed her big, curly hair and traded the thigh-high minis for turtlenecks and pantsuits. By the late ’90s, Doc abandoned the pony-girl parties altogether and embraced Melissa as his sole girlfriend.
While Doc was a character, active in local politics, his widow is largely unknown in town. After services, she essentially disappears. Scott will not disclose where she lives, although she allows it is not at her late husband’s Pasadena “church parsonage,” recently listed for $17 million. “I am very much a recluse,” she admits. She is constantly shadowed by a security detail, which enforces the church’s strict reservation-only attendance policy. Cameras are expressly forbidden inside. “I have stalkers, people who are obsessed with me,” Scott notes.
Some parishioners just don’t get it. “I think she’d have a much bigger congregation if she came clean,” says a former member who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “People would have more respect for her if she said, ‘Yes, that was me, but I’ve repented and turned to Christ.’ Instead it’s, ‘What else are you lying about?’”
But Pastor Scott simply won’t. She points to the stained-glass window depicting the scene from John 20 in which Jesus appears to Doubting Thomas, the apostle who demands proof of Jesus’s resurrection. Everyone, Pastor Scott coos, has a little Doubting Thomas in them. She pulls the Bible from her lap, licks the tips of her fingers, and flips through the worn pages. “Only three chapters [of the Bible deal with] God’s perfection,” she says, pinching off a small section. “The rest deals with man’s fall and bringing man back. I want people to be able to start over, start a brand-new life. How do you do that if you’re condemning them? God is a god of second chances.”
A slow grin spreads. “I’m at perfect peace about where I am and what I’m doing. I feel that I fit right in this time and this moment.” And with that, Pastor Melissa Scott rises to go. A dozen security guards standing sentinel in the hallway spring to attention and hustle her out of the building.”
From http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/latest/melissa-scott-porn-pastor
Brian is pissed
In Uncategorized on May 11, 2009 at 6:54 pmBrian Houston blogs…
“WOW… someone just sent me a link to the Sydney Morning Herald, online, and there’s Bobbie and I on the front page! I’m sure the photo of me is straight out of the 1980’s or at best, the mid 90’s and Bobbie looks like she is about to get hit by a truck!!
The headline is just that… a headline and it goes down the line of Hillsong ’selling itself’ and ‘franchising’.
Here’s what I find interesting, almost every Christian denomination I know levies their affiliated churches with ‘dues’ (a percentage of their offerings) but Hillsong charges NOTHING to those churches who are part of our greater family and carry the Hillsong name. We have only ever sought to resource them and help them.
I am glad that within this article itself, the journalist gave me a fair hearing and quoted me in context – as this is not always the case.
As written in the article: “Our heart is to bless and build churches through example, encouragement, and strategic partnerships and we believe it is right for churches to endeavor to reach and help people wherever there is need.”
To me, the church is all about GOD and PEOPLE and perhaps the day may come when we do have to consider how to pay for the administration of these relationships, but at this point that is not so.
Some call it franchising, but I prefer to see it as partnering to be more effective in bringing the good news of Jesus to a desperately hurting world.
Have a blessed day”
From http://brianandbobbie.com/2009/05/headlines/#more-402
SMH article
Hill$ong Brisbane – more bad press
In Uncategorized on May 10, 2009 at 11:04 pmThe Sydney Morning Herald reports…
“Sydney, London, Kiev, Paris, Cape Town, Stockholm, Moscow … and now Brisbane.
The languid Queensland capital has become the latest stop in Brian and Bobbie Houston’s odyssey to franchise their pentecostal Hillsong Church around the world.
Mr Houston has resigned as president of the Australian Christian Churches, a position he held for 12 years, to focus on the “multisite” expansion of Hillsong. And that, coupled with the controversial move interstate, has prompted speculation that Hillsong is ramping up its domestic network of churches, ready to pounce on churches struggling amid the global financial crisis.
Garden City Christian Church on Brisbane’s southside will be renamed Hillsong Brisbane Campus and the Houstons installed as senior pastors there on May 24, after 79 per cent of Garden City members voted in favour of the takeover.
An information document circulated before the vote said the Houstons had chosen to move into Brisbane because “it is a fast growing area with great potential for the Gospel”.
The Garden City Christian Church’s 3000-strong congregation will significantly bolster Hillsong’s numbers, which stand at 21,000 across Sydney.
Hillsong told the Herald there are “currently no plans” for other churches in Australia. “However, our heart is to bless and build churches through example, encouragement, and strategic partnerships and we believe it is right for churches to endeavour to reach and help people wherever there is need,” it said in a statement.
The Sydney-based Houstons, who already spend much of their time travelling to the branches they have set up overseas, intend to be in Brisbane “as much as possible” to lead services and meetings.
Garden City’s senior pastor for eight years, Bruce Hills, was forced out before the arrival of the Houstons. Garden City Christian Church announced Mr Hills’s resignation in December, amid criticism that the church was not growing enough. Yet in an address to a Christian conference at Easter, Mr Hills revealed he had a nervous breakdown last September. “Emotionally I just imploded,” he said.
When he returned from eight weeks’ leave, Garden City Christian Church elders told him: “We’d rather have more of a CEO leader than you. We’d like you to resign.”
Describing it as “the deepest, darkest experience I’ve ever been through”, Mr Hills said he was “really angry about what these people had done”.
Steve Dixon, who has been acting pastor at Garden City since Mr Hills’s resignation, will now be “campus pastor” of Hillsong Brisbane.
A former Hillsong staff member for seven years, who now blogs as The Thinking Theologian, argues the worldwide economic downturn has crimped the Houstons’ global expansion ambitions, forcing them to look closer to home for new Hillsong branches.
“An established, sizeable congregation, with a catchment of wealthy city-slickers, is far too lucrative an opportunity to turn down,” the blogger posted. “But it won’t stop at Brisbane. I suspect as increasing numbers of churches feel the pinch of the global recession, they’ll be more than willing for Brian Houston and co. to step in and give them a makeover, repackage them, and then market them under the Hillsong brand.”
Since starting their church with 45 people meeting in the Baulkham Hills Public School hall in 1983, the Houstons have been trying to emulate the model of established churches, where there is one leader for the faith, and “operational” pastors appointed to run individual churches in locations around the world.
The takeover of Garden City Christian Church coincided with Mr Houston’s resignation from the Australian Christian Churches presidency at its conference conference on the Gold Coast.
“Its [sic] a happy, sad time for me as my time as leader of ACC comes to an end tonight. My heart is full of vision for the future though,” Mr Houston said on Twitter.”
The world’s worst and most embarrassing ‘tithe raps’
In Uncategorized on May 9, 2009 at 2:46 pmFirst Baptist Church, Starke
Woodland Community Church
Impact Community Church
New Hope Christian Fellowship
‘I’m a Christian just like them’ says jailed fraudster
In Uncategorized on May 9, 2009 at 2:05 pmKOMO reports…
“Stone Phillips III, who joined local churches to prey on the faithful and pull off a slick investment scam, has been sentenced to roughly 18 years in jail for fraud and theft.
The case was triggered by a KOMO News investigation that began four years ago.
Some of the victims made a point to be in court Friday to see Phillips put behind bars. They feared he’d get away with it. Sources say Phillips even bragged this day would never come.
Phillips, who promoted himself as a “faith-based financial advisor,” was sentenced for an investment scheme that targeted local Christians in King and Pierce Counties.
Phillips was convicted in April of five counts of fraud and seven counts of theft.
“I seek their forgiveness. I accept all accountability, responsibility for my actions,” Phillips said before Judge Lisa Worswick handed down the sentence in Pierce County Superior Court. “I made bad judgments in my business decisions.”
But Worswick called it greed, sentencing Phillips to 215 months in prison.
For victims Steve and Mary Shriver, 18 years is not enough. The prosecution was pushing for 25 years — the maximum allowed. The Shrivers say even that would not make up for what Phillips did to them.
“I’m angry,” said Steve Shriver, “and I’m gonna be angry for quite some time.”
For more than four years, KOMO News tracked Phillips’ trail across more than five states. We discovered Phillips used more than a dozen aliases, at one point legally changing his name from Ricardo Martinez to Stone Phillips III. In recent years, Phillips has been living in the Phoenix, Arizona area, where people say he used the names Sylus or Sylas Stone.
According to a KOMO investigation, Phillips first surfaced in the Seattle area in the late 90s. Intelligent, clean cut, and professionally dressed, he targeted prominent local churches where he promoted his business called Northwest Financial Solutions.
At some churches, he even conducted financial investment seminars. Church members opened retirement accounts. Some even rolled over their entire savings into Northwest Financial Solutions.
But the state Department of Financial Institutions says Phillips never had the required license or certification to handle securities investments. The judge called it a sophisticated scam.
Through their dealings with Phillips, socially and at church, the victims say Phillips became their friend. Later, they would discover the investment deals were not at all what they had been told. They lost their homes, their equity and hundreds of thousands of dollars — money the court said Phillips used to support an expensive lifestyle.
Phillips insists he’s a person of faith.
“I made careless mistakes. But I’m not a bad person. I’m a Christian just like them,” Phillips told the judge, referring to the church members he defrauded.
But as he was lead out of the courtroom and back to jail, Phillips’ comment to KOMO News was so un-Christian that they could not be repeated on air.
Phillips” attorney had sought a lighter sentence, arguing that 215 months is the kind of sentence typically handed down for first-degree murder, rape and child molestation. But the judge said what Phillips did was a calculated and financial crime that devastated the victims’ lives.
As Phillips serves his sentence, the Shrivers say there are other local church members who were also defrauded by Phillips but never came forward out of embarrassment or fear of making waves among their churches, family or friends.
Fraud investigators say that’s a classic example of why this type of fraud, known as affinity fraud, is so pervasive. Victims get taken in by friendships and common interests. By the time they realize their trust has been betrayed, their money is gone. They’re reluctant to come forward and in most cases, the person responsible never gets caught.”
From http://www.komonews.com/news/local/44627377.html
Lance loses the plot. Like la-la-land, cuckoo clock stuff
In Uncategorized on May 9, 2009 at 2:14 amLance (Group Sects) writes…
I’m just back from Perth’s Murray Street Mall where the Potter’s House pricks were back evangelising shouting at shoppers and I had a one-on-one conversation with one of them who wasn’t quite as pig-headed as the rest of them but was being a good drone in parroting the company line.
And I didn’t get my face bashed in by one of them, which is always a good thing.
But, I did learn from the drone why I don’t understand the bible.
Apparently it’s because I’ve been reading it with my brain.
Yes, my brain, which is not the work of God of course, but is a devillish grey fungus that’s formed above and behind my eyes.
I have to, and he was dead serious with this, I have to disengage the intellect and read ’in the Spirit’ to understand the bible.
Well, unfortunately, I’m stuck with this brain thing, so I’ll never make a good Pente.
Further up the mall, there was what’s becoming a fascinating Friday night ritual of the final Christianity vs Islam showdown.
Perhaps that’s a beat-up as it’s all very respectful and good-natured, but each week, some young Muslims from a local mosque have been showing up to engage in discussion with the street preachers.
I’ve been standing back listening to the dialogue, and apart from noting how completely inept the preachers are at explaining the Christian faith, I’ve had the opportunity to hear about spiritual matters from an Islamic perspective.
Some things clearly stand out.
Firstly, the Muslims take their faith seriously, certainly more seriously than young Christians and most older Christians. They generally fear God (to use some Christianese) and they are careful with their words and actions because of that fear, which I never felt was an unhealthy or paranoid fear. Perhaps ‘respect’ of God/Allah is a better word than fear.
I threw the ‘gay thing’ (the standard test of the veracity of someone’s religion) at them and they handled it pretty well, showing respect to me and not taking a dogmatic religious position (they felt it may be a special test for me from Allah and it was something that was between me and Allah, not their concern)
Now comes the bit where Christians will probably suggest that I’ve lost the plot.
These Muslims, have faith in God, genuinely acknowledge Jesus as a special messenger from God and live a quiet life of regular worship and caring for others.
Do they believe all of what Christians believe? No.
But they believe and practise enough of what evengelical Christians (should) regard as the fundamentals of Christianity, faith in God, repentance from sin, acknowledging the primacy of Jesus, that I reckon they’re in, in the same way that Pente’s with all their wacky beliefs and add-ons to the faith and subtractions from the faith and plain ignorance of the faith are in, because of their faith in God, their (half-hearted) repentance from sin and by acknowledging their own, well, well-to-do, sexiest-man-alive version of Jesus.
When I read the New Testament I see very few people, including the disciples who really ‘got it’ regarding Jesus.
But they were accepted anyway through God’s grace and forgiveness.
Have Christians stopped believing in a God who fills and reconciles the gap between spiritual understanding and human assumption-style wisdom, and now only believe in a God they consider to be so narrow and legalistic to deny entry to those who are sincere in their intentions who don’t have their theology straight, either because they’re bad theologians or they grew up in a culture or a setting with bad theology?
I’m not about to become a Muslim, but their, I’ve got to say, Christ-like style of relating and sincerity impresses me to the point that I’m happy to say they’re ‘in.’
Now I know in the comments I’m going to get a lot of, ‘well, did you know Muslims really believe this and that’, and there’ll probably be some Nalliah-inspired dickheadedness, but the sad news for some of you is that grace from God for the sincere believer wins in the end, not you playing God.
The absolute awesomeness of excellencenessness. What is this bloke talking about?
In Uncategorized on May 8, 2009 at 11:16 pm
The boy trapped in the Hill$ong bubble
In Uncategorized on May 6, 2009 at 11:33 pmJoel Houston blogs…
“So easy to get comfortable in the bubble.. I’ve wrestled with it my whole life… Trying to find the balance between resistance and expansion.. Two completely different outcomes depending on which side you apply your weight.. Lean too hard on the former and it can lead to resentment and compromise.. Lean too hard on the latter and you’ll start dwelling in conformity and irrelevance.. It can be a complicated balancing act.. A thin wire to walk across; straight and narrow and open to the elements.. It’s a line that is different for every-one.. Yet it’s one I think we all need to balance for ourselves…
For the most part, especially on tour, we are camped in the bubble.. Poking at it as much as we can.. Stretching it with all our energy.. But today we had a day off in palm desert.. Got given passes for ‘coachella’… Tired as we were.. It’s fair to say we were all pretty keen to get out of the bubble.. And so we did.. And it was an amazing experience… I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more diverse assortment of people in all the earth.. Doing everything imaginable to escape reality and have a good time… I was like a kid at the circus.. Just soaking up the creativity; the atmosphere; the whole experience.. There’s an undenyable emptiness to the frivolity.. But my eyes were re-opened; my heart re-ignited by the beautiful mess that is humanity.. People being people.. There was a strange authenticity to the facade.. I know that makes no sense.. And I’m perhaps the only person who understands what I mean by that… But there’s something to be learned from everyone.. And for me; the other side of the bubble proved a day of learning… That perhaps the idea is that there should be no bubble.. That the bubble is something that we created – not God.. That we’ve surrounded ourselves to protect ourselves.. To comfort ourselves.. To seperate ourselves and ultimately feel better about ourselves.. When all the while, If we just stopped focusing so much on ourselves, we might actually be awakened to the idea of ‘others’… it’s still a balancing act.. And I reckon if your gonna walk that line you’ve gotta be pretty established in at least one rule..
matt 16:24_ if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me….
If we learn how to deny ourselves.. then we don’t need the bubble.. But ‘denying ourselves’ is a journey; an every day. Every moment decision.. But in understanding it there is MASSIVE freedom.. Endless opportunity..
i’m pretty sure Jesus had this bit sorted.. and i’m pretty sure if He was on earth now you wouldn’t find Him in a bubble…”
From http://www.hillsongunited.com/blog/2009/04/desertjust-beyond-bubble
The Bruce Hills coup – the real story behind the Hill$ong takeover of Brisbane’s Garden City Church
In Uncategorized on May 6, 2009 at 1:22 am
“……This is the reality of what Bruce Hills has had to go walk through. I have had to wrestle with forgiving others for what has been done to me.
Six months ago, late September 2008, I had what would be regarded as a mild, mild …meltdown/breakdown.
Emotionally, I just imploded and I just needed some time out. I was so tired and bereft inside.
And during that time, I had about eight weeks off. The eldership and the board of our church were having meetings together and talking about the future.
And when I was about to re-enter and to come back into Sunday ministry, they called me in to have a meeting and they said, ‘listen, in your absence we’ve been thinking about it, and we believe that even though you’ve got integrity and your ethics are good and you’re ministry is great, we believe that we’d rather have more of a CEO-type leader than you. We would like you to resign.
Now, at the time because I was absolutely emotionally undone, I had no fight in me and I couldn’t take them on, and I just said, ‘look, OK, I’m gonna move on.’
That began to start a series of things inside of me where you start to get a bit upset.
I recovered quite quickly after that and I had to really wrestle with this stuff.
So what I’m trying to say today is, this is not just a sermon, this is the reality of my life, forgiving our debtors.
I am not talking to you about just some principle in scripture. I have had to walk this. Because there were some nights where I’m just lying in bed at night, really angry about what these people had done..and just stewing over it and it was getting into my heart until one day I had to get to a point where I said ‘God, I forgive them for what they’ve done. I release them from what they’ve done. I give that into your hands. I choose to go on. I choose to let go. I choose to become what you want me to be’.
And I was liberated. I felt such freedom. It took a while for my thought life to catch up. It took a while for my feelings to catch up, but the choice was made.” – Bruce Hills, Legana Christian Church Tasmania, 2009 Refresh Easter Convention.
African women prostitute themselves to afford ‘tithes’
In Uncategorized on May 5, 2009 at 10:48 pmallafrica.com reports…
“In my part of Delta State, particularly among the Itsekiri and Ijaw communities in the riverine areas, there are no churches, let alone schools, health centres, electricity and so on. Go to Bayelsa, Akwa-Ibom and others, the story is largely the same. Every pastor wants to be in the city where he/she can have all worldly necessities of life. Our residential quarters, schools, and even roads have been mercilessly and lawlessly turned to churches, in reckless disregard of the right to freedom of religion as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The more the churches, with their uncontrollable loud speakers and fiery prayers, the more the high rate of crime and criminality in the society.
Most of their prayers often hang and end right there on the ceilings of their churches, as it appears God has turned His ears against the prayers of this set of pretentious and insidious elements, masquerading as Christians. Daily, everybody wants to either become a politician or a pastor. Churches are being planted as investment, a means of looting the poor and those who cannot differentiate between fake and original commands of the Bible. Christ has become the easiest and most marketable tool to rob, to cheat and to sell products, including fake ones, in the public, commercial buses inclusive. After political robbers rig elections, pastors would pray God to grant them long tenure, and even urge their congregations and general public to support a government that was not voted for by the electorate.
People are now paying for prayers; paying for praising and worshiping their heavenly Father. No wonder ladies are going into fornication and/or prostitution in order to pay their tithes and offerings, some of which are up to eight (if not more), alongside forceful vows and other levies. In the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) led by Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, there are divisions: Yoruba caucus, Igbo caucus, Delta/Edo caucus, etc; everybody fighting for his selfish interest; not the preaching of the gospel of salvation, which our Lord Jesus Christ upheld.
A few months ago, one of the Pentecostal pastors took a loan from a bank and bought the Surulere, Lagos-based training centre of the Times Journalism Institute (TJI), a training wing of Daily Times of Nigeria Plc. Before the property was advertised for sale in “The Guardian” by the Federal Government, the pastor, in conspiracy with some top government officials, had long bought the property, demolished structures he deemed unfit and erected his multi-million naira church thereon; while deluding executives of the Students’ Union Government (SUG) and some members of staff of the TJI that the place the church was built on was leased to him for three years. I wish to say the rest is history, as the Chairman of Daily Times and others are handling the matter confidentially.
A few months ago, when I was in Warri with members of my extended family, I was invited to a church programme. The church is located at Iyara Street. Rather than preaching salvation, it was all prosperity, how to give and invest in the lives of men of God. I had no choice than to put on my recorder to record the rantings of the guest speakers. The host pastor, who is also the founder/General Overseer, summarised it all when he told the congregation to go and close their bank accounts and bring the money to sow a seed of faith in their lives (pastors). Those who did not have money, let alone bank accounts, were told to go and borrow, deluding the congregation that it is only when they do that, that God would be challenged to answer their cries and heart desires. Right now, the GO has three cars and a personal driver! Perhaps, the next plan will be to establish a Bible college or university, and later, the purchase of a jet! Thereafter, the Isiekwenes of this deceitful world would feed us with all kinds of propagandist explanations.
While urging us to be wise as the serpent and smart as the dove, the Bible (I John 2:5-6) tells us: “If someone says, I belong to God; but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and does not live in the truth. But those who obey God’s word really do love Him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Christ did.” While warning us in II John 1:10-11 that “If someone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don’t invite him to your house or encourage him in any way; anyone who encourages him becomes a partner in his evil work,” Matthew 7:21-23 further notes: “Not all people who sound religious are really godly. They may refer to Me as ‘Lord’, but they still won’t enter the kingdom of heaven. The decisive issue is whether they obey my Father in heaven. On judgment day, many will tell Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ we prophesied in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and performed many miracles in Your name. But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Go away; the things you did were unauthorised.”
Waxing philosophical, the great philosopher, Francois Arouet, lamented: “What a terrible time this is to be a Christian. The church has failed and betrayed us, and the ministry preaches hate and murder. If there is a sane and reasoning voice in the Christian church today, it is sadly silent.” Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not philosophy of life, but a life and a living process. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a renowned writer, noted: “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” I believe we can learn from history how past generations thought and acted; how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems, worshipped their God.
The main thing history teaches is that human action has consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events. Finally, in the words of the celebrated philosopher, C.I. Scofield, I say, “The church has failed to follow her appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an absent but coming Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilising the world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth; and, in this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not where to lay His head.”
Your pastor is prosperous but as for you, well, sucked in
In Uncategorized on May 5, 2009 at 2:52 pmReligion Dispatches reports…
“Today we shriek as we hear of financial scams, corporate greed, and virtually anything money-related that isn’t entirely on the up-and-up. While religion has generally been a help in these economically difficult times, there is one segment of Christianity that is scamming as many as they can. Those who have ears (and debt) let them hear.
The Prosperity Gospel, also known as a facet of the Word of Faith movement (a louder voice in Pentecostalism), has been writing checks with its lips that’s its theology can’t cash. Last year’s Pew Foundation mega-poll, which surveyed nearly 35,000 people (one of the largest religion polls ever accomplished), revealed a few interesting facts about Christians in the Pentecostal tradition, among them:
• Pentecostals have the lowest incomes of any other Christian denomination.
• Pentecostals have the least education of any other Christian denomination.
The results show that Pentecostals have the most high school dropouts, the fewest college graduates, and the fewest post-graduates. But the most interesting thing is that they earn the least annual income of any other Christian tradition polled. This is shocking, considering that a main feature in popular Pentecostalism is the Prosperity Gospel, where church members are promised that God will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they tithe generously and believe that they will receive the money.
Not only do Pentecostals fail to out-earn the regular “non-spirit filled” Christian, they make less. For me, to read such information is heartbreaking, as I am a teacher in a private school that’s part of a Word of Faith church. The church is doing very well for itself, as most Pentecostal churches are, but the people are suffering.
I often speak with coworkers and church members as they slowly slip into despair. I watch helplessly as their hopes dim, and their pennies dwindle. When I attend a service at this church, I hear the pastors declare that God will make everybody rich, if only they will throw what little they do have into the offering plate. Loud confident voices echo off the palatial walls of the sanctuary, while weary, struggling believers bristle with the hope of God’s “promises.” My impoverished friends dance down the plush expensive carpet to the altar and pull out their dollar bills (not their food stamps and government checks, though they have those also) and cheerfully give. The pastor nods approvingly, his hands folded in prayer (a shiny Rolex on his wrist), his eyes misty.
Say what you want about the corruption of the pulpit, or the decadence of the minister—that’s not my issue. My point is that while the world howls at the scam artists who fail to deliver on big promises, Christianity has its very own Ponzi scheme that’s alive and well. At least when Bernie Madoff promised big returns he actually delivered (if only for a moment); the prosperity gospel doesn’t even do that much. When Joel Osteen, Ken Copeland, Paula White, or Benny Hinn take your money, you’ll never see it again (unless you happen to glimpse one of their private jets leaving a runway for Bermuda).
When a major tenet of your theology is that people who invest in your church will experience wealth, while the facts show that your congregants are among the poorest and most desperate in the country, you have just been exposed. Further, when the national economy is in shambles, it should be criminal to continue to avoid taxes as a charity, yet earn immense amounts of capital on the promise of a better future. In the business world we call it a scam.
So why are we silent while this happens in every neighborhood in America?
Another concern raised by the Pew poll is the average profile of the victim. As Pentecostals tend to be the least well-educated group of believers they make a prime target for would-be millionaire pastors. In many ways, I am as green with jealousy as these prosperity preachers are with greed, in that the scammed believers have more faith in their little finger than I will probably ever know in my lifetime. They would give the shirt off their backs if they believed God wanted them to, and many of them have. These people have the purest of Christian hearts, trusting the intentions of their Shepherd as they’re led as lambs to the slaughter.
Imagine that there was a brand of theology in which people were taught that God has promised to give followers an additional arm, right from the center of their chest. Let’s say it taught that scripture had everywhere indicated that this was the case, and that by believing this “fuller” version of the gospel, you were opening up the as-of-yet closed off area of blessings that Christians have forgotten about (i.e. growing another appendage to better do God’s work).
Let’s imagine that after about 50 years the movement has spread worldwide, with followers numbering in the millions, and you look to see how many of these folks have in fact grown that “arm of the Lord.” Upon inspection you find that the vast majority of them have lost an arm, leaving them worse off and less able to serve than even those old two-armed folk. The irony would be overwhelming.
Despite the statistics, and the continued empirical evidence of devastated human lives (Pentecostals also have the most divorces), few if any Christians have plainly spoken against the Prosperity Gospel, or raised awareness that measures any merit. While high-level corruption and financial disarray are the soup du jour of recent weeks’ media cycles, this prominent and aberrant theology has been allowed to wreak destruction on a mass of people who are grasping at economic straws.
Prosperity Gospel theology is bankrupt. The debate raged for years about how much sense coveting money made in the context of biblical principles, but now the fruit has been borne and the numbers don’t lie: those who attend Prosperity Gospel churches are in fact worse off for it.”
From http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/1374/the_ponzi_prosperity_gospel
The Hill$ong indoctrination of Garden City
In Uncategorized on May 5, 2009 at 2:45 pmThe Garden City church website states…
“TOUCHING HEAVEN NIGHT
A packed auditorium and a full kids outdoor program celebrated a great night at GCCC on Friday 1st May. Pastor Steve Dixon led the meeting and hosted Pastor Brian Houston and the Hillsong worship team. The praise and worship was led by Reuben Morgan and Brooke Fraser. It was announced that a ‘Launch Sunday’ was planned for Sunday May 24th from which time Garden City Christian Church will operate as Hillsong Brisbane Campus. The church will then run 6 Hot Friday Nights from May 29th onwards. These Friday night church events will replace the Sunday night services for those 6 weeks and will offer the opportunity for the Brisbane campus to get to know and hear from some of the Hillsong leaders and ministries as well as pastors Brian and Bobbie.
Don Stewart’s snotty green hankie
In Uncategorized on May 5, 2009 at 12:29 amThe Arizona Republic reports…
“Don Stewart says God touched him even before he was born.
It was 1939, Prescott. A 41-year-old pregnant woman was rushed from a country hovel to the county hospital in fierce labor pain. With the baby in breech, doctors and nurses were convinced the mother would die.
Then a stranger walked into the room holding a prayer cloth.
“Witnesses going down the hall said the room lit up when the man came in,” Stewart says. “The man . . . put the prayer cloth on my mother and said, ‘You shall live and not die, and the child you shall have will be a chosen vessel.’ “
Stewart presides today over a multimillion-dollar Phoenix ministry that reaches across the globe, although many Arizonans have never heard of him.
The 69-year-old televangelist conducts energetic revivals across the country – he calls them “crusades” – that often feature rapid-fire faith-healing episodes. Stewart oversees 85 churches in the Philippines, preaches to viewers through his “Power and Mercy” television show and conducts a direct-mail campaign that floods followers with requests to donate money.
Stewart also has built his ministry on charitable work and delivering aid to the world’s poor and sick.
But he has been dogged by controversy. Two decades ago, he was accused by another church of committing arson for an insurance payoff. A decade before that, church officials in his own ministry accused him of embezzlement. And, in 1997, the IRS accused Stewart of using his church for personal benefit and revoked the ministry’s tax-exempt status.
But Stewart has never been charged with a crime, and he dismisses the accusations as unproven, motivated by unscrupulous critics and disgruntled employees.
Stewart is not as flamboyantly recognizable as some televangelists. He does not have the extravagance of Benny Hinn, the audience of Robert Tilton or the mega-church of Robert Schuller. His ministry, the Don Stewart Association, operates out of a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park near Interstate 17.
Stewart’s calling also has brought him wealth. He lives in a $2.5 million Paradise Valley home owned by his church, and the church has paid his wife and his sons hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. The church’s charity also bought a Hummer, records show; it’s unclear whether that was the same yellow Hummer driven by his wife, Brenda.
Stewart calls this God’s reward. It echoes the message he imparts to his followers: that God will reward the faithful with prosperity.
“I see the Bible through the lens of a young kid who didn’t have a chance in life. No money, tattered and broken and heartbroken,” Stewart says. “God says come and follow me and I will take care of all your needs. Not only will I do that, but I will give you the desires of your heart.”
Stewart did his growing up dirt poor in Clarkdale and Jerome.
His mother was a devout Christian, his father a bigamist who abandoned Stewart’s mother and five siblings before he was born, Stewart says. His father later returned to the family, repentant and religious.
“He came back, and the dad I knew was a very distant man, a hard worker,” Stewart says. “But he never told me he loved me or anything like that.”
At 13, Stewart says he developed a bone disease. Four operations later, hips pinned, he could not walk without crutches.
“I was in . . . a little Assembly of God church in Cottonwood,” Stewart says. “Evangelists prayed for me. I threw my crutches away and ran around that building. I fell at the altar.”
He describes the experience as an anointing, and like Saul on the road to Damascus, he heard God’s voice.
“How do I know it was God? Was it audible? Was it in my heart? I can’t tell you, but it was real to me. He said, ‘Take my healing powers to the nations of the world.’ “
Stewart’s critics describe him as a huckster with a Bible. They say he takes his cues for coaxing money and emotions out of people from an old school of televangelists and Pentecostal preachers.
“During his services, Stewart sings off key to people just before they are ’slain in the spirit’ by his touch,” Pastor G. Richard Fisher wrote in a 2002 article on Stewart in New Quarterly magazine. “He warbles and croons songs (partially scripture and partially positive affirmations) that sound like he is just making them up as they go along.”
Fisher wrote that some ministries are “not only concerned with Stewart’s lavish lifestyle . . . money-raising schemes, IRS problems . . . and overblown hype regarding his power,” but also that “his published statements are replete with new-age buzz words.”
Fisher is a senior researcher for Personal Freedom Outreach, a non-denominational Christian watchdog group in Missouri that seeks to expose what it describes as false biblical teachings.
The miracle engine of Stewart’s empire is a green handkerchief called a “prosperity prayer cloth.” Stewart says it’s a touchpoint for God’s blessing, not unlike the one the stranger carried into his mother’s hospital room.
Stewart’s promise: wealth and health in exchange for financial contributions.
“Whatever you make happen for God’s work, God will make happen for you,” Stewart tells followers.
Stewart says he graduated 12th in a high-school class of 12. Instead of textbooks, he read the Bible and dialed in radio revivals. One preacher in particular, a man named A.A. Allen, held him rapt with fiery sermons and vivid healings.
“I had never heard anybody preach like that.”
One of the things Allen preached was how God wanted them to be prosperous.
“That struck a note of hope in me,” Stewart says. “I found out that about over 20 percent of the Bible is made up of scriptures that have something to do with money, gold, silver . . . I went through the Old Testament and I found that God’s best friend was a millionaire; his name was Abraham. He was blessed, he prospered.”
The day that Stewart stepped into Allen’s tent was the beginning of a 12-year friendship between the two men.
Asa Alonso Allen was one of the forerunners of modern televangelism. At his most popular, Allen was broadcast on more than 50 daily radio stations and 40 television stations. He also started a Bible college off Highway 92 south of Sierra Vista and west of Bisbee, a place called Miracle Valley.
Allen claimed he could heal the sick, turned sermons into prophecies and had a collection of bottles that he said held the evil spirits exorcised from his followers.
Stewart went from pounding tent stakes at Allen’s revivals to driving a truck to preaching. He finally took over Allen’s ministry.
Stewart calls Allen his spiritual father. And when Allen drank himself to death in 1970 at age 59, it was Stewart who attempted to clean up evidence of his mentor’s alcoholic binge in a San Francisco hotel before the police arrived.
Stewart, who weeps when talking of Allen, says he wasn’t trying to cover up anything. He says he was protecting one of God’s chosen few.
“The man changed my life, dear God,” Stewart says. “God takes human, frail beings and I don’t understand how, but he anoints them. And anybody that will protect the anointed . . . will be blessed.”
In the wake of Allen’s death, Stewart was hit with allegations of embezzlement by Allen’s brother-in-law, of pocketing offerings from the revivals.
Stewart denies embezzling money, saying the accusation was part of a power struggle that ended when Allen’s brother-in-law got a restraining order against him that shut down operations for 24 hours. Stewart prevailed in court, and the restraining order was lifted. No theft was ever proved. The ministry’s board of directors sided with Stewart, who renamed the ministry the Don Stewart Evangelistic Association. Later it became the Don Stewart Association.
At the age of 30, two months after Allen’s death, Stewart says he was in a New York hotel when he had a vision about becoming the first faith healer to preach in the newly built Madison Square Garden.
“Suddenly, something came in my spirit and said, ‘You are going to preach there.’ “
Stewart says at that moment he “set a vision” to become the first minister of his type to preach in the Garden. And he did, filling the arena with followers.
Flush with success and a bigger audience than ever, Stewart moved his operation to Phoenix in the early 1970s.
Miracle Valley fell into disrepair and destruction. Stewart leased the property to the Hispanic Assemblies of God for $1 a year. But when a suspicious fire burned a key building to the ground in 1982 and Stewart opted for a cash insurance settlement rather than to rebuild, church officials accused him of arson. He denied having anything to do with the fire and was never charged.
“They (Assemblies of God) felt I torched it so I could collect on the insurance,” Stewart says, adding that a settlement was reached in which his ministry collected close to $1 million and the Assemblies of God got the property, “no strings attached.”
A wane in the faith-healing revival era in the U.S. set the stage for Stewart’s modern ministry.
As the 1980s approached, Stewart says he tried to adjust and considered becoming a mainstream preacher and teacher.
“I believe there again God spoke to my spirit and told me to quit trying to adjust yourself to this society; go to a people that want what you have.”
Stewart embarked on an international crusade, going to 86 countries and drawing audiences of half a million or more in the Philippines, Central America and South America.
He says he initiated feeding programs through the church to address the horrific conditions and scenes of starvation that he witnessed. Charitable work became as much a part of the Stewart operation as the crusades.
His ministry found a loyal following among African-American audiences, a point of pride for Stewart, who was arrested in 1962 for refusing to segregate a South Carolina revival.
Stewart’s crusades continue today. In hotel ballrooms, churches and auditoriums from Los Angeles to New York, he leads revivals that can last more than five hours. Anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand people attend.
A September revival in Secaucus, N.J., was no exception.
“He’s just wonderful,” said Erica Boone of Newark, N.J., adding that Stewart inspires her and that the green handkerchief is always close at hand. “When I’m feeling down, I just put it up to my heart and I feel better.”
Beatrice Dicks of Patterson, N.J., said she has been following Stewart for years.
“I believe he is a prophet of God, because everything he says to me, it is,” she says. “If I had a million dollars, he’d have half of it.”
Stewart acknowledges that the largest segment of his audience is made up of low-income individuals. He says he has no feelings of hypocrisy when asking them to contribute money to his ministry. He says giving is part of his faith, part of the lesson Jesus taught.
But the suggestion draws a rare flash of ire toward critics.
“Why weren’t they criticizing me when I had to go around in telephone booths and try to find a quarter? Why weren’t they criticizing me when I’d go to the butcher and say, ‘Do you have any dog bones?’ Because if you ask for dog bones, they don’t charge you,” Stewart says. “Where were the critics then?”
From http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/05/04/20090504charities-stewart0504.html
The prostitutes of Baulkham Hills
In Uncategorized on May 3, 2009 at 11:19 pmThe Sydney Morning Herald reports…
“The Bible belt shire of Baulkham Hills has breathed a collective sigh of relief after its local council won a battle to keep what would have been the area’s first legal brothel from opening its doors in the town centre, just down the Windsor Road from Hillsong Church.
The proposal to turn the vacant building into a seven-room knocking shop running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ended up in the Land and Environment Court after the application was lodged last year. Among the objections from concerned locals was that the brothel was “morally wrong”.
Commissioner Tim Moore ruled that the impact on local businesses meant it should not go ahead, but not before one objector demanded that Moore disqualify himself because he had declared he “did not have jurisdiction to deal with questions of morals”.
Don’t assume such services are completely uncalled for in the Hills, however: the case also revealed there are up to 50 illegal brothels operating in the area.”
From http://www.smh.com.au/national/mary-and-fred-feel-pinch-too-20090503-argz.html?page=-1
Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party ‘a cult’:Moyes
In Uncategorized on May 3, 2009 at 2:04 pmGordon Moyes blogs…
“On Saturday 18th April, at a meeting of the Christian Democratic Party State Council, my appeal against being expelled from the CDP was rejected. This was predictable based upon the numbers. A month earlier I read in the newspapers that the Leader For Life of the CDP Rev Fred Nile, had announced I had been expelled. He had never discussed this with me, before, then or since.
“I was expelled not because of any moral, sexual, financial or any other kind of unacceptable Christian behaviour but because I have some different views to the leader and believe the Management committee to be dysfunctional. Differing with our Leader is regarded as disloyalty and being critical of our Management Committee effectiveness is regarded as grounds for expulsion.”
Since 2002 I have sought to help the Party become more Christian in its attitudes to society and Australian citizens, and more democratic in the way it decides policy and direction. Those who have taken the Party in extremist and racist directions reject my approach entirely, and like many other ordinary members and paid staff in the last couple of years, I have been expelled.
My aim has always been to refresh, renew and reconnect the CDP with the Christian churches and faith. I have been deeply committed to seeing the CDP grow and thrive. I have stated publicly on many occasions that I will never accept any position of leadership within the party, even if offered, as I believe we need a new team of leaders at least twenty years younger than Fred. Fred has no need to feel threatened by my presence. I have offered to resign if Fred does also. He has refused to do so.
There were some funny things that happened prior to the start of the meeting and in the question time. I will mention these first. Fred had arranged for Elwyn Shepherd, who is older than Fred, to present the charges because that way none present would be able to question Fred on anything only Elwyn as the spokesperson for Fred.
The charges were two – I disagreed with Fred on some issues which is disloyalty and I had described the Management Committee for being dysfunctional which is a grounds for expulsion from the party. That is a ruling that has been used to get rid of many people including Ben Carpentier and John Phillips. I would affirm the accuracy of both charges.
Everybody was there at 2pm ready to start, but the Management Committee who was organising the afternoon had a few problems and asked us to wait. The people appointed to handle the security (checking everyone’s identity) had not completed their job, and the recording system (to make sure a full tape was obtained), and the people putting up the amplification equipment were either late or had forgotten.
So we waited for 40 minutes until the amplification man arrived and started to set up his equipment. The person who was to lead in fifteen minutes of prayer was apparently not prepared or else was overwhelmed by the occasion, and Elwyn was asked to read a Bible passage and pray. It was a dysfunctional start!
Elwyn surprised me with some additional charges which were added to later and also from Kiah, a volunteer who works in Fred’s office. She charged me with being a Freemason. When I announced I was not and had never been a freemason, Kiah said, “Well I don’t believe you, you are!”
I was charged with being a member of the Theosophical Society (because I broadcast for many years on 2GB Macquarie Broadcasting station. Later I was elected a Board member and later still Chairman of the station). In 1935 the Theosophical Society owned the licence. They sold the licence in about 1937 to the FAIRFAX media family, owners of the Sydney Morning Herald, and they subsequently sold shares to a number of companies in 1988 and later still to John Singleton Advertising, Wesley Mission and Harold Mitchell Advertising Agency. When I replied I did not know a single member of the Theosophical Society, I had never attended any meeting with such people or had ever been in their offices or even bookshop, I was not believed by some who felt I was there incognito!
Elwyn then charged me with divination, because when I returned from USA last year I had predicted Barrack Obama would win the Presidency! Fred was not charged with divination, because he had during my talk injected “I bet you anything you like that the next President of the United States will be John McCain”. Apparently if you are right you can be charged with divination, but if you fail to predict the winner you are not divining.
Then finally, Elwyn charged me with witchcraft. For the life of me I cannot think what that was for. Did I once quote Macbeth?
Elwyn then read quotes from my questions of CDP policies and press releases where I called for CDP to be more Christian and more democratic. He later said I had gone to the Clerk of Parliament to complain about my staff’s working areas and that when asked my staff both agreed there was nothing wrong and they had no problems. In fact it was my staff, who unknown to me went to the Clerk. But Elwyn was wrong on many facts.
Then it was my turn and please click here for the transcript of my address.
Then it was twenty minutes when some questions were asked, and some more along the lines above. Then the vote – 26 agreed I should be expelled (including the 14 Management Committee) and 8 said I should not and another 5 said the whole thing was stupid and refrained from voting in protest. I thanked those who spoke up in support, although three who spoke in favour of me were jeered. Some later resigned from the CDP. We all had a cup of tea and went home.
Beverley and I felt relieved it was over, visited our daughter and family, and went out to a dinner with a dozen or more Wesley friends. I will remain as an independent Christian Democrat in Parliament or until other approaches have been clarified.
There is a much deeper issue involved than just my personal situation. It has to do with how a religious political party can become a cult.
Alarm bells started ringing loudly when all CDP members were strongly urged to attend every Monday night, the Fred Nile School of Politics. They were to be instructed in holding the Fred Nile world view. This was not something that local churches do, and attending local church Bible studies and prayer meetings were not advocated. But CDP members needed to get involved in the Fred Nile School of Politics. This certainly smells like a cult.”
From http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2009/04/20/expelled-for-trying-to-be-more-christian/
Danny Nalliah tells US religious right TV, it’s time for the church to attack
In Uncategorized on May 3, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Phil Pringle moves forward the invention of guns by a few hundred years
In Uncategorized on May 2, 2009 at 10:13 pmPhil Pringle writes in his book ‘Dead For Nothing’…
“……In Luke 15:20 we read that when the prodigal son returned home, his father was running to meet him. Taking into consideration that the father’s reputation had been seriously maligned through his son’s behavior, his father’s action is even more striking. He had been left shorthanded on the farm. At least one third of his life’s savings had been squandered by this renegade boy. His feelings of disappointment over his son were high. His remorse over his own ability as a parent plagued him.
Given all this, it was perfectly reasonable for the prodigal to expect that the man running toward him would be anything but merciful. He was expecting his father to pull a gun out of his back pocket and begin firing. But the father kept running, and instead of producing some kind of weapon, he just held out his arms – to embrace him….”
From ‘Dead For Nothing’ by Phil Pringle, pg 16
Phil Baker’s bad leadership – incomprehensibly allowing this video to be uploaded to Revenue Church’s official Youtube page
In Uncategorized on May 2, 2009 at 2:44 pm(Click blog post title above to view video subtitles if your browser doesn’t display them fully)
“All Comments
raindreamer333 (1 week ago)
I really don’t find this funny,and I find it offensive that it was uploaded on a church page.
raindreamer333 (1 week ago)
This clip is just so wrong
merechrist (1 week ago)
Meglomaniacs need to be laughed at….the clip was in the context of a seminar on bad leadership as light relief after a major study into global dictators
Bursting0ut (5 days ago)
THIS IS FUNNY!… LIGHTEN UP”
Stay, just a little bit longer
In Uncategorized on May 2, 2009 at 11:53 amThe Garden City Christian Church website states…
“Statement from the Board of GCCC
Wednesday 29 April
Following an intensive selection process, the Garden City Christian Church Board and Elders recommended that Brian and Bobbie Houston become Senior Pastors at GCCC.
There was open and extensive consultation with Church members and, on Sunday 26th April, registered members voted overwhelmingly to accept the Board’s recommendation and are in full support of Pastor Brian and Bobbie’s vision for the future of Garden City.
This leadership decision has no effect over the way Church assets are held, the current Constitution, or the Church’s legal structure. GCCC will continue to exist and will operate as Hillsong Brisbane.
All parties have agreed that Pastor Steve and Joyce Dixon will continue to oversee the day-to-day outworking of Brian and Bobbie’s vision in the Brisbane campus; a role that they are excited to continue indefinitely, with the full support and insistence of our new Senior Pastors. Brian and Bobbie will be actively involved giving leadership and oversight to all areas of Church life, and working in partnership with the wonderful team of staff and volunteers at Garden City Christian Church.
What will now change is our capacity to spread the word of the Gospel. The GCCC and Hillsong partnership will enable the Church to touch and change many more lives. We will be able to enhance our good work in this community and continue to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, here in Brisbane, and far beyond.”
Breaking News: Pastor gets something 100% right
In Uncategorized on May 1, 2009 at 2:02 amPastor Chris McMillan blogs…
“I love leadership and church conferences of all kinds. I attend whenever I have the chance. I guess you could say I am kind of a conference junkie. I also follow what’s happening with Mega Church pastors and churches through Twitter and their blogs. While many of the conferences bless, inspire and challenge me there is a subltle danger that church leaders must be careful of: secondhand vision.
Whenever we hear a megachurch pastor at a conference talk about what God is doing in their church the tendency is to try to replicate that vision in our own local church ministry. When I first started in ministry I had so many visions people must have thought I was schizophrenic. I was purpose-driven, seeker sensitive, revival oriented, third wave, externally focused, discipleship focused and missional. I was influenced by Willow Creek, Saddleback, Hillsong, Champions Centre and a host of others. The problem is that what works in their communities and in their churches often doesn’t work in ours.
Certainly we can be influenced by style, methodology and philosophy of these great leaders and churches but we need a first-hand vision from God Himself about how to reach and impact our cities. The truth is that God didn’t call Ed Young, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, T.D. Jakes or Brian Houston to your community, He called you. The vision that God has given them is for them and their church not for you.
I think that the most beneficial and effective thing we can do for our churches and ministries is to get a vision from God about what He wants to do in our cities and pursue that vision. It may look like the vision you see in other places but remember that no two visions are exactly alike. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. So don’t focus on trying to be a Hillsong or Willow Creek in your city focus on trying to be the unique church and leader God has called you to be.
We have far too many copycats and not enough originals in the church. Break the mold and get some firsthand vision for your church and ministry and watch God blow the doors off!”
From http://pastorcmac.blogspot.com/2009/04/danger-of-secondhand-vision.html
