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Tag: Joel Osteen

In THIS God We Trust: Exorbitant Honorariums Common Among Evangelical Preachers

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When preachers come to Evangelical churches to hold revivals, preach special meetings, or speak at conferences, they are given an honorarium. Churches also pay for travel, meals, and lodging. This is the way it has always been, yet some Evangelicals today are outraged over honorariums, acting like paying a preacher for speaking is somehow wrong or immoral.

Recently, a report was released that detailed the honorariums paid out to speakers by Hillsong Church — a multisite charismatic/prosperity gospel megachurch with numerous locations worldwide. Founded by Brian and Bobbie Houston, Hillsong is at the forefront of the prosperity movement — a church movement known for material excess. According to prosperity preachers, a sign of God’s blessing on your life is material wealth. Thus, is it surprising to find out that Hillsong paid out exorbitant honorariums to preachers the likes of TD Jakes and Joyce Meyer; to find out Hillsong doled out millions of dollars to the Houstons and other family members, musicians, and scores of Evangelical preachers? Of course not. As long as churches and parachurch ministries are considered tax-exempt institutions not subject to government oversight and control, preachers are gonna grift and get paid.

What I find amusing is the outrage coming from certain corners of the Evangelical world, giving the appearance that the excesses of Hillsong and the Houstons are not found where they worship and preach. I know better.

A Christian Post headline reported that “Hillsong Church operated lucrative honorarium scheme for celebrity preachers.” The Christian Post would have you believe that the excessive honorariums and gifts are like a mob scheme to defraud innocent people, when in fact such practices are normal — perhaps not to the degree Hillsong has taken things, but normal nonetheless. This is especially the case when churches and pastors reach megachurch status or when preachers travel the preaching circuit, preaching special meetings and conferences several days a week while still pastoring a church.

We live in a day when preachers can become millionaires through honorariums, book sales, salaries, housing allowances, and “benefits.” Most Evangelical church members have no idea what their pastors actually make; preachers have numerous ways to hide their actual total income. And remember, most of their total “income” is tax-exempt. It is a great gig if you can get it.

I am not suggesting that all Evangelical preachers are grifters. I am, however, suggesting that by the time a man or woman pastors a large church or has a successful parachurch ministry, they have likely figured out how to minimize reported income and tax liability. They have likely found ways to look humble while rolling in benjamins on their beds at home.

Even in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, certain preachers used the conference circuit to rake in thousands of dollars every week, all the while drawing salaries and benefits from the churches. Does anyone seriously believe that men such as Jack Hyles and Curtis Hutson were “poor?” Only their sycophants’ would dare say that these men, and others like them, were poor, humble servants of the Lord.

What Hillsong doled out to so-called men and women of God is disgusting; a denial of the teachings of Jesus and his example while ministering to the least of these. Hillsong certainly represents the worst of the worst, but the practices revealed by the whistleblower’s reports are common throughout Evangelicalism. If the books were ever opened for church members and the public at large, the grift would be over. Or maybe not. Millions and millions of Evangelicals think the grift is God’s will; a sign of God’s blessing. What they want is to get in on the scam too. Unfortunately, as with all Ponzi schemes, money rarely flows downhill. People such as the Houstons, Jakes, Meyer, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Juanita Bynum, Kenneth Copeland, Rod Parsely, Paula White Cain, John Hagee, Kenneth Hagin, Jesse DuPlantis, and David Oyedepo — all multimillionaires, tell the hungry masses to just pray, believe, and give their money to them, and they too will be blessed by God. They never see that these modern Elmer Gantrys are silently laughing at them, knowing that the only people getting blessed by “God” are preachers in on the con.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Christians Say the Darnedest Things: God is a Kanye West Fan

I know that God’s been calling me for a long time and the devil’s been distracting me for a long time.

When I was in my lowest points, God was there with me and sending me visions and inspiring me, and I remember sitting in the hospital at UCLA after having a mental breakdown and there’s documentation of me drawing a church and [wanting to] start a church in the middle of Calabasas.

….

Because every time I stand up, I feel that I’m standing up and drawing a line in the sand and saying, ‘I’m here in service to God and no weapon formed against me shall prosper.’

Jesus has won the victory. I told you about my arrogance and cockiness already. Now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for him.

— Kanye West, Church service at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, November 18, 2019

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor John Elleson Running for Congress, Has a Sketchy Past

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The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

John Elleson, an Evangelical pastor, is running in the Illinois Republican primary, hoping to win an opportunity to challenge U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky in November’s general election. According to the following Chicago Tribune story, Elleson has a sketchy past.

Kim Janssen, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, writes:

Arlington Heights pastor John Elleson, who is making a bid for Congress, risked the ire of multimillionaire televangelist Joel Osteen by including Osteen in a recent TV ad without Osteen’s permission.

But Osteen isn’t the only fellow pastor Elleson has upset over the years, court records show.

Elleson — who’s running in the Republican primary to challenge U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky in November’s general election — was ordered by a judge to complete 150 hours of community service and to return $49,000 in benefit payments he’d improperly collected after pleading “no contest” to a first degree theft charge in Hawaii in 2003, court records show.

Prosecutors alleged that Elleson and his wife, Suzanne Elleson, who pleaded “no contest” to second-degree theft, had lied about how they were feeding teenagers who attended a religious drug addiction rehabilitation service Elleson ran, so that they could illegally squeeze extra money out of taxpayers.

According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the state probe of Elleson began after a teenage client alleged the Ellesons required him and other clients to apply for benefits, then turn over their benefits cards to Suzanne Elleson or face being kicked out of the program.

That wasn’t the end of Elleson’s problems tied to the rehab program. After the church that had hired him to run the program fired him for his “contentious and noncooperative spirit” and his “assumption of dictatorial authority over an assembly,” Elleson was sued by the church for continuing to use their “Teen Challenge” trademark without permission.

A judge found that Elleson had “willfully engaged in . . . deceptive trade practices,” ordered him to stop and told him to pay the church’s legal costs.

Elleson has fought with a neighboring church in Illinois, too. According to a 2010 lawsuit, Arlington Heights police were, on more than one occasion, called to intervene in a dispute Elleson’s Lakewood Chapel had with the Bethel Pentecostal Church of God.

Elleson sold Bethel half of his church, but after his plan to build a wall dividing the worship area into two was rejected by the village, he “repeatedly interrupted” Sunday services at Bethel by cutting off the electricity to the public address system, removing microphones from the podium during services, and by playing loud music and projection screen TVs during services, according to the lawsuit.

A Cook County jury sided with Bethel, ordering Elleson’s church to pay Bethel $257,600, plus costs.

….

He described “the Hawaii thing” as “an unfortunate time in our lives,” and said he would not have been charged under current law.

“Everybody who knows me, knows I am an open book,” he wrote. “I have nothing to hide. I have shared everything you mentioned, opening with the church I pastor, and anyone who listens to my recorded sermons.”

He added, “In every one of the things you mentioned, there are no rifts with any of the people today. In life you will have conflicts, but we have tried to bring peace to every situation when possible.”

Elleson wrote that he was “not aware of” a 1998 criminal damage conviction he holds in Cook County, according to court records, which indicate he plead guilty to the misdemeanor.

“I have a clean record,” he wrote.

Elleson is the pastor of Lakewood Chapel in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

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Songs of Sacrilege: Joel Osteen by Roy Zimmerman

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This is the one hundred and fiftieth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Joel Osteen by Roy Zimmerman.

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