Someone knocked off televangelist Joel Osteen’s church.
Joel Osteen recently reported the theft of $600,000 from the safe in his church, but the theft wasn’t the only information of interest revealed. After finding out that this large chunk of money was from just one weekend of Osteen’s collected church donations, jaws dropped around the nation.
According to News Max on March 18, it didn’t take long for folks on the outside to do the math. Based on Osteen’s reported amount of money in this theft, it appears his Lakewood Church takes in $32 million a year. Calculator keys were punched around the nation taking the $600,000 for Olsteen’s [sic] weekend donation collection and timing this by the 52 weeks in a year.
Many consider this a conservative estimate of donations this church receives, as March is just an average month with no holidays for the church. The spirit of giving around the holidays has to net this church more than the average week. Then there’s Easter and other holidays.
All of it tax-free, too.
Smart guys everywhere (there are four of these just around our little town in NW Ohio) have figured out the math, set themselves up in business and bought a new Jaguar with MINISTER plates. You, too, could reap the profits. Get out of the education biz where the profits are minus and start your very own church.
By the way, most churches are not rolling in dough like this. The congregation I’m part of has an annual budget that’s about half of the weekly take at Osteen’s outfit. And we do things like house a homeless group in our building every night, which I doubt Osteen does.
Same here. His weekend income would set up the Miami Friends Meeting’s budgets for ten years.
Wouldn’t an audit of the church books be intriguing? Bet there’d be all sorts of interesting entries there.