When Joyce Meyer was 12 or 13, her father decided to teach her to drive.
He didn't do it for her, Meyer said. He never did anything for her.
He did it because he wanted to get her out of the house and away from her mother. He wanted to use her.
Sometimes, they would drive to a cemetery and park the car. He liked cemeteries, she said. They were remote and private.
"Things were a little better in the wintertime," when she was in school, she said, because her father worked nights and they were rarely home together.
"But I hated summers. He would go out and get drunk and take me with him. He'd feed me alcohol ... get me dizzy. And he'd do different things in the back of the car ..."
Meyer, 60 and one of America's wealthiest and most powerful TV preachers, has repeated these stories often in recent years — in her books and at her conferences. They are stories of a bullied and emotionally starved young woman victimized by an abusive father, a weak mother and a manipulative first husband.
They are stories, she said, that have had lasting, profound effects on her life and on a ministry that reaches around the globe.
"I'm not telling you this to get you to feel sorry for me," she told followers in a crowded church in Tampa, Fla., in September. "I'm telling it to you to show you that people have awful things happen to them."
Still, she said, "I know that my life is more powerful because of what happened to me than it ever would have been if it wouldn't have happened."
Meyer and the ministry's attorney, Tom Winters, have asked that reporters not interview Meyer's parents, threatening legal action against the Post-Dispatch. Meyer said any stress could jeopardize her parents' fragile health. The parents, both in their 80s and living in south St. Louis County, did not respond to a letter sent by the newspaper to their home.

Nightmares of childhood

Meyer was born Pauline Joyce Hutchison on June 4, 1943.
In her recent book, "Help Me — I'm Married," Meyer recounts how her father went into the armed forces the day after she was born.
When he was discharged three years later, he returned "bitter, angry and addicted to alcohol." Almost from her first conscious memory, she said, he began to abuse her sexually.
In her 1990 audiotape series "Trophies of God's Grace," Meyer says the abuse began as molestation and worsened as she reached adolescence.
A factory worker and machinist with roots deep in the "back hills" of Kentucky, Meyer's father saw nothing wrong with what he did, she said. In his family, he told her, "everybody did it, and that's just the way it was."
He was persistent and demanding, she said. He looked for opportunities whenever and wherever he could find them.
"He might tell me, 'I'm going down to the basement. Meet me in five minutes,'" she said. "'I'm going out to the garage. Meet me out there in ten minutes.'"
As early as age 9, she said, she told her mother what her father was doing to her. When her mother confronted him, Meyer said, he denied everything. Her mother chose to believe him.
Meyer wrote in her book "Beauty for Ashes" that one day when she was 14, her mother returned home early from a shopping trip and discovered the two of them together.
Her mother "looked, walked out and came back two hours later, acting as if she had never been there," Meyer said.
Years later, her mother told her that she knew about the abuse but could not bring herself to face it, she said.
Meyer said that her father often beat her mother but that he rarely struck Meyer. He didn't have to, she said. The threats and the intimidation were enough.

Feeling the power of God

When Meyer was 9, her mother became pregnant with Meyer's brother.
"I remember so desperately wanting the new baby to be a girl," she wrote in "Beauty for Ashes." "I thought that maybe if there was another female child in the family, I might be left alone, at least part of the time."
That year, Meyer said, she felt the true power of God for the first time.
One night, while visiting relatives out of town, she decided to sneak away to a local church service. She says she was "born again" while there.
"I felt clean, as though I had received an inner bath," she wrote years later.
The next day, she said, she cheated in a game of hide-and-seek, which made her feel that she had betrayed God. By the time she returned to her own home, she said, the peace she had felt had vanished.
"I thought that I had lost Jesus," she said.
As a girl, Meyer recalls, she had a fascination for the spiritual: stories of extrasensory perception, science fiction and horror movies.
She said she was drawn to hypnosis and astrology, "any kind of a carnival."
"I would go by the fortune teller's booth or the person who was reading the tarot cards ... or I would always want to have somebody look into the crystal ball for me," she said.
Meyer said she routinely stole "about anything I could get my hands on" as a child, including "stuff I didn't even need." Once, she said, she stole a pair of eyeglasses from a friend's home.
"She was a woman I loved," Meyer said. "I stole the glasses and took them outside and hid them under a rock."
Even years later, as an adult, she continued to steal, often straight from the cash registers where she worked, she said. She believes now that it was her way to exert some control over a life in which she felt largely powerless.
At 13, she began working in St. Louis dime stores and restaurants so she wouldn't have to depend on anyone else for what she wanted.

A disastrous first marriage

Meyer attended O'Fallon Technical High School, where, she said, "people constantly came to me for counseling."
"The Flame and Steel," O'Fallon's yearbook, pictures her with the June clerical department graduating class and says she was trained in bookkeeping. The yearbook lists her activities as girl's softball, school representative and Honorama, a school honorary for students who excel in scholarship, school service and attendance.
An O'Fallon classmate remembers Meyer as the "sharp tongued" leader of a small but tight "in crowd" of girls who seemed unusually concerned with fashion, hair and makeup.
While he said he is surprised that Meyer became a minister, he is not surprised that she became so successful.
"Getting out in front and leading the parade, that's where she always wanted to be," said the classmate, who asked not to be identified.
Almost immediately after graduation in 1961, shortly after her 18th birthday, Meyer packed her belongings into her black 1949 Chevrolet and moved out of the family's red brick, two-story flat in the 3900 block of Wyoming Street.
"As far as I was concerned, I was going to run my own life from that point on," she said.
That year, she married "the first young man who showed an interest in me." He was a fifth-grade dropout and part-time car salesman.
From the beginning, the marriage was a disaster. He worked only sporadically; they moved often. She said she routinely returned home from work to find him gone. He might not return for days, weeks or even months.
She said he sold her typewriter and her class ring and "one night I caught him trying to get my wedding ring off me in the middle of the night." She said she was working as a bookkeeper in charge of her company's payroll department when her husband persuaded her to steal money by writing phony payroll checks.
"We ran around town and cashed them and then we took off for California," she said. Years later, she said, she returned the stolen money.
At 21, Meyer suffered a miscarriage. The next year, she became pregnant again. During a sweltering St. Louis summer, she came "dangerously close" to losing her mind, she said. Severely depressed over her marriage and the couple's financial situation, she said, she stopped eating and sleeping and started taking over-the-counter sleeping pills.
Within months of her son's birth, Meyer decided she could no longer tolerate her husband's infidelities and trouble with the law. She took her son, anything else she could carry and walked out.
She went to a corner phone booth, telephoned her father and asked whether she could come home. She said he was delighted.
Depressed and confused, Meyer said, she began turning to local bars for "entertainment" and started sleeping with men she barely knew.
Her days, she said, had become a living hell.
"Dear God," she said she prayed, "please let me be happy ... someday."

A gradual path to the ministry

In late 1966, just months after divorcing her husband, Meyer met David Benjamin Meyer as she washed her mother's car outside her parent's home. After five dates, they married in St. Louis on Jan. 7, 1967, and he quickly adopted her infant son.
He was, she said, a good and kind man, a hard worker and completely devoted to her. But happiness continued to elude her.
In her book "Knowing God Intimately," published this year, Meyer says she was driving to work one morning in February 1976 when, out of frustration and desperation, she began crying out to God.
She said she heard God call her name. He asked her to be patient, she said.
"From that moment," she said, "I knew with certainty that God was going to do something."
That evening, as she drove home from a beauty shop appointment, God filled her "full of liquid love," she said. That night, at a local bowling alley, she felt almost drunk with the spirit of God.
Soon after, while working as an office manager at Isis foods, she began a regular 6 a.m. Bible class at Miss Hulling's cafeteria at Eighth and Olive streets.
Initially active in Our Savior Lutheran Church, Meyer and her husband left there in the early 1980s. They joined Life Christian Church, then a small, struggling, 30-member interdenominational storefront church at Tesson Ferry and Green Park roads in South County.
Since then, Life Christian has grown to about 3,000 members, at least in part because of Meyer's popularity. The church is now housed in a sprawling complex off Gravois Road in Fenton.
Rick Shelton, the pastor, says he liked the Meyer family from their first visit.
Shelton serves on the board of Joyce Meyer Ministries and sometimes travels with the family on the ministry's private plane to their three-day rallies.

"How to fight the devil"
Soon after the family joined the church, Shelton said, Meyer began holding Bible study classes for women in her home.
Before long, the meetings were moved to the little church and then continued at Life Christian's new home in a converted IGA grocery in South County. Eventually, he said, 500 women were attending the Thursday morning Bible classes.
"Ladies were coming from all over the metropolitan area," he recalls.
By 1983, Meyer was standing in for Shelton in the Life Christian pulpit. He asked her to appear with him on a daily 15-minute radio program on the old WCBW Christian station. Soon, she had a 15-minute program of her own. Before long, she had purchased time on six other radio stations, from Chicago to Kansas City.
It was while at Life Christian that Meyer began one of the more unusual chapters of her early ministry.
In an audiotape series called "How to Fight the Devil and Win," Meyer recalled how she read a book on freeing people from demons. She saw the book as a revelation from God and began what she called a "deliverance ministry," much of it out of the family's home on Codorniz Lane in Fenton.
"I had every person, I think, anywhere within 10 miles who had a demon come knocking at my door wanting deliverance," she said. "And I was staying up half the night, almost every night, Dave and I were, casting out devils."
She said she got on people's backs and rode them "all over the house, with these demons of anger and fear and violence ... you know our kids are back there sleeping and we're in the living room screaming at demons half the night.
"I mean one woman came to my house, and me and my pastor (Shelton) literally rode her piggyback all over my house.
"She threw up in every towel I had. She spit all over us. Rick had to get his tie off. He had to get his jewelry off. Sweat was pouring off of both of us."
In a recent interview, Meyer said she understands how some people might consider such activity "goofy." She said she is no longer involved in such work.

Founding Life in the Word

Meyer stayed at Life Christian for five years. In her book "A Leader in the Making," published two years ago, Meyer said God told her when it was time to leave.
"The Lord spoke to me and said, 'Take your ministry and go north, south, east and west.' So I did," she said.
Shelton said he expected great things of Meyer but he had no inkling things would turn out as they have.
"If I were to say I expected anything even remotely close to this, even a small fraction of this, I would be disingenuous," Shelton said. "I am stunned by what has happened."
In August 1985, Meyer and her husband, David, filed papers with the Missouri secretary of state's office establishing Life in the Word as a nonprofit corporation. By the following May, Life in the Word had received status as a 501 (c) (3) federally tax-exempt corporation.
The early years of the ministry were anything but easy, Meyer has said. Scraping for money, she said, she and her husband usually drove to conferences, often sleeping in their car on "a McDonald's parking lot" because they couldn't pay for a motel room.
"We would believe in God literally for our socks and underwear," she said.

Going for it all on TV

Dave Meyer said in an interview in 1999 with the Post-Dispatch that he was in the bathroom in 1993 when God "opened his heart to me" and changed the direction of the ministry.
"I could feel the hurts of the world," he said. "I decided that Joyce's message should go international on television.
With about two dozen employees, the ministry put together a TV program using video from Meyer's live conferences. Initially, it was aired on WGN in Chicago and Black Entertainment Network. Within five years, Meyer and her message were on about 600 radio and TV stations, seven cable networks and seven satellite networks.
In November 1998, Meyer made the big time with a cover story in Charisma & Christian Life magazine, one of the nation's leading publications for followers of the charismatic movement. On its cover, the magazine called Meyer "America's most popular woman minister."
A year after the article, the ministry moved from its office building in Fenton into a $20 million headquarters nearby.

Trying to heal the past

Despite the enormous success of her ministry and a series of personal victories — Meyer won a battle with breast cancer in the early 1990s and says she repaired difficult relationships with her four children — she has said that possibly her biggest challenge was confronting her own past.
Twice, she said, she went to her father to tell him she had forgiven him for what he had done to her. Twice, she said, he refused to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong.
Still, she said, God continued to push her to heal the relationship.
In November 2000, Meyer and her husband bought a $130,000 house in St. Louis County for her parents and moved them there from the small town in southern Missouri where they had been living.
In the newest version of her book "Beauty for Ashes," Meyer writes that three years after her parents' return to St. Louis, she and her husband visited them on Thanksgiving.
As they walked through the door, she said, her father began to cry.
"I just need to tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you," she said he told them.
"It's all right, Daddy," Meyer told him. "I forgive you."
Ten days later, Meyer said, she baptized her father in a simple ceremony at the St. Louis Dream Center on the city's North Side.

Federal law bars religious groups and charities from spending excessively on insiders — those who form and control the organization.
One lawyer calls it a "drop-dead prohibition."
Some tax experts say Joyce Meyer may be violating that law.
Wall Watchers, a North Carolina-based nonprofit group formed to monitor the finances of large Christian organizations, wants the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and some other TV preachers on exactly that point. Wall Watchers, formed in 1998, provides financial information of 500 Christian groups on the Internet. It's stated purpose is to educate donors about where their money is being spent.
Rusty Leonard, founder of Wall Watchers, said that if investigators determined that the TV preachers are compensating themselves at "extraordinarily high levels," the IRS should be prepared to revoke their tax-exempt church status.
Meyer and her lawyer, Tom Winters, say they aren't worried.
"Obviously, this is a big ministry, and the IRS can look at it at any time," Winters said. "But we're confident there are no problems. This ministry is so darn compliant with the IRS. This thing's clean."
Wall Watchers tax expert Rod Pitzer says federal law requires that any compensation — salary and perks, including housing for ministers — must be reasonable. "Reasonable" means that the benefits to Meyer and her family roughly equal what other ministers in the St. Louis area get from their congregations, Pitzer said.
For example, Pitzer said, Meyer's use of church money for five homes in South County — for Meyer and her husband, and for each of their four children — seems "abusive."
But Meyer says there's nothing wrong with the ministry paying about $4 million to purchase, renovate and maintain the five homes. As she sees it, the ministry-owned homes are simply parsonages for her church.
"Ministers either have a parsonage that their ministry pays for — like the Pope lives in the Vatican, which is very nice — or they can take a housing allowance and own their own house," Meyer said.
Winters said that under tax laws, Meyer could take tax-free housing allowances and then deduct the family housing expenses from their income taxes. The homes would belong to the Meyers and their children and not the ministry, he said.
Winters called the parsonage plan "a more conservative approach."
"To criticize them for doing it this way, it's just not right," he said.

Church audits are "sensitive"

Robert R. Thompson, a lawyer in Michigan who participated in some of the earliest investigations of TV ministers, said the law is clear: Private inurement — excessive benefits to anyone who founds or controls a ministry — is "a drop-dead prohibition."
"If even an ounce of private benefit is found," the IRS can act, he said.
But starting an IRS investigation is not easy. Religious groups get special treatment under the law because of the freedom-of-religion guarantee in the Constitution's First Amendment, and resulting court rulings and laws.
"We have to have serious allegations," said Bruce Philipson of St. Paul, Minn., the IRS regional group manager of tax-exempt organizations for this region. "Church audits are always going to be sensitive."
Before launching an investigation, the IRS must narrow the scope to be as specific as possible. It must get the approval of the agency's national director of exempt organizations. And it must give the ministry up to 90 days' notice before looking at any of its records.
Other measures hamper the IRS' reach. First, federal law allows religious groups to enjoy tax-free status without ever proving that they have a charitable purpose, as other nonprofits must.
Further, religious groups never have to report their finances publicly, as other nonprofits must.
Despite these safeguards for religious groups, Philipson said, the IRS usually can get approval to start an investigation when one is merited.

Jefferson County, Meyer joust over tax exemption

Atop a hill in Jefferson County sits the $20 million headquarters of Joyce Meyer Ministries. The 52-acre complex is the focal point of county Assessor Randy Holman's toughest tax battle.
For two years, Holman has wanted Meyer's complex and its $5.7 million in contents on the county's tax rolls. If Holman wins, Meyer will have to pay $600,000 in annual real estate and personal property taxes that would help pay for schools and for fire and police protection.
But Meyer is standing firm.
"You're not going to, out of the kindness of your heart, pay over a half million dollars in taxes that you don't owe," she said in an interview. "If we're not tax-exempt, I don't know who would be."
Missouri law mandates that religious institutions asking for tax exemptions on real estate must use the property solely for religious purposes — "exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges, or for purposes purely charitable and not held for private or corporate profit," according to Missouri state law.
Holman argues that Meyer's property does not comply with the law because it is a business. He says it consists of a 158,139-square-foot office building, a 35,020-square-foot distribution center and a 5,000-square-foot automotive maintenance center on Gravois Road in Fenton.
In 2001, as work at the complex was almost finished, Holman's commercial supervisor strolled inside the buildings and concluded that "the entire operation has the look and feel of a business — the business of selling religion and, specifically, Joyce Meyer religion."
At the headquarters, Meyer and her staff of 510 produce Meyer's television program, audiotapes and videotapes, take in money from contributions and the sale of Meyer's products, answer phone calls from viewers responding to Meyer's television show and ship out orders.
An armed guard stands outside in a shed at the edge of the headquarters, checking the identification of all employees. He stops members of the public from entering, unless they want to go into a 300-square-foot bookstore to buy Meyer's books and tapes. Only Meyer's staff members can attend services in the chapel in the main building.
Meyer argues that the complex is the site from which her television program is sent around the world. Her conclusion: Because her church is her television program, the property houses her church.
Meyer and Tom Winters, her lawyer from Tulsa, Okla., declined to discuss the matter further because Meyer's appeal of the assessment is before the State Tax Commission.
Holman said that during the decade Meyer ran her ministry out of an office park at 300 Biltmore, just a block from her current headquarters, Holman taxed Meyer as a business — and Meyer paid her taxes, which were $109,000 for the last year there.
And when he sent Meyer the first tax assessment in 2001 on the new headquarters, Holman said, Meyer said nothing. Then, in December 2001, as the tax bill came due, Meyer sued Holman.
Meyer dropped the suit in April, after county lawyers defending Holman demanded a second inspection of the headquarters and financial records for the ministry's operation.
In the meantime, Meyer went through the normal channels last year and appealed to the county's tax appeals panel, the Board of Equalization. The board sided with Meyer, saying she is tax-exempt as a church, and removed Meyer's property from the tax rolls.
The move sparked angry cries from citizens and taxing bodies alike. Schools and fire departments had to trim their budgets and boost their tax levies.
Last summer — months after Holman called the building a business park, Meyer erected a five-story, blue-lighted cross at the headquarters to help designate it as a religious place.
Holman put Meyer's property back on the tax roll this year. But when Meyer appealed this time, the county's tax board chose to keep her on the tax rolls. So, Meyer took the matter to the State Tax Commission, which has the final say.
To offset outcries this time around, Meyer responded to the local police department's plea for help by buying the department a new van. And she gave the cash-strapped Northwest R-1 School District $110,000 for this school year. She foots the bill for the county sheriff's Christmas party.
Meyer says she's confident that the commission's hearing officer will see it her way.
"There are two other ministries right here in the same district that have had to fight at the state level and won, and so there's already a precedent set," Meyer said. "I don't know how we could possibly lose."

Money pitch is a hit with followers

The spray on Joyce Meyer's hair and the sequins on her tailor-made pink suit sparkled in the bright stage lights. She stood before 8,000 people in the arena where the Buffalo Sabres play hockey.
Meyer's rough, homespun south St. Louis drawl thundered out to her audience, which suddenly had become silent and still.
To give is godly, she said. Never fear giving too much in the name of God, even if it means sacrificing dinners out during the three-day conference. Fear, she said, is the work of the devil.
She lectured for nearly an hour before ending with the same plea she'd been delivering for a decade: "Make your checks payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries/Life in the Word. And million is spelled M-I-L-L-I-O-N."
Many in the crowd flipped open their wallets or pulled out their checkbooks.
No one came forth with a million dollars that day in June. But in September, the ministry says, an East Coast woman gave stock worth that amount. Meyer then asked for more.
"I didn't have that thing for five minutes and I said, 'OK, God. Next I'll take $5 million,'" Meyer later told an audience in Tampa.
It is this kind of hard-edged audacity that has made Meyer one of the biggest names in big-name TV evangelism and has endeared the Fenton grandmother to millions of faithful supporters worldwide. At 60, she shows no signs of slowing down as she stretches herself further.
In St. Louis last month, Meyer asked for a $7 million check.
"That would really bless me," she said.
Meyer's 20 or so conferences each year, where followers usually have their only opportunity to see and hear her live, are part old-fashioned tent revival, part motivational rally and part unrelenting sales pitch.
Meyer attracts her fans to her gatherings with promises of a free conference. The only conference with an entrance fee is her annual St. Louis women's conference, which charges $50 per person.
Yet, from the moment followers enter one of her free conferences, Meyer pushes for their money.
"God does not need our money. The giving thing is not for Him, it's for us," Meyer told a Detroit audience in September. "I should not have to work to try to support myself."
The Post-Dispatch attended four of Meyer's conferences: Buffalo in June, Atlanta in August, Detroit in September and St. Louis in October.
The newspaper found virtually identical elements at each conference — heavy doses of modern religious music, an unwavering religious faith of her audiences and a strong, focused effort to bring in money.
Joyce Meyer Ministries is, without question, a well-oiled moneymaking machine.
Selling as the doors open
Faithful followers line up outside the arena hours before a Meyer conference begins. The doors open exactly two hours early. Some fans arrive in dresses and matching handbags. Others wear jeans and T-shirts. Still others wear miniskirts or shorts. Sheri Davis, 39, a former St. Louisan living in Atlanta, wore an "I Love Jesus" motorcycle jacket.
White women over 30 are Meyer's biggest audience. But all ages and races are represented. The relatively few men in the crowds seem to accompany wives or girlfriends. Children play in the aisles.
After bags and purses are checked by security, Meyer's volunteers hand the followers a 20-page catalog listing Meyer's products for sale.
Just a few steps inside the arena, followers find 100-foot-long tables with Meyer's items for sale. People crowd them, jockeying for places to look at Meyer's products.
Videotapes, audiotapes, books, CDs, calendars and coffee mugs are stacked up to 10 high. Prices range from $3 for palm-size books of 60 pages to $110 for videotape and audiotape packages. The average cost of a videotape is $22.
Meyer's ministry depends on more than 100 volunteers from local ministries to help work her conferences.
Her workers flown in from St. Louis handle the sales. Followers, their arms overflowing with books and tapes, line up in roped-off lanes similar to those at airport ticket counters. Ministry workers behind the counters keep 10 credit card machines whirring.
Nearly everyone in attendance carries a plastic Life in the Word bag containing the products they bought.
Inside the arena, followers troll for seats as close as possible to Meyer. They seem undaunted by having to sit behind two cameramen, perched 10 feet above the center of the crowd.
Another camera, mounted on a mobile arm like those used on TV programs such as David Letterman's, is positioned beside the stage to catch Meyer's every move and her audience's reactions.
The stage is set to look like the gates of heaven, with towering columns and flowing drapery. An image of a blue sky with puffy clouds is projected behind the stage.
On each side of the stage is a large video display. Each flashes messages to the audience:
"Buy $500 worth of product and get $100 free."
"The music now playing is from our 'Free at Last' CD and is available at the product table."
"The tapes of these sessions can be ordered at the product table."
Minutes before the session is scheduled to start, Meyer's daughter Laura Holtzmann steps onstage. She urges the audience members to buy Meyer's books and tapes and offers them special deals. She tells them not to be discouraged by long lines at the product tables. The lines move fast, she says, because 15 Life in the Word employees are working them.
Holtzmann tells them that their money will go to good causes — 50 charities.
In June in Buffalo, a video outlined one of Meyer's charities: Her ministry says it has sent care packages with Meyer's books and shampoo to 789,898 prisoners in 946 prisons in more than 40 states. Unnamed men identified as prisoners tell how they love Meyer. The tape ends, but no one applauds. The crowd wants to see Joyce.
The videos often show followers giving testimonials on how great things happened to them after they gave to Meyer. In Buffalo, Meyer called a woman to the stage to talk about how her husband gave his last dollar after seeing Meyer at a conference. Her husband's name: Dan Goodson, Meyer's general manager.
Enter: Joyce Meyer
At each conference, Charlie and Jill LeBlanc come onstage and sing modern gospel songs, preparing the audience for Meyer. The video screens flash lyrics so the audience can sing along. After each stanza, the screens tell the audience members how they can buy CDs containing the songs.
Meyer walks onto the stage, singing along. The audience goes wild. They hang on every word. When she tells them to do something — stand, say amen, answer her — the audience quickly responds.
Hundreds yell: "We love you, Joyce," "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord."
Meyer keeps the audience standing. She tells them that through her, God will cure their headaches, depression, stomach problems, drug addiction and homosexuality.
In Buffalo, Meyer instructed the women in the audience to place their hands on their stomachs while she spoke. Most did. She told them she had healed all of their female problems. She announced that she once did this and a woman with cancer went to the doctor and found it had gone away.
Meyer then told the audience, which had been standing for an hour, that she was going to heal their backaches. She let them sit down.
"I know someone is already feeling better," she quipped.
Meyer then delivered her sermon for giving. She told them that some Christians are worried that if they give it all, they will end up with nothing. If they give, she said, they can expect much more in return.
"Sowing and reaping is a law," Meyer told the Buffalo audience. "If you sow, you will reap. I believe stingy people are very unhappy people. I want you to give your best offering. I believe one person could write one check to cover all of the expenses of this one conference."
A middle-aged man wearing worn jeans pulled a wad of $20 bills from his pocket and placed them in an offering envelope. An elderly woman in a wheelchair wrote out a check for $100.
As hundreds of volunteers passed around white paper tubs resembling movie theater popcorn buckets, Meyer lectured on her partnership program. She said regular partners who allow her to deduct a monthly donation directly from their bank accounts get a tape of the month, the ministry's monthly magazine and are prayed for "as if in the room."
She said she has 120,000 partners that have monthly donations taken out of their bank accounts. She's hoping to double that number by next year.
"Don't procrastinate, because procrastination is the tool of the devil," she warned the Buffalo audience.
After the offering, the bucket-bearing volunteers were ushered to a remote part of the arena. There, ministry workers counted the money, supervised by Dave Meyer, the ministry's business administrator and Meyer's husband.
A practical message
While money pleas dominate most of her conferences, Meyer also gives a practical lesson. It's the main thing the followers come to see. Each lesson is edited for use on her TV show and videotapes that she sells.
On June 26 in Buffalo, Meyer's message was about "thinking big." She told the crowd that everyone there needed to become a "fresh piece of clay, starting over."
"Stretch out your borders. Enlarge your tent," Meyer urged. "You need to stop telling God what you've done wrong all the time. You need to move on."
Meyer told them they should never let their disabilities or disadvantages stop them. Like her — an abused girl, and a housewife from Fenton when God called her to preach — He has a plan for them, too.
"I don't care what anyone says about me," she said. "Just hide the wash. Mmmm, mmm! I feel like the Holy Ghost."
The hall erupted in shouts of "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord."
"Don't let mutterers stop you in life," Meyer told them, shaking her fist in the air. "People are jealous, critical. They're resentful. Most people want what you get but they don't want to do what you did to get it."
She told a biblical tale about Zacchaeus, a short man who wanted to see Jesus so badly that he climbed a tree. Jesus liked his ingenuity so much, he went to the man's house to eat dinner with him.
"When an opportunity comes before me, I go for it," Meyer said. "Thinking about it kills it. Narrow-minded people almost always miss their miracle. They look for Him to come in the front door, and He comes in the window."
Dress well, live well
Outside the Philips Arena in Atlanta in August, about a dozen people had gathered nearly three hours before Meyer's conference was set to begin.
One was Ronald Granville, 45, of Sacramento, Calif., a seminary student. He wore a black shirt with white and gold letters that said, "God has been so good to me."
Granville said he's heard the criticism of evangelists like Meyer: They live the high life while many of those who support them live at or near poverty.
"That's between them and God," Granville said. "If they're getting the word of God out, why should they ride around in a 1980 Pinto? Is Joyce Meyer supposed to come out here in Salvation Army clothes or patched-up jeans?"
Meyer wears nothing but the best. Her clothes are tailor-made. She has a private hairdresser. Her nails are perfect. She wears glasslike slippers and dangly earrings and sparkly necklaces.
Her workers back in St. Louis pack the things she needs at the conference. Perrier water is a must.
It takes four 18-wheelers to carry her products and stage setup from St. Louis to each conference.
On the road, Meyer and her husband live in exclusive hotels.
In Detroit, they stayed in a suite in the Townsend in Birmingham, Mich., the area's richest suburb. The Townsend houses movie and rock stars when they appear locally. Privacy protection is the hotel's hallmark, and it prides itself on its "discreet" handling of each guest. Suites cost about $1,500 a night.
Meyer's magnetism
There is something magnetic about Meyer's appeal to women. Much of this appeal is Meyer's willingness to share nearly every aspect of her life, including sexual abuse by her father, her quick temper with her four children, how she hates it when her husband overdirects her — telling her how to walk or to close the blinds while undressing in front of hotel windows.
In St. Louis last month, Meyer told her audience about an exploded hemorrhoid that had sent her to the hospital during her Thursday evening session.
All of Meyer's past flaws are an open book to her fans: She chain-smoked. She drank. She slept with men she had just met. She stole things she didn't need.
And those are the things that endear Meyer to her followers. Her advice hits home: Forgive those who hurt you. Copy others' successes. Believing will heal you and make you wealthy.
At times, Meyer's speeches ramble as if she is speaking thoughts at the very same time they occur to her.
"I can stand up and talk all day and not even know what is coming out of my mouth next," she told the Buffalo audience in June. "That's my gift."
In Atlanta in August, Meyer's followers wanted to see her perform one of her classic acts. Meyer hinted she might do her so-called robot routine. Hundreds of women began chanting: "Robot, robot, robot. . .!"
Meyer finally went into a stiff-armed, animated walk, her representation of a self-indulgent, windup robot that repeats the phrase: "What about me? ... What about me? ... What about me?"
Meyer demands order at her conferences. In St. Louis, Meyer commanded that nobody leave the hall during her sessions. She said she has to talk for two hours without going to the bathroom, so if she can wait, they can wait.
In Buffalo, when her microphone was not positioned the way she liked, she stopped the conference and ordered an employee to the stage to fix it.
Meyer wanted to teach them to talk in tongues, a practice that she says caused her, in part, to leave her Lutheran church in St. Louis. She ordered the crowd to stand and told them she was filling them with the Holy Spirit.
"Soak in the Holy Ghost," she demanded. She began muttering inaudible words. Many followed her lead.
"I believe His presence is here," her voice thundered.
A middle-aged woman wearing a white bow in her hair and a hunter-green dress began howling, "Oh, Jesus ... Oh, Jesus." She collapsed on the steps inside of the arena. Meyer's workers quickly whisked her away.
"Thank you, God, for reaching the people tonight," Meyer told them. "We're not going to leave the way we came."
Meyer's money pleas
Sometimes soft, sometimes tough, Meyer's plea for money, like most things she does, is matter-of-fact and without apology.
"Some of you need to sow a special seed this weekend," Meyer told her Detroit audience. "Don't be a $10 man all your life. Don't even be a $100 man all your life. . . . You have to give sometimes until it hurts. It needs to cost you something."
Sometimes, she's more demanding.
"I don't have to stand here and beg," she told the crowd in Buffalo. "What God wants you to do here tonight is to pay for somebody else to watch my show."
Meyer told her Detroit audience about those who are unhappy with the way she pleads for money.
"People say, 'I don't want to hear about the money, the money, the money, the money. I came to hear Joyce. I didn't come to hear about the money,'" Meyer said. "Giving will change your life. When God gives you an increase, you give more."
Meyer often stands on stage hawking her products. In Atlanta, she held an enormous basket, overflowing with 50 of her books — "free" for a $1,000 offering.
She showed off new tape offerings packaged like suitcases. At one point, Meyer struggled to carry four of the massive tape cases, which sell for $110 apiece, across the arena stage.
"I need to see you leaving my meetings just like this," she said.
She pointed out that her audiotapes are cheaper than the $100 an hour that some professional counselors charge.
She told her flock in Buffalo that they have to stop being jealous of people like her who have nice things.
"Don't be jealous of what somebody's got," she said. "It's not about somebody getting your money. You need to give."

After 9 years of giving, man has no Chrysler, no wife, no wealth

Bob Schneller gave to Joyce Meyer until it hurt. Nine years later, he says, it still aches.
He's out of money, out of a marriage and out of faith with televangelists.
Schneller, 59, lives alone in a 600-square-foot, early-model mobile home in House Springs. He's surrounded by videotapes of televangelists. He says he studies the tapes to learn how he was taken in by Meyer.
Not so long ago, Schneller spent his days hanging on Meyer's every word. The money he gave her — $4,400 a year — surpassed his annual mortgage payment. He and his wife lived on $30,000 a year.
"She teaches you that if you give a seed offering, it will come back tenfold or a hundredfold," Schneller said. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but you get caught up in it. You believe it as truth."
Schneller was reared as a Roman Catholic but said he was reborn as a Protestant Christian when he was 40.
A year later, in 1985, the Schnellers started attending Life Christian Center, near their home in Fenton. At the center, they learned what Schneller calls the prosperity message: If you give, you will get more in return. And there they met Joyce Meyer, then an up-and-coming preacher.
"Her teachings were practical," Schneller said. "I'd never heard anyone preach that way before."
He and his wife, Mary Jo, followed Meyer to her church meetings in a Ramada Inn in South County, one of several places she preached.
Soon, the Schnellers were working for Meyer. Bob Schneller became Meyer's exterminator. Mary Jo worked as Meyer's hairdresser.
Most of what Meyer taught, Schneller said, is what he calls the "name-it-and-claim-it" theology: If you have enough faith, you can name what you want.
"So I laid across the hood of a brand new 1985 Chrysler Fifth Avenue," Schneller said. "I never did get it. She would say that I didn't have enough faith, or that there was sin in my life blocking the blessing. It always goes back to you."
The Schnellers began giving more to Meyer: $350 a month. They went to Meyer's home Bible sessions.
By the early 1990s, Meyer's popularity started to climb.
But Schneller was less fortunate. His back went out, and he lacked money to pay his bills. He went to Meyer and told her what was happening. She laid her hands on him, he said, and told him that he would be healed, that his problems would soon go away.
"One day, I went out to my mailbox, and there inside were six $100 bills wrapped up," Schneller said. "Right after that, she had me give testimony, and she used it to prove that you can be blessed."
Despite the $600, nothing changed, he said. He went on workers' compensation and underwent neck surgery. Meyer called him to wish him well, he said. She began giving seed money to a ministry that Schneller and his wife had started, Sword of Spirit of Truth.
Then, in the spring of 1994, a new technique was percolating among charismatics like Meyer. It was called "holy laughter," a ritual in which the congregation sings songs repetitively. The preacher steps onstage and begins laughing. Immediately, the room breaks into laughter. People slide out of their chairs and onto the floor, "drunk on the Holy Spirit."
But Schneller felt uncomfortable with it.
The Schnellers went to a church in Waterloo. There, Schneller spoke out against holy laughter. A few days later, Schneller said, his wife was called into Meyer's office.
Meyer told her, Schneller said, that because of their position on holy laughter, "I can no longer support you."
They parted ways.
Since then, Schneller's marriage has fallen apart. He works as a security guard and attends a "regular church, where the Bible is taught verse by verse."
Referring to Meyer's ministry, he says: "My advice to other people thinking about getting involved and giving: Don't give it — you're being ripped off."

Women offer testimonials on how Meyer's preaching has helped them

Four years ago Sandy Dunn had a $125-a-day heroin habit, a room in the St. Louis County Jail and an "I don't give a damn" attitude about her health, her family and her future.
"I weighed 90 pounds," Dunn said, referring to the walking nightmare that was her life. "I never ate, I never slept, I never did anything except get high.
"I was torn up."
Dunn said she saw Joyce Meyer's "Life in the Word" program on the jailhouse televisions but didn't give it much thought until a group of volunteers from the ministry arrived to pass out pamphlets and books to the prisoners.
"Her ministers gave me 'Battlefield of the Mind,'" Dunn said, referring to Meyer's self-help guide on using faith to break through depression and anger. "It changed my life."
In August, Dunn, 36, sat in a folding chair 10 rows from the stage inside the Philips Arena in Atlanta, one of 8,000 people who had come to hear Meyer's series of "tell-it-like-it-is" sermons.
Once she left jail in 1999, Dunn said, she never used drugs again, thanks in large part to Meyer and her message. She works now as an emergency veterinary technician in the Atlanta area, and says she has a good home and a new relationship with her family. She is a member of a ministry similar in philosophy and outreach to Meyer's ministry — Creflo Dollar's World Changers Church International in nearby College Park, Ga. Her money, she says, goes to her church now instead of into her arm.
"I have everything," she said. "Life is good, very good."
Testimonials to Meyer and her ministry are everywhere in the pages of Meyer's corporate magazine, on her Web site, in the letters and phone calls that pour into her offices around the world, and inside the convention halls and the arenas where she speaks.
At Meyer's conference in Atlanta, every woman seemed to have a story:
n Valerie Fannin, 50, of Durham, N.C., says she quit a smoking habit "cold turkey" through the encouragement she found in Meyer's ministry.
n Kelley Slotty, 34, of Dallas, Ga., said that before she found Meyer and God, "I weighed 206 pounds, smoked and had a bad attitude." The cigarettes and the extra weight are gone, she says. She also credits Meyer, through God, with healing a painful broken tailbone. "God can heal you," said Slotty, who contributes $35 a month to Meyer's ministry.
n Alice Lawrence, 51, of Douglasville, Ga., said Meyer's ministry helped heal her from chronic headaches.
n Pam Ericson, 37, of Warner Robins, Ga., who said she attempted suicide 17 years ago after she lost her 3-year-old son in a fire at her home, said she owes everything to the guidance of Meyer and ministers like her.
Many women say that Meyer's autobiographical messages of child abuse, family estrangement and anguished search for love strike a familiar chord with what they have faced.
"It's like she is talking directly to me," said Rhonda Spidle, 43, of New York, who says she was sexually assaulted at age 14. She said she first noticed Meyer preaching on TV.
"I'd see this white lady who was dressed so sharp, her hair and her nails were done so nice, and she had so much authority," says Spidle, who is black. "Just looking at her, you wouldn't think she'd had a bad day in her life."
As Meyer spoke of forgiveness, Spidle talked directly back at the TV screen, she says.
"Oh, no, Joyce, I will not forgive that person."
But one day, Spidle said, she realized that if Meyer could forgive her own father for years of abuse, "I could forgive someone for one incident.
"Now," she said, "I love everybody, even the person who did this to me."

Meyer's charity work begins at home

The former Holy Rosary Catholic Church rises from the intersection of Margaretta and Clarence avenues like a hulking giant, its rough stone facade the color of bone in the late-afternoon sun.
It's a Tuesday, just after 5:30 p.m., and yellow buses already have begun to arrive for the 7 o'clock worship service, their riders spilling onto the street. Women in flowered housedresses, girls in ribbon-tied pigtails and men in baseball caps pulled snug on their heads gather on the sidewalk — laughing and talking.
Just four years ago, the church in the O'Fallon Park area of St. Louis was little more than a tired neighborhood relic, desperate for life and purpose.
Not any more.
In the fall of 2000, the church and adjacent school were reborn as the St. Louis Dream Center, an ambitious, privately funded effort of Joyce Meyer Ministries, a $95 million-a-year TV ministry based in Fenton.
The center is modeled in part after a similar program in Los Angeles and is the largest and most visible local example of Meyer's charitable work, which also includes support for a proposed home for troubled young women in Jefferson County and orphanages in India and Latvia. Recent figures compiled by the ministry report that it donates more than $650,000 a month — nearly $8 million a year — to charitable groups. They include a radio ministry in Warren, Mich., and outreach programs in Africa, England, Brazil and Ecuador.
This year, Joyce Meyer Ministries also will contribute nearly $2.8 million to the operation of the Dream Center and get back about $600,000 in donations collected there, a ministry spokeswoman said.
Covering nearly an entire block, the St. Louis Dream Center is a grand experiment in faith-based social service outreach in the midst of a neighborhood in urgent need of help.
A brochure given to first-time visitors calls the Dream Center "a healing place for a hurting world ... a place of unconditional love ... a church of second chances."
Extensively renovated, funded and staffed by Meyer's ministry, the Dream Center offers a wide range of Christian-based social service programs, from a teen drop-in center to nursing home visitations to efforts to reach out to area prostitutes and the homeless.
It operates Christian education centers for neighborhood children from prekindergarten through high school, including a traveling "KidzJam" Bible school program and a "Super Saturday" program of music, videos and games in the church sanctuary.
At first, the Dream Center seems far removed from Meyer's $20 million, red brick- and-glass corporate headquarters in Jefferson County and her carefully landscaped $2 million home in south St. Louis County. Just three blocks west of Fairground Park, the church sits in the middle of some of the poorest areas of the city.
But Meyer, who preaches at the center several times a year, says it is a natural extension of who she is and what she believes.
"The Bible said that Jesus came for the sick and not the well," Meyer says. "We're just trying to relieve suffering any way we can."
"Cubbies" and warehouses
On a clear Friday night in August, about a dozen church workers and volunteers from the Dream Center made their way along a dirt path cut through a tangle of tall weeds near the city's riverfront.
They carried bottles of fruit drink and sandwiches wrapped in plastic, gifts for the people who live there. Others carried fliers printed on brilliant red and pink paper, invitations to church the following Sunday.
Earlier that evening, Richard Jones, who runs the center's homeless ministry, spoke to a gathering of volunteers who would be traveling with him into the gritty shadows of the city.
"Some people do things for power," said Jones, best known simply as Pastor Richard. Other people, he said, "do things out of greed. We do it for love."
At the start of each weekend, three Dream Center vans loaded with food head into the city's parks, tunnels and alleyways, searching for the people of the streets. Most are known only by their first names or nicknames.
Jones, whose work with the homeless began years ago as a volunteer with the Rev. Larry Rice's winter patrol, has known many of the men and women for years.
Along the riverfront, Jones led his group to little plastic- or tarpaulin-covered tents, reminiscent of Depression-era lean-tos, and hidden back among the weeds and the litter.
"Cubbies," the people who live there call them.
Outside one of the tents, a toy firetruck sat in the crook of a tree for decoration. At another, a large number 9 had been painted just above the entranceway, an address in a place without addresses.
A man known as Steve approached the group, showing off a shopping cart equipped with makeshift headlights: flashlights taped to the sides of the cart.
"We've got four people cutting hair on Sunday," Jones told him.
Not far away, inside an old warehouse littered with wood pallets, a thin man with short, wiry hair appeared from the shadows with his pet dog.
Suddenly, the man pulled himself up on a forklift and stretched himself out until his body was parallel to the ground as his guests applauded politely.
The workers traveled into the little city parks, where men were drinking from bottles wrapped in paper sacks. And they drove deep into the old railroad tunnel under Tucker Boulevard, where people live atop rocky embankments.
They stopped near an enormous pile of sand under the Interstate 55 Highway Bridge and called to a young man who sat there atop the sand, in the darkness.
"I'm all right," the man said, as he waved them away. "I'm all right."

"A whole lot of friends and...enemies"
The day-to-day operation of the Dream Center is in the hands of senior pastor Terry Gwaltney, a one-time heating and air conditioning worker from rural Southern Illinois who gained notoriety in the winter of 1999 for leading a fight to post the Ten Commandments in public schools in Harrisburg, Ill.
Gwaltney was cheered and vilified by a community that split deeply over the issue. Supporters tied white ribbons around trees outside their homes; opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that posting the commandments violated the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
Ultimately, the local school board decided against the commandments idea. Gwaltney, facing additional criticism over his running of his Harrisburg church and a not-for-profit clothing and food giveaway program, left for St. Louis in the spring of 2000.
"Unfortunately, it seems in the ministry you make a whole lot of friends and you make a whole lot of enemies," Gwaltney said, referring to his time in Harrisburg.
In the months before he left, still more controversy surrounded Gwaltney. Several members of his local church quit, accusing Gwaltney of blocking their efforts to obtain financial records. Gwaltney denies the claims and calls much of the criticism a vendetta against him. There were people, he said, who wanted to "destroy my credibility and the credibility of the church."
Several former associates of Gwaltney said their most serious concern involved his handling of the purchase and sale of the Saline County home where he and his wife lived.
County records show that the ministry bought the house for $63,000 in 1966 and sold it to the Gwaltneys for $58,000 in 2000. Gwaltney, as president of the charity, and his wife, as secretary, both signed off on the transaction. The Gwaltneys sold the house in February 2001 for $71,000.
Federal tax laws bar private individuals from profiting on the sale of charitable property, which Gwaltney said he did not know.
Gwaltney said that after paying for repairs of termite damage, and a fee to the real estate company that sold the house, he and his wife made very little on the sale of the property.
Gwaltney and his wife now live in the House Springs area. His wife, brother, sister-in-law, father and a longtime friend are listed as staff members of the Dream Center.
Meyer said Gwaltney has done an exceptional job running the center.
"We love on the people"
The center offers a variety of programs for women, especially women in trouble.
On Friday nights, immediately after its sandwich-and-juice ministry to the homeless, a Dream Center van takes sandwiches, matchbooks with the Dream Center's address and long-stem red roses into some of the St. Louis area's toughest alleyways and bars, in search of prostitutes.
Led by Alliece Cole, a woman with seemingly boundless energy and faith, the prostitute ministry stays on the streets until 3 a.m. or later, talking and praying with women who have become numb and hardened.
"We just go in and love on the people," said Wes Gwaltney, brother of Terry Gwaltney, who often drives a van for the prostitute ministry.
Recently, the center opened a Women of Hope program, a project that offers transitional housing to women trying to make changes in their lives.
A 47-year-old resident of the program, who asked not to be identified, said she owes her life to Meyer, Terry Gwaltney and to the Women of Hope project. She said the Dream Center helped her beat a long drug addiction, has dramatically reduced her need for prescription medication for depression and, hopefully, will soon help reunite her with her children.
"If not for Joyce Meyer and Terry Gwaltney, I might be on the streets of Missouri looking for my next fix," she said. "I'm not angry any more. I'm not angry at people; I'm not angry at God."

Sunday at the Dream Center
On a recent Sunday, the buses began arriving at the Dream Center shortly after 8 a.m., filled with homeless men and women picked up at the Rev. Larry Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center, the Salvation Army's Railton Residence and St. Patrick Center.
Some were ushered into a second-floor room to wait for showers, haircuts or clothing. Others were directed into the church chapel, where music was already echoing across stained-glass windows and two enormous video boards on both sides of the pulpit.
"Let your hair down," Terry Gwaltney called to those filling the church on a Sunday in August. "This is a celebration. We're excited about what God has done in our lives."
Terry Horiace, 52, a resident of Rice's New Life shelter, said he had been to several churches before joining the Dream Center.
"The people here look on the inside of you, not on the outside," he said.
On Sundays, the Dream Center is split into two areas: the sanctuary, where services are held three times a week; and the nearby administration and activities building. There, the center runs a small clothing boutique, a women's gymnasium and three lively children's areas, one of them a teen drop-in center called "The Court," similar to a program Gwaltney operated in Harrisburg.

Good for the neighborhood
Residents who live near the Dream Center say the local ministry has been a godsend to the neighborhood. They praise the center's work with children and older residents and its desire to integrate itself into the community.
Pat Allen, who has lived across the street from the church for 45 years, said center employees went door-to-door soon after the Dream Center opened, introducing themselves to residents. She said that workers from the center regularly pick up litter in the neighborhood and that the center's private security staff keeps an eye out for problems in the immediate area.
One downside, Allen said, is an ongoing problem with parking in the area, particularly on Sunday mornings and during special holiday events. Still, she said, employees have seemed sincere in working with neighbors to ease the situation.
Keishia Curtis, of the 4300 block of Margaretta Avenue, said the center's programs have been "good for the kids. It keeps them out of trouble." She said her daughter LaKeishia, 4, and son Winston, 8, regularly take part in center activities.
Brian Zimerman, principal of Ashland Elementary School, which is just west of the Dream Center, said that before the start of the school year, volunteers from the center sanded and painted the school's wrought iron fence.
He also said the center has been involved in a wide range of in-school activities. He said center volunteers have donated gifts to the children, organized recreational activities and put on plays designed to teach respect and citizenship.
Not once, Zimerman said, have center workers tried to influence the children with their religious beliefs while they were at the school.
Last year, Joyce Meyer Ministries and its Rage Against Destruction Program came under attack from civil liberties groups for using that program to invite high school students to a Christian-oriented after-school rally. The groups argued that the ministry was violating laws mandating the separation of church and state. The ministry eventually ended that program.
Rosemary Townsend, who lives about a block from the center on San Francisco Avenue, said center employees regularly check on her elderly mother. She also said the church has made great strides in promoting racial understanding in the area. Most of the top staff at the center are white, while the congregation is racially mixed, she said.
In a recent interview, Meyer said she knew from the moment she entered the ministry that part of her work would involve reaching out to the poor.
Since the Dream Center opened, Meyer said, visitors from several other cities have been so impressed with the work there that they have taken the idea back to their own communities.
"I've seen firsthand what God and His word have done for me in my life," Meyer said. "God is taking all the abuse I went through, and it's made me that much more determined to try to make sure that other people are restored."

Homeless ministry's parish is in the streets

On his first Sunday in St. Louis, Fredrick Warren sat on a folding chair inside a crowded, second-floor room in the St. Louis Dream Center, looking forward to a hot shower, a change of clothes and a fresh shot at life.
"God had been calling me, but I'd been running," said Warren, just off a Greyhound bus from Chicago. "There's something He wants me to do and, whatever it is, I'm going to do it in a church.
"And this may be the church."
Warren was among dozens of homeless men and women who came to the Joyce Meyer Ministries' Dream Center this year, lured by the promise of doughnuts and a free haircut, and a simple message: "Jesus loves you."
Many visitors brought to the Dream Center are the city's shadow people, whose homes are in the old warehouses and abandoned truck trailers sprinkled throughout the fringes of downtown.
They are men like Frank, who uses a borrowed lawnmower to cut the weeds in front of his riverfront shanty, and JoJo, who stepped sleepily out of the back of a derelict semitrailer one evening last summer to greet a group of Dream Center volunteers.
"I knew it was you," he told them, grinning. "It had to be you."
Richard Jones, who heads the homeless outreach for the Dream Center, said center staff and volunteers go into the streets every weekend, seeking out people with drug and alcohol addictions, mental disabilities and anyone else with too many problems and too little hope. They are people, he said, who "sleep on the dirt," who "urinate on themselves."
"Love," he says, "is a color the devil cannot see. It's a smell the devil cannot smell. As long as your motives are pure, you can do anything you want to do."

The Prosperity Gospel

The end of the 1980s was a bad time for TV preachers.
One moment, men like the PTL Club's Jim Bakker and television's Jimmy Swaggart seemed bigger than life, supermen blessed with an uncanny ability to attract followers and money. The next instant, they were only men -- fragile, flawed and the butt of barroom jokes and newspaper cartoons.
In many ways, it seemed like the beginning of the end for big-time TV religion. Look, the critics said, the emperors really do have no clothes.
But Americans, at least many of them, seem to have forgotten and forgiven. TV's salvation shows are still here, bigger and flashier than ever, thanks to the proliferation of the internet and the continued spread of satellite and cable TV.
The names may have changed -- Juanita Bynum, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, T. D. Jakes, St. Louis' Joyce Meyer and a dozen others have replaced Bakker, Swaggart and Oral Roberts at the top of the evangelical mountain -- but the message remains virtually identical.
Believe with all your heart and soul, they tell the faithful. And give, give, give until you can't give any more.
God, they say, loves a cheerful giver.
In the late 1980s, when the sex-and-fraud scandals boiled over into America's living rooms, Joyce Meyer's little radio ministry was scarcely a blip on the evangelical radar screen.
Today, Meyer heads a ministry fast approaching $100 million a year and is among a dozen or so evangelical superstars headlining a revived, and very healthy, industry.
The prosperity gospel also has been called the ``name it and claim it'' theology. God wants His people to prosper, evangelists like Meyer maintain. Those who follow God and give generously to his ministries can have anything, and everything, they want.
But critics, from Bible-quoting theologians to groups devoted to preserving the separation of church and state, abound. At best, they say, such a theology is a simplistic and misguided way of living. At worst, they say, it is dangerous.
Michael Scott Horton, who teaches historical theology at the Westminister Theological Seminary in Escondido, Ca., calls the message a twisted interpretation of the Bible -- a ``wild and wacky theology.
``Some of these people are charlatans,'' Horton said. ``Others are honestly dedicated to one of the most abhorrent errors in religious theology.
`` I often think of these folks as the religious equivalent to a combination of a National Enquirer ad and professional wrestling. It's part entertainment and very large part scam.''
Sociologist William Martin of Rice University said that most people who follow TV religious leaders put so much trust in them that they want them to thrive. Martin is a professor of sociology at the university, specializing in theology.
The preachers' wealth is ``confirmation of what they are preaching,'' Martin said.
Ole Anthony's Trinity Foundation, best-known for working with the national media to uncover questionable activities involving TV evangelists, often resorts to digging through preachers' trash to find incriminating evidence. Anthony said that most of the preachers begin with a ``sincere desire to spread the faith. But the pressure of fundraising slowly moves all of them in the direction of a greed-based theology.''
Even J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma & Christian Life magazine has become alarmed at what he sees as the excesses of some TV preachers. Grady defends the principle that if you are stingy with your money, you will lack things in life; and if you are generous, you will get things in return. ``But that doesn't mean you can treat God like a slot machine,'' Grady said in an interview.
Bakker, who spent five years in prison for defrauding Heritage USA investors, says he has had a change of heart about the prosperity gospel. The same man who once told his PTL coworkers that ``God wants you to be rich,'' now says he made a tragic mistake.
``For years, I helped propagate an impostor, not a true gospel, but another gospel,'' Bakker has said in his 1996 book, ``I Was Wrong.''
``The prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of the Scripture,'' he said. ``My heart was crushed to think that I led so many people astray.''
While Bakker may have changed his tune, many more TV preachers are steadfast in their conviction that if you give money, you will receive it many times in return.
Meyer spends most of her three-day conferences on lessons in giving, and she is blunt when she addresses what the critics say about her seed-faith interpretation of the Bible. She says that those preachers who believe that to be godly is to be poor are the ones who have it wrong.
``Why would He (God) want all of His people poverty stricken while all of the people that aren't living for God have everything?'' Meyer said. ``I think it's old religious thinking, and I believe the devil uses it to keep people from wanting to serve God.''

TV evangelists call signals from the same playbook

The end of the 1980s was a bad time for TV preachers.
One moment, men like the PTL Club's Jim Bakker and television's Jimmy Swaggart seemed bigger than life, supermen who had been blessed with an uncanny ability to attract followers and money. The next, they were only men - fragile, flawed, and the butt of barroom jokes and newspaper cartoons.
In many ways, it seemed like the beginning of the end for big-time TV religion. Look, the critics said, the emperors really have no clothes.
But Americans, at least many of them, seem to have forgotten and forgiven. TV's salvation shows are still here, bigger and flashier than ever, thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and the continued spread of satellite and cable TV.
The names may have changed - Juanita Bynum, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes and St. Louis' Joyce Meyer have replaced Bakker, Swaggart and Oral Roberts at the top of the evangelical mountain - but the message remains virtually identical.
Believe with all your heart and soul, they tell the faithful. And give, give, give until you can't give any more.
God, they say, loves a cheerful giver.
In the late 1980s, when the sex and fraud scandals boiled over into America's living rooms, Joyce Meyer's little radio ministry was scarcely a blip on the evangelical radar screen.
Today, Meyer heads a ministry with an annual income fast approaching $100 million a year, and she is among a dozen or so evangelical superstars headlining a revived, and very healthy, industry.
"Wild and wacky theology"
The word-faith, or prosperity, gospel has been dubbed by some critics the "name it and claim it" religion. God wants His people to prosper, evangelists like Meyer maintain. The proof, they say, is in the Bible.
Give and you shall receive; sow and you shall reap.
But critics, from Bible-quoting theologians to groups devoted to preserving the separation of church and state, argue that the theology is simply wrong. At best, they argue, it is an excuse to take advantage of their followers to accrue power and wealth.
Michael Scott Horton, who teaches historical theology at the Westminister Theological Seminary in Escondido, Calif., calls the word-faith, or "seed-faith," message a twisted interpretation of the Bible - a "wild and wacky theology."
"Some of these people are charlatans," Horton said. "Others are honestly dedicated to one of the most abhorrent errors in religious theology.
"I often think of these folks as the religious equivalent to a combination of a National Enquirer ad and professional wrestling. It's part entertainment and very large part scam."
Sociologist William Martin of Rice University said that most people who follow TV religious leaders put so much trust in them that they want them to thrive. Martin is a professor of sociology at the university, specializing in theology.
The preachers' wealth is "confirmation of what they are preaching," Martin said.
Ole Anthony's Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, best-known for working with the national media to uncover questionable activities involving TV evangelists, often resorts to digging through preachers' trash to find incriminating evidence. Anthony said that most of the preachers begin with a "sincere desire to spread the faith. But the pressure of fund raising slowly moves all of them in the direction of a greed-based theology."
Even J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma & Christian Life magazine, has become alarmed at what he sees as the excesses of some TV preachers in their constant trolling for money. He is most concerned about preachers who guarantee that God will reward followers with new homes, cars or better jobs in exchange for their donations.
Grady's concern is remarkable because his magazine gets most of its advertising from TV preachers.
In the magazine's August issue, Grady wrote a column headlined "Fair Warning," in which he said: "Some charismatic churches in this country are headed for serious trouble."
Grady said he still believes in the principle that Christians who are generous with their money will be blessed, while those who are stingy will want.
"But that doesn't mean you can treat God like a slot machine," Grady said in an interview. "It's not fair for a minister to get up and say, 'If you give tonight, you'll be rich.' ... What if you are living immorally and give an offering? That's not a guarantee that you will be blessed.
"Let's cut out the craziness and manipulation and the shenanigans and the pressure that is rampant right now."
Even Bakker, who spent five years in prison for defrauding Heritage USA investors, says he has had a change of heart about the prosperity gospel.
The same man who once told his PTL co-workers that "God wants you to be rich" now says he made a tragic mistake.
"For years, I helped propagate an impostor, not a true gospel, but another gospel," Bakker said in his 1996 book, "I Was Wrong."
"The prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of the Scripture. My heart was crushed to think that I led so many people astray."
"I am here. It worked"
While Bakker may have changed his beliefs - he now uses the same Bible passages to criticize the prosperity theology that he once used to defend it - many more TV preachers are adamant that the more a Christian gives, the more he will receive.
Meyer spends much of her three-day conferences emphasizing the importance of giving. Her critics, she says, are simply wrong.
"Why would He (God) want all of his people poverty stricken while all of the people that aren't living for God have everything?" Meyer said. "I think it's old religious thinking, and I believe the devil uses it to keep people from wanting to serve God."
In Tampa, TV preacher Rodney Howard-Browne went so far as to tell his flock that if they gave to the building fund for his River at Tampa Bay church, they could expect God to give them a house in return.
"For whatever he sows, it is what he will reap," Howard-Browne said. "People stop reaping because they quit sowing."
Randy White, a TV preacher from the other end of Tampa at the Without Walls International church, told his congregation in September that if they were broke, they should still give to his church.
"If you don't have anything to give, ask the person beside you to borrow $100," White said. "If they don't have it, ask them to give you a blank check. I'm asking everyone to give."
Those who support the ministries say they have seen first-hand the miracles of seed-faith giving.
Rallies and church services are filled with people who say they are living proof of the seed-faith message.
At a recent Sunday morning service in Meyer's Dream Center, Luchae Manning of St. Louis said she was jobless and homeless when she began volunteering at the center. Almost from the moment she began donating 10 percent of her state aid check to the ministry, her life began to change.
She says she now has a GED and her own apartment.
"I have a car," she told those who had crowded into the sanctuary. "And it's not an old, raggedy car.
"I am here. It worked."
Preachers teach each other
Fifteen years have passed since Bakker's Praise the Lord empire turned to dust, the victim of a motel tryst with Jessica Hahn and a criminal conviction of defrauding thousands of investors in his Heritage USA theme park.
Swaggart, too, fell fast and hard, after a rival minister caught him meeting with a prostitute. His guilt-ridden, tear-streaked face still graces mocking Internet Web sites.
Even Roberts, dubbed the father of television evangelism, took fire for claiming that God would "call me home" unless his viewers sent him $8 million, a statement seen by some as a form of evangelical blackmail.
Since then, cooperation among televangelists seems to be growing. They regularly contribute money to each other's ministries and often come together for rallies and conferences.
When one comes up with a new idea for making more money, the others seem to follow.
In September, Meyer stood on stage before 3,000 worshippers at Randy and Paula White's church in Tampa.
Meyer, clearly the biggest name of the three, told the flock that they had to start copying each others' successes. She told them how Paula White, an up-and-coming preacher with a TV show of her own, wanted to pick Meyer's brain to find out how Meyer had become one of the most successful women evangelists.
She said White wanted to ask her: " 'How did you do this? How did you do that? What about this? What about that?' ... She wants to know how I got where I am, because she has a dream and a vision."
Paula White, sitting in a chair on the side of the stage, smiled and nodded.
Days later, the Whites hosted a five-day "Fall Campmeeting" session, a kind of classroom for new preachers. Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis and Robert Kayanja appeared to share their knowledge.
Start-up ministers begin by organizing with the IRS as a tax-exempt religious organization. That allows them to accept tax-free donations, buy and sell products like books and videotapes - mostly free of sales taxes - and keep their financial books closed to the public and the government.
Most set up boards made up of themselves, friends and family members. Some board members are also employees of the ministries.
Next, an upwardly mobile TV evangelist needs to find a way to get on cable television. The cost can be relatively inexpensive, depending on the station. The more and bigger the stations, the bigger the audience. The bigger the audience, the bigger the gifts to support the ministry and the ministers.
Paul and Jan Crouch's Trinity Broadcast Network, home to some of the biggest names in TV evangelism, is considered the top of the Christian TV ladder's rung and a kingmaker, or queenmaker, for television preachers.
The ministers now have added another medium: the Internet.
An Internet check turns up a seemingly endless number of preachers asking for prayers and money. Many of the sites point to their ministry's support of a variety of outreach programs, such as programs for hungry or abandoned children. The sites often show the preacher's TV program 24 hours a day.
Most televangelists release dozens of self-help and religious books and tapes that are available to their followers who send them a set donation.
The newest tool to assure a continuous pipeline of funding allows supporters to make direct monthly deductions from their bank accounts. Ministries tout it as a "more convenient" method of monthly giving.
Many also make use of marketing companies to saturate a certain demographic group with requests for money. Using target lists, the preachers send out mailers and catalogs.
Some send out "free gifts" - small booklets with inspirational messages, blessed cornflower and bottles of holy water - through the mail to woo the recipients to send money to them.
Last month, Meyer began using her Web site to ask followers to send the ministry money for $7 million worth of new TV equipment to help her improve the quality of her show, saying she needs to compete with sports shows and movies on television.
In return, she promised to send out free crystal globes - small, medium and large - depending on whether the follower's gift was $100, $500 or $1,000.
As a result, many of the ministries have enjoyed astonishing success. Of the 17 ministries researched by the Post-Dispatch, six surpass the $100 million-a-year mark.
Attempts to police the industry
Even before the televangelist scandals of the 1980s, many in the business had begun quietly looking for ways to recover their credibility.
A watchdog group called the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was set up in 1979. In 1989, after the scandals, the group began random on-site checks to verify that cooperating ministries were following their standards. The group's goal: to help "Christ-centered organizations earn the public's trust through developing and maintaining standards of accountability that convey God-honoring ethical practices."
The council monitors how much money a preacher raises and how the money is used. The group then provides the financial information free on the Internet.
The problem: Most TV preachers don't participate. Of the 17, including Meyer, surveyed by the Post-Dispatch, only the Rev. Billy Graham's ministry is a member of the group.
The council has said they have received no financial information from any of the rest.
Because internal policing has fallen short, an external watchdog group is trying to fill in. The group - Wall Watchers Ministries - sends out questionnaires to 400 of the largest Christian ministries in the United States. Wall Watchers asks for full financial disclosure of revenue and expenses for each group.
Wall Watchers then grades the religious group for its willingness to share its financial information with the world. Wall Watchers gave Meyer an F, or failing, grade. That's because Meyer's ministry refused to disclose how she raises or spends the $95 million a year her ministry is taking in.
Of the rest of the ministers researched by the Post-Dispatch, five more - Dollar, Hinn, the Copelands, TBN Christian network owners Paul and Jan Crouch, and Kenneth Hagin - got an F grade from Wall Watchers. The 11 others were not listed as ministries researched by Wall Watchers.
Last month, Wall Watchers called on the IRS and Congress to investigate the finances of Meyer and other TV preachers, specifically mentioning the ones who got failing grades.
"Such a high level of profitability is appalling for a ministry," said Wall Watchers founder Rusty Leonard. "However you slice it, what they're doing is wrong.
"If a ministry or person is going to solicit money by invoking the name of Jesus Christ, they should certainly be completely open with their finances."
Tom Winters, Meyer's lawyer from Tulsa, Okla., said that everything Meyer's ministry has done is legal. Meyer herself says only that the ministry has no obligation to release specific financial information.
Graham is the only TV evangelists to get an A grade from Wall Watchers. Graham's ministry, in fact, helped form the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. His records, available on the groups' Web sites, show that Graham took in $117.8 million in 2001, the latest year for which the information is available.
In 2000, Graham got $197,911 in salary, benefits and an expense account for his work as chairman of the ministry, according to the latest figures available from the organization.
Nearly every TV preacher talks about aspiring to be like Graham. Yet, most evangelists operate differently.
The most obvious difference: Graham has an independent board that votes on what his ministry can do.
To theologian Horton, the difference is that most TV preachers today have only one goal in mind: to personally prosper.
"With the exception of Billy Graham, it is hard to see any of the televangelists who are not personally flourishing today," Horton said.
Sociologist William Martin at Rice University sees little changing in the way that television evangelists do business, at least in the near future.
TV preachers will continue to prosper, he said, and journalists will continue to report their excesses. And their supporters, Martin said, will continue to "chalk it up to a liberal media controlled by Satan."

Downsized Bakker returns to TV pulpit in Branson, Mo.

To much of America, Jim Bakker was the preacher with the Midas touch.
Everything seemed to turn to gold in his hands, from his massive PTL Club ministry to his squeaky clean, fun-for-the-whole-family, Christian-based Heritage USA theme park. At the height of his popularity in the mid-1980s, he owned six mansions and a Rolls-Royce and was pocketing an annual salary of nearly $2 million. God, it seemed, was good business - very good business.
Today, the nation's most famous fallen electronic preacher is in Branson, Mo., the family entertainment capital of America's Bible Belt. He's older and wiser, Bakker says, and scraping to make ends meet at a little cafe-TV studio just north of the town's famous "strip." He hawks whipped cream-topped pies and barbecue sandwiches, pleads for a new piano and begs for volunteers to operate his TV cameras.
"This is the lowest-budget show in America," he said last month during a taping of "The New Jim Bakker Show," set in the 260-seat Studio City Cafe. "It's just a miracle that we're even on the air."
Bakker's hourlong, five-day-a-week program, which first aired Jan. 2, marks the evangelist's first tentative steps back into the life that cost him his first wife, Tammy Faye, his fortune and his freedom. Convicted of 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy for taking more than $3 million from his followers, Bakker spent five years in prison before winning an early release.
"I didn't ever plan on being on television again," Bakker said last month from the basement office of the restaurant. "And I thought I could never move to Branson.
"This is a show town. I know that every move I make is being analyzed."
Bakker, 63, and his second wife, Lori, moved to Branson and the Studio City Cafe at the urging of Branson businessman Jerry Crawford, who credits Bakker's old PTL ministry with helping to save his marriage. Crawford says he was born again during a PTL visit in 1986. It was Crawford who built the cafe, paid for the TV equipment and offered them to Bakker for his program. Crawford lets Bakker and his family live rent-free in a home he built near his own.
Bakker says he made $16,000 last year and still owes the government about $7 million in penalties and interest tied to his conviction.

A Joyce Meyer fan
Bakker said that most mornings, as he and his wife are getting dressed to come to the cafe for the show, they watch a videotape of their favorite TV preacher: Joyce Meyer. He says Lori Bakker began listening to Meyer on the radio 13 years ago.
"She has such a practical teaching," Jim Bakker said.
He says he worries about so-called prosperity preachers - men and women who have followed in his ministry's "give and you shall receive" philosophy.
"It's very, very dangerous when we focus on material things," Bakker said. "Especially the church - to focus on material things is opposite of what Jesus taught."
He says he is amazed by the good will he has received from the community since his move to Branson.
He talks of praying with Andy Williams, Tony Orlando and the Osmonds. He says the Lennon sisters have embraced him and his family "like we're old friends."
He is so comfortable here, he says, that he never wants to leave. He hopes to stay "until death or rapture, whichever comes first."

Some hype remains
Bakker's show, which features religious music, interviews with guests and party hats for diners celebrating birthdays, is aired in more than 150 countries, according to a ministry news release. The cafe walls are hung with gold-framed religious paintings, and photos of Bakker with celebrities and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. A framed picture of a Rolls-Royce hangs in the cafeteria men's room.
Bakker also spends part of the show selling his and his wife's books and soliciting donations. For a $100 contribution, visitors from the cafe audience are invited onto the set to pose for photos with the Bakkers.
Many of those who come to the diner are the same people who watched Bakker on the old PTL Club program. Some lost money to Bakker and his ministry when a plan to offer lifetime memberships to Heritage USA went sour.
Among the ministry's volunteers are Stan and Diana Stuart, who followed Bakker when they lived in Colorado in the 1980s. Stan Stuart maintains that Bakker was railroaded by the government.
"At the time," Stuart said, "it seemed almost like a crucifixion."
When Bakker talks of the old days, there is a hint of regret in his voice. Still, he says, he would not want to return to them. Even now, he sometimes worries that things are happening too quickly.
"There are times I say to Lori, 'Let's just go back to the ghetto ... people loved us there,'" he said, referring to the post-prison days at the Los Angeles Dream Center. "I tell you what, riches and things are just not all they're cracked up to be. The more you have, the more stress you have."
The "New Jim Bakker Show" is not available on St. Louis-area TV, but programs can be viewed live at jimbakkershow.com, the show's internet Web site.

Popular TV preachers

Joyce Meyer is one of America's best-known prosperity-gospel TV ministers - preachers who teach that personal wealth can be attained through a strong faith in God and a strict adherence to the Bible.
Following is an alphabetical list of a new wave of popular word-faith ministers who have used television to build large followings:

Juanita Bynum
Headquarters: Waycross, Ga.
Reach: Her program, "Weapons of Power," is seen worldwide on TBN; she holds conferences throughout the United States.
Wealth: No information available.
In the news: In April, Bynum married Thomas Wesley Weeks III in the palatial Regent Wall Street Hotel in New York City. The ceremony featured a wedding party of 80, a platinum-colored satin bridal gown with a bodice covered in Swarovski crystals and a 7.76-carat diamond ring.

Kenneth and Gloria Copeland
Headquarters: Fort Worth, Texas
Reach: Ministry Web site says its TV show, "Believer's Voice of Victory," is seen by more than 76 million households on nearly 700 U.S. stations. Show also airs on about 135 international stations.
Wealth: A ministry official estimates the ministry's annual revenue at $70 million.
In the news: In June, the Copelands joined four other TV preachers who gathered around Oral Roberts, 85, considered the grandfather of the prosperity gospel, to pray for healing the failing founder of the university that bears his name.

Jan and Paul Crouch
Headquarters: Costa Mesa, Calif.
Reach: The Crouches are owners of Trinity Broadcast Network, the world's largest Christian TV network. TBN reaches millions of viewers on more than 5,000 TV stations and 33 international satellites around the world.
Wealth: The Crouches and their son Paul Crouch Jr. said they earned a total of $855,000 last year. TBN's annual income exceeds $100 million a year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The ministry provides the Crouches a $10 million, 80-acre, eight-home ranch near Dallas and two Land Rovers that the Crouches drive. In 2001, the couple bought a $5 million oceanfront estate in Newport Beach, Calif.
In the news: The ministry recently purchased the Nashville, Tenn., home and estate of the late country music performer Conway Twitty and opened Trinity Music City USA as a tourist attraction there.

Creflo Dollar
Headquarters: College Park, Ga.
Reach: Dollar's "Changing Your World" TV program on TBN reaches 150 countries.
Wealth: The ministry's income is unavailable, but newspaper accounts say the ministry paid $18 million in cash for his new 8,000-seat World Changers Church International on the southern edge of Atlanta. He drives a black Rolls-Royce and travels in a $5 million private jet.
In the news: Dollar's ministry became a focus of a court case involving boxer Evander Holyfield in 1999. The lawyer for Holyfield's ex-wife estimated that the fighter gave Dollar's ministry $7 million. Dollar refused to testify in the case.

Marilyn Hickey
Headquarters: Denver
Reach: Her TV show, "Today with Marilyn," on the TBN and Black Entertainment Television networks can be seen around the world. She has offices in England, South Africa and Australia, and is on the board of Oral Roberts University.
Wealth: Her ministry occupies a 260,000-square-foot former shopping mall in Denver. No information on ministry or her personal wealth is available.
In the news: She has been dubbed the "fairy godmother of the word-faith movement" and "the mistress of mail-order madness," by the Texas-based Christian Sentinel, a ministry that monitors what it calls "religious deception." Hickey got the "mistress" name for her use of trinkets - blessed cornmeal, cloths, seeds and coins - sent out to followers to urge them to send in money.

Benny Hinn

Headquarters: Grapevine, Texas
Reach: Hinn's "This is Your Day" program is seen throughout the United States and in nearly 200 foreign countries.
Wealth: The ministry took in $60 million in 2001. A news story earlier this year in the Colorado Springs Gazette said annual income now exceeds $90 million. Hinn told CNN in 1997 that he drew an annual salary of $500,000 to $1 million a year. He has a $3.5 million home in the Los Angeles area and drives an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz G500.
In the news: A "Dateline" segment on NBC examined five of Hinn's faith-healing "miracles," showing that none of the people was cured and that one woman with lung cancer died nine months later.

Rodney Howard-Browne
Headquarters: The River at Tampa Bay, Tampa, Fla.
Reach: His live broadcasts from his River at Tampa Bay Church stream online on his Internet site www.revival.com and can be seen worldwide.
Wealth: He and his wife, Adonica, oversee his $16 million church, which they founded in 1996. The couple live in a six-bedroom, four-bath lakefront home on Cory Lake in northwest Tampa. The home includes a dock, spa, pool and gazebo.
In the news: Howard-Browne has called himself the "bartender of holy laughter." Holy laughter was a controversial movement that swept evangelical circles in the mid-1990s. He would walk on stage laughing uncontrollably. The congregation would begin laughing. Howard-Browne would sweep his arm toward the crowd. People would appear "drunk on the Holy Spirit" and slide out of their chairs or dance in the aisles.

T.D. Jakes
Headquarters: Dallas
Reach: Jakes' "The Potter's House" TV program is seen throughout the world on TBN and Black Entertainment Television. His ministry boasts more than 26,000 members. A rally at the Georgia Dome in 1999 drew more than 100,000 people.
Wealth: He has mansions in Charleston, W.Va., and Dallas.
In the news: Called the best preacher in America by Time magazine in 2001.

Robert Tilton
Headquarters: Miami
Reach: He once ran his Farmers Branch Church in Dallas before scandal toppled it in the early 1990s. His show now airs on Black Entertainment Television and has a potential audience of 74 million homes.
Wealth: He is building a two-story home on a $1.39 million oceanfront lot on an island in Biscayne Bay off Miami Beach, and his ministry owns a 50-foot yacht. His ministry takes in about $24 million a year.
In the news: Tilton is rebounding after his ministry collapsed in scandal a decade ago amid news reports that prayer requests he said he personally prayed over were found in a trash bin after the money, food stamps and rings had been removed.

Randy and Paula White
Headquarters: The Without Walls International Church, Tampa, Fla.
Reach: The "Paula White Today" TV show can be seen worldwide on TBN and Black Entertainment Television. The ministry's Operation Explosion travels into public housing complexes with "rolling theatre-style pink trucks" to share Christianity in a Nickelodeon-type program for underprivileged children.
Wealth: The Whites live in a $2.1 million, 8,000-square-foot home facing Tampa Bay. Their ministry owns a jet airplane, a Cadillac Escalade and a Mercedes-Benz sedan.
In the news: Paula White calls Joyce Meyer her mentor; Meyer visited their church in September.

The Entire Nightmare

Information about Terry Gwaltney
Sunday Morning with Terry Gwaltney and his Congregation
Long version of the November 16th School Board Meeting
Profile of the Rutherford Institute
Resources for the Separation of Church and State
The Harrisburg Schoolboard
Harrisburg Daily Register
St. Louis Post-Dispatch