![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburg "When you give to God," Crouch said during a typical appeal for funds, "you're simply loaning to the Lord and He gives it right on back."
Though it carries no advertising, the network generates more than $170 million a year in revenue, tax filings show. Viewer contributions account for two-thirds of that money.
Lower-income, rural Americans in the South are among TBN's most faithful donors. The network says that 70% of its contributions are in amounts less than $50.
Those small gifts underwrite a lifestyle that most of the ministry's supporters can only dream about.
Paul, 70, collects a $403,700 salary as TBN's chairman and president. Jan, 67, is paid $361,000 as vice president and director of programming. Those are the highest salaries paid by any of the 12 major religious nonprofits whose finances are tracked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
We're a generous lot. I remember how everyone dug down and donated to the various 9/11 funds -
I only sent money to the Red Cross. If they didn't need it in New York, they'd find a place that did - and I trusted them to do just that.
The most visible evidence of the Crouches' success is Trinity Christian City International in Costa Mesa, a striking white wedding cake of a building surrounded by reflecting pools, sculptures and neoclassical colonnades.
Visitors to the complex, alongside the San Diego Freeway, can attend live studio broadcasts, buy TBN-branded clothing and stroll down a re-creation of Via Dolorosa, the street in Jerusalem where Jesus walked to his crucifixion. In a high-tech 50-seat theater, people watch biblical movies in seats that tremble during the quakes, storms and other disasters recounted in the Scriptures.
The ministry owns a similar complex near Dallas and a Christian entertainment center outside Nashville.
But most TBN devotees will never visit those places.
No, the Orange County airport is one of the most expensive ones in the basin to fly into. It smacks of playing the lottery, to be honest with you.
Can I touch it? Can I participate in it? Sure - for a price.
And just keep paying, by the way.
The last studio apartment I lived in before getting out of school- I swear it was haunted. The previous tennant had been institutionalized in a mental health facility, and the place hadn't been cleaned out. Mom and I did the work - and we found plenty of evidence that the poor thing had been hounded within an inch of her life to "save the world! Send money NOW!"
With her Medi-Cal stickers.
Disgust doesn't cover what I think of these people.
Converting folks? Sure, I'm certain they do - and get another source of income as well. No, I'm certain of it.
I'm all for getting people inside the door - but I often question what is done to them to keep them there.
Plastic, I tell you. I don't trust plastic people.
EDIT: Here's your soundtrack for this story.
Though it carries no advertising, the network generates more than $170 million a year in revenue, tax filings show. Viewer contributions account for two-thirds of that money.
Lower-income, rural Americans in the South are among TBN's most faithful donors. The network says that 70% of its contributions are in amounts less than $50.
Those small gifts underwrite a lifestyle that most of the ministry's supporters can only dream about.
Paul, 70, collects a $403,700 salary as TBN's chairman and president. Jan, 67, is paid $361,000 as vice president and director of programming. Those are the highest salaries paid by any of the 12 major religious nonprofits whose finances are tracked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
We're a generous lot. I remember how everyone dug down and donated to the various 9/11 funds -
I only sent money to the Red Cross. If they didn't need it in New York, they'd find a place that did - and I trusted them to do just that.
The most visible evidence of the Crouches' success is Trinity Christian City International in Costa Mesa, a striking white wedding cake of a building surrounded by reflecting pools, sculptures and neoclassical colonnades.
Visitors to the complex, alongside the San Diego Freeway, can attend live studio broadcasts, buy TBN-branded clothing and stroll down a re-creation of Via Dolorosa, the street in Jerusalem where Jesus walked to his crucifixion. In a high-tech 50-seat theater, people watch biblical movies in seats that tremble during the quakes, storms and other disasters recounted in the Scriptures.
The ministry owns a similar complex near Dallas and a Christian entertainment center outside Nashville.
But most TBN devotees will never visit those places.
No, the Orange County airport is one of the most expensive ones in the basin to fly into. It smacks of playing the lottery, to be honest with you.
Can I touch it? Can I participate in it? Sure - for a price.
And just keep paying, by the way.
The last studio apartment I lived in before getting out of school- I swear it was haunted. The previous tennant had been institutionalized in a mental health facility, and the place hadn't been cleaned out. Mom and I did the work - and we found plenty of evidence that the poor thing had been hounded within an inch of her life to "save the world! Send money NOW!"
With her Medi-Cal stickers.
Disgust doesn't cover what I think of these people.
Converting folks? Sure, I'm certain they do - and get another source of income as well. No, I'm certain of it.
I'm all for getting people inside the door - but I often question what is done to them to keep them there.
Plastic, I tell you. I don't trust plastic people.
EDIT: Here's your soundtrack for this story.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 12:24 pm (UTC)The St Louis Post-Dispatch did a nice long multi-parter on Joyce Meyer I think last summer. It's a shame the folks at the Times didn't do likewise.
TBC headquarters
Date: 2004-09-22 01:11 pm (UTC)I suspect that part of the brownouts in OC are directly due to the wattage that 50-terrawat monstrosity expends on lighting.
I have an overwhelming urge to practice target shooting on its lights.
Really, SOO do not get me going on that...
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 05:46 pm (UTC)Got themselves throwed out of PTL.
What a shame and what a pity,
Won't get into the Heavenly City,
Ride that Holy Roller coaster to Hell!"
- "Pearly Gate Blues", lyrics copyright Barry & Sally Childs-Helton, TTTO "Plastic Jesus"