(Photo: Mansion and guest house from Realtor.com)

It should surprise no one that televangelist David E. Taylor’s church purchased an $8.3 million mansion and guest house in Tampa, Florida. The church parsonage serves as a palace and Taylor is a king.

Taylor, a proponent of the prosperity gospel, teaches that Christians are supposed to be kings. This teaching is found in Taylor’s book The Kingdom of God – Part 1 which is promoted on Amazon with a fanciful description:

“In this royal revelation, given to David E. Taylor during multiple Face to Face Visitations and trips to Heaven, you will understand the need to reestablish God’s Kingdom order in your life, ministry, and destiny. When you realize your true identity as a king, you will gain all you need to reign!”

In his book Supernatural Marvels: Time Travel, Taylor also teaches that Christians can time travel.

Continue reading “Church Purchases $8.3 Million Mansion, Received Tax-Exempt Status After Complaints to IRS”

By Barry Bowen and Pete Evans, Trinity Foundation

(Photo: Former home of faith healer David Turner, from Realtor.com)

Donors, where is the money going?

When a televangelist’s ministry or pastor’s church owns a private jet, you can almost be certain the leader lives in a mansion. That is one of the lessons Trinity Foundation has learned from investigating religious fraud and excess for more than 30 years.

In April 2021 the Houston Chronicle’s Jay Root asked Trinity Foundation for assistance on an article series about church parsonages in Texas. Trinity Foundation compiled a list of megachurches and large media ministries in the state and then searched for parsonages and homes of pastors and ministry leaders.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle examined the state tax code and filed open records requests with county appraisal districts seeking lists of parsonages.

Root’s thorough investigation uncovered startling evidence of pastors living extravagantly: “A months-long Houston Chronicle investigation of ministers’ tax-free residences found no shortage of extravagant homes in high-dollar locales. At least two dozen were worth over $1 million even using the artificially low values that exempt properties typically carry.”

If you are keeping track, that is at least 24 parsonages in Texas worth more than $1 million.

Trinity Foundation also investigated pastor and ministry housing in other states, discovering multi-million dollar homes of several televangelists and pastors who have received little media scrutiny. It’s time to present some of our findings.

Continue reading “Million Dollar Homes Become Status Symbols of Televangelists and Pastors”

Don’t believe every criticism of televangelists on social media.

After a series of tweets and memes claiming that televangelist Joel Osteen drove a Ferarri spread rapidly accross Twitter in mid-July, Trinity Foundation attempted to verify the car ownership but found no evidence of Osteen owning a Ferrari.

Snopes, the fact checker, came to the same conclusions. Snopes reported that one of the memes featured “a Ferrari in Zurich, Switzerland in 2013” which was clearly not owned by Osteen.

In a recent tweets, pictures of Kanye and Kim West’s Calabasas, California home were also wrongly labeled as Joel Osteen’s residence. In fact, pictures of at least five different homes have been identified on Twitter as belonging to Osteen.

Continue reading “Blowback: Joel Osteen’s Lifestyle Target of Twitter Criticism”