https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/14478/20220104/megachurch-sells-property-and-goes-completely-virtual-due-to-decline-in-donations.htm
They have so much judgement for regular people, but they're all hypocrites. Rules for thee, but not for me.
https://news.yahoo.com/megachurch-pastor-oklahoma-apologized-demonstration-233423861.html
I’m a college student and have recently seen hella people my age attending a Passion conference in Atlanta.
It gave me weird vibes, so I looked into it. Turns out the founder, Louie Giglio, is openly racist and homophobic, claiming that white privilege should be seen as “white blessing.” He has also been openly homophobic.
Idk, I just find it weird that the conference targets college kids? Kinda seems like Cult 101?
Srry if this is offensive to anyone just curious if anyone has thoughts.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/hipster-megachurch-shambles-over-pastor-045337396.html
When volunteers at Venue Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, arrived at their pastor’s house last November, they were hoping to raise his spirits with a surprise visit. Instead they got a shock: Pastor Tavner Smith was alone with a female church employee—she in a towel, he in his boxers.
The charismatic 41-year-old hurriedly explained that the two of them had been making chili and hot dogs and gotten food on their clothes, according to one volunteer who was present. But, as the volunteer put it, “I don’t think none of us was that dumb.”
“If she dropped chili on her clothes, why are you in your boxers?” she recalled thinking. “Was y’all like, throwing chili at each other?”
For the volunteer, the scene confirmed something she had long suspected—that Smith, then married with three children, was secretly carrying on an affair with the employee, who was married to another church staffer. Smith has denied any affair took place, but rumors about it have nonetheless led to something out of a daytime soap opera, involving two divorces, one secretly recorded video, and the departure of nearly all the church’s full-time staff.
And former staffers, members, and volunteers told The Daily Beast they are still struggling to come to terms with the maelstrom that left one of the country’s fastest-growing mega churches in shambles.
“Everyone used to say, ‘Venue is a cult, Venue is a cult,’ and I was like, ‘No, it’s not,’” the volunteer who witnessed the chili incident told The Daily Beast. “And now as I look back I’m like, ‘I don’t think I was in a Godly place.’”
To hear Pastor Smith tell it, he came to Chattanooga by divine intervention. In 2012, as a lowly student pastor at Ron Carpenter’s massive Greenville, South Carolina, megachurch, Smith says he was called by God to move his wife and kids to Tennessee and start a church of his own, in the hollowed-out building of an old Sam’s Club. He claims he was once banned from the mall for recruiting there eight hours a day, and that he recruited hundreds of new members by dropping 50,000 eggs from a helicopter on Easter Sunday. (The egg drop, of course, was God’s idea.) By 2015, Venue was on Outreach Magazine’s list of fastest-growing churches in the country; by 2020, it had campuses in two states and pu
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Here is an excerpt of the article at the Washington Post followed by a link to the whole article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/19/apollo-quiboloy-charged-sex-trafficking/
Between 2002 and 2018, Apollo Carreon Quiboloy — the founder of a Philippines-based megachurch — and his accomplices recruited women and girls as young as 12 to work as Quiboloy’s personal assistants, or “pastorals,” prosecutors said.
Under Quiboloy and his accomplices’ orders, women and girls prepared his meals, cleaned his multiple residences in the Philippines and the United States, gave him massages and accompanied him on trips around the world, court records state.
For over 15 years, the victims were forced to devote their lives and bodies to the founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Name Above Every Name by writing “commitment letters” to Quiboloy, prosecutors state.
Quiboloy, an ally of the Philippine president who has referred to himself as “the Appointed Son of God” and is believed to be 71, allegedly forced the women and girls to regularly engage in sexual acts with him in what he called the “night duty.” Quiboloy, also known as “sir” and “pastor,” and his accomplices would tell his victims that obedience to Quiboloy was “God’s will” and that “night duty” was considered a privilege and a means to salvation, court records state.
Now, Quiboloy and two of his top administrators, Teresita Tolibas Dandan, 59, and Felina Salinas, 50, have been charged with orchestrating a sex-trafficking operation, federal prosecutors announced this week. Girls and young women were forced into sex with the church’s leader under threats of “eternal damnation,” according to a superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday and filed in the U.S. Central District of California.
Quiboloy, Dandan and Salinas could not be reached for comment. An attorney representing Quiboloy did not immediately respond to a message from The Washington Post late Thursday. Court records do not list attorneys for Dandan and Salinas.
In a statement released Friday, legal counsel for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ said its leaders were “maliciously accused” and dismissed those raising the case as “dissidents.”
“We are confident and ready to face whatever is hurled against Pastor Quiboloy and the Kingdom leaders,” it said.
The 42-count superseding indictment includes nine defendants and expands on charges filed last year against three church administrators. That indictment accused the administrators of
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hello all, I don't usually post but I know that this community is a large and dedicated one and I was hoping you could help me. The prominent megachurch Cornerstone Chapel is in my area and I typically pay them no mind except for a rather concerning video from service today where the pastor opened the church atrium to sign recall petitions for the school board and preached political bullshit during mass.
I don't really give a rats ass about the political theater but I don't think the church should be allowed to keep its tax exempt status if it wants to be a political organization. Please help by submitting an IRS complaint, blowing up their social media, and supportingthose who have called them out.
