"For example, Joel Osteen represents a pastor of the largest mega-church in America. Although its members consider themselves Christian, Osteen's church shows no cross or image of Jesus, anywhere. Instead, Osteen preaches a cherry-picked brand of Christianity where he focuses on positive thinking rather than sin. This New-Age kind of Christianity has virtually nothing in common with Old-World Christianity, except carefully picked Bible verses that conform only to Osteen's happy-clappy vision but leave out the hell-and-brimstone verses. Various denominations of watered-down Christianity continue to grow throughout the world that has little to do with traditional Christianity, nor do they agree with their contemporary new-age churches..

The very fact that most Christians no longer believe in the Biblical age of the universe provides an example of how the world view of this religious belief system has shrunk incredibly over the centuries. Not only do most Christians not believe in a Young Earth…more and more Christians no longer believe in the miracle stories, including walking on water, turning water into wine…"

"

I think what is even worse is when we, as "critical thinkers, " in the body of Christ begin to resemble the world in our piranha feeding frenzy capitalizing on the failures or perceived failures of others.  See Gal. 6.1-3 AMP

Some of the mentioned ministries, we have given to, faithfully, for years.  We have examined their doctrine up close and seen, firsthand, the results and fruit of their ministries.  For now, we and others will continue to support these "pioneers" of the faith and from our perspective will probably increase our giving.

I've spent almost 20 years working at different levels within Churches and denominations and it is my observation that there are practices that go on within Churches, denominations and para-church organizations that are a result of their tax exempt status that wouldn't go on if they were paying taxes, having to file even informational returns or were making the records public with full-disclosure to contributors.

Separation of Church and State in the US (which interestingly Phil is addressing in another thread and poll) gives the Church tremendous freedom.  That freedom however can be abused.  If the Church as a whole does not regulate itself and address these abuses then in the end I believe those freedoms may indeed be threatened and an investigation such as Grassley's begin to result in a chipping away of those freedoms based upon public pressure if and when some of these abuses are exposed.

There is an element of precedent here that if allowed to stand may well lead to other politicians targetting other ministries based upon whether or not it will generate favorable publicity for them.  Televangelists are easy targets right now and frankly as a community they deserve it on many levels.

If I were to give any advice right now, if would be for each of the ministries targetted to work together cooperatively to do the following things:

1.  Join the ECFA or some other credible organization if they are not members already or examine their adherence to some higher organization's code of ethics and public disclosure standards and immediately make receiving that organizations seal of approval and maintaning it with a good faith effort.

2.  Immediately have an outside auditing agency appointed to audit their books and make a report available to the leadership with disclosure following addressing any deficiencies.

3.  Do the two steps above before publically addressing Grassley's call for records and if a principled stand is to be make refusing cooperating, preface all statements with disclosure above of the steps that have been taken, willingness to correct issues but opposition to the direct involvement of a politician who is by-passing the appropriate chain of command in either the courts or the IRS to address these issues and not breach the veil of separation of Church and State.

4.  Follow through on the commitments made, take responsibility for abuses discovered and maintain the standards and code of ethics adopted moving forward.

If something like this is not done however, there will be more actions of this nature and what is televangelists now will soon be local churches.

I hate that there have been so many abuses that they felt forced to.

The ECFA has tried to become an agency to help safeguard against the abuses, but many mega-organizations have no interest in joining.  Why?  Often it's their policy on the make up of the board (limiting family members and paid employees).

And since we as the church give to whoever we want regardless of if they are a member of any such organization, why should they join?  Why should they (the mega leaders) be accountable to anyone?

Well what we are seeing now is the "why".  If we don't bring acountability, Uncle Sam will.  This is just the beginning.

Since we are so concerned about riches and wealth…Abraham, Solomon, David, Esther, Mordecai, Gaius, et al, would probably take exception to our judgments.  And for those of us who are ultra inflamed over the materialism of preachers, heaven is going to be a blinder and a "heart stopper."  When we put this in proper Biblical perspective, how insignificant is our finite thinking.

I was an elder in a nondenominational church ten years ago…attendance 500, conservatively…some would say more like 700.  As a member of the elder board, we set the senior pastor's salary.  We paid him very generously based on national stats provided to us with similar church size, tithes and offerings and assets.  I am convinced had some members known the senior pastor's financial package, they would have fainted.  Were we a congregation of 20K as some are, the mere size, payroll, expenses and net worth can be staggering to the average person.  It is an expensive "machine" to maintain with the myriads of outreaches that requires much planning, oversite and, yes, legal, financial and spiritual counsel.  I was then and am today, at peace with our prayerful, financial decisions that governed our local church body.