One consistent finding was charismatic churches were far less likely to take out loans than Southern Baptists. ![]() The Potter’s House (TD Jakes) received up to $1 million. ![]() Max Lucado’s Oak Hills Church received $1-2 million. Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship (Tony Evans) received between $2-5 million. Levi Lusko’s Fresh Life Church received up to $1 million. Churchome featuring Judah Smith received up to $2 million. John Piper’s Bethlehem College and Seminary received up to $1 million. Master’s Seminary received their approval on August 8, a late outlier. John MacArthur double dipped with Grace Community Church received between $1-2 million, while Master’s Seminary received $5-10 million. Church of the Highlands, one of the largest churches in the country did not directly take money however, the Association of Related Churches (ARC) formed by its pastor Chris Hodges did take somewhere between $350,000 and $1 million.īeloved celebrity pastors were quick to get this money. Other notable absences include Rick Warren who is the only SBC church of comparable size to not take the money and Andy Stanley. This could be that several Prosperity Churches were not thoroughly identified, but people like Creflo Dollar, Paula White, John Gray, obvious figures, were conspicuously absent. ![]() VOUS Church (Rich Wilkerson Jr) and Transformation Church ( Mike Todd) both received under $1 million. Hillsong’s various LLCs all received somewhere between $150,000 and $1 million. However, Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyers are outliers. One would think the Prosperity Gospel would be all over forgivable loans. Life Dot Church ( Craig Groeschel), Willow Creek Community Church (David Dummitt), Joyce Meyer Ministries all hauled in over $5 million each, and the separate Willow Creek Association received an addition $1-2 million. The biggest hauls range between $5-10 million. Receiving between $1-2 million were Green Acres Baptist Church (David Dykes) McClean Bible Church (David Platt) First Baptist Church Orlando ( David Uth) Fellowship Church (Ed Young Jr.) Thomas Road Baptist Church (Jonathan Falwell). Receiving between $2-5 million dollars includes Harvest Christian Fellowship (Greg Laurie) Shadow Mountain Community Church (David Jeremiah) Elevation Church ( Steven Furtick), First Baptist Church Houston (Greg Matte), New Spring Church. The SBC President JD Greear’s Summit Church accepted between $2-5 million. Southern Baptists were very partial to accepting forgivable loans. Five of the six Southern Baptist Seminaries (SBTS being the outlier) received loans ranging from $1 million to $5 million. The SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, helmed by Russell Moore, received up to $1 million. Mark Dever’s 9Marks and his church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, received up to $350,000. Tim Keller’s The Gospel Coalition received up to $1 million while his church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City, received up to $5 million. The organizations synonymous with Big Eva such as The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, and programs under the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention all have forgivable loans. Blatant heretical movements are labeled but this categorization is not universally applied to organizations theologically aligned to these movements for the brevity of research. These results contain churches, seminaries, faith-based media outlets, and ministries. The selected examples are not exhaustive, but they are meant to contain the largest churches and America’s most influential pastors, particularly those who are in and represent Big Eva, and teachers and churches that readers have requested more research on. The exact loans amounts were not disclosed in the SBA metadata. It is possible that some of the churches under non-denominational are affiliated organizationally or ideologically with established denominations. ![]() Catholic Dioceses and mainline denominations are excluded from these findings. We searched and selected several prominent Evangelical organizations found to have been granted a loan. The Evangelical Dark Web analyzed the data released by the Small Business Administration of all organizations that were approved of loan amounts greater than $150,000. In fact, Lakewood Church’s $4.4 million haul was not even the largest. But Joel Osteen was far from the only pastor and Lakewood Church was far from the only church to have received these forgivable loans. Joel Osteen landed in hot water when the Houston Chronicle broke the story that Lakewood Church had indeed accepted Payroll Payment Protection loans under the Small Business Administration’s allocation for non-profit organizations to benefit from this lockdown relief program, which he previously denied.
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