Elmer Gantry Lives

[Pyrrho]

Remarkable....

http://www.cleveland.com/religion/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/1081000596268170.xml

The businesses are a step toward Vernon's vision of "Word City" a 5,000-seat church on 50 acres, surrounded by a community center, senior housing, church schools and businesses. Vernon will ask his followers for extra donations, starting at his Easter service at the Cleveland State University Convocation Center, to kick off his drive to raise $8 million to $10 million for the project.

Like "megachurches" elsewhere, Word City would mix economic empowerment with religion by providing jobs, shopping and activities for members.

 

[Kopji]

In a recent service that bordered on a self-help session, Vernon urged his congregation to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of their decisions and pick friends carefully to avoid the "dumb, needy people" who are "stuck in neutral and resent you having plans."

Some people seem to like you, but only "when you ain't about nothing," he said. "You have to surround yourself with people who can take you where you want to go."

I wonder what the other churches in the area think of them taking all the non dumb and needy people for themselves? -snort-

Funny how I'm so easily led astray. The minister was a graduate of Moody Bible Institute (no comment), but I skipped over to their website and read Moody's vision statement:

Our Values

The authority of the Word of God

The centrality of the Church

The worth and dignity of the individual

The priority of servanthood

The practice of integrity

The responsibility of stewardship


Our Vision

To encourage and equip believers to:

Think Biblically

Live Christianly

Serve Effectively

Reproduce Consistently

http://www.moody.edu/mission.htm

Say what? Reproduce Consistently? Maybe their website was hacked. That just cracked me up