Joel Osteen
When this article was published on March 30, 2006, collections at the service at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, where Joel Osteen is minister, brought in close to $1 million a week, with $20 million or so a year more sent in by mail, said Don Iloff, Lakewood's spokesman and Mr. Osteen's brother-in-law. The money went to pay the staff of 300, service the debt on the $95 million it cost to turn the Compaq Center (formerly the 16,000-seat home of the Houston Rockets basketball team) into a church (now about half paid off), support ministries in India and elsewhere and buy television time around the country. Mr. Osteen stopped taking his $200,000 annual salary from the church after he sold his first book.His debut spiritual guide, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," sold more than three million copies. "I believe God wants us to prosper" is the gospel according to Mr. Osteen, 43, who offers no apologies for his wealth. In March 2006, Mr. Osteen signed a contract that could bring him as much as $13 million for a follow-up book.
Mormon Church
In 1997, the Mormon Church's assets totaled a minimum of $30 billion and annual gross income was estimated to be $5.9 billion. In the previous year it collected $5.2 billion in tithes, $4.9 billion of which came from American Mormons. By contrast, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with a comparable U.S. membership, received $1.7 billion a year in contributions.
In 1997, the top beef ranch in the world was the Deseret Cattle & Citrus Ranch outside Orlando, Fla. It covered 312,000 acres; its value as real estate alone was estimated at $858 million. It is owned entirely by the Mormons. The largest producer of nuts in America, AgReserves, Inc., in Salt Lake City, is Mormon-owned. So are the Bonneville International Corp., the country's 14th largest radio chain, and the Beneficial Life Insurance Co., with assets of $1.6 billion.The Latter-day Saints employ vast amounts of money in investments estimated to be at least $6 billion. Most of this money is invested directly in church-owned, for-profit concerns, the largest of which are in agribusiness, media, insurance, travel and real estate. Deseret Management Corp., the company through which the church holds almost all its commercial assets, is one of the largest owners of farm- and ranchland in the country, including 49 for-profit parcels in addition to the Deseret Ranch. Besides the Bonneville International chain and Beneficial Life, the church owns a 52% holding in ZCMI, Utah's largest department-store chain. All the Latter-day Saints farmland and financial investments are estimated to total some $11 billion, and that the church's nontithe income from its investments exceeds $600 million.
Catholic Church
Roman Catholic holdings dwarf Mormon wealth. But the Catholic Church has 45 times as many members. The Catholic Church has a vast amount of real estate. It owns more land globally than any other organization on the planet, but trophy properties like Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City produce little income and cost a considerable amount of money to maintain. The church owns priceless ancient treasures, like opulent basilicas and a museum-quality art collection and jewelry. The church’s main revenue source comes from parishioner contributions, which amounted to $8 billion in 2003.
Excerpted and adapted from: Joel Osteen's Credo: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate Prosperity
Kingdom Come (No longer on internet; access from link in BIO 301 URLs), Church finances a challenge for pope