I Thought Only Criminals Took Kickbacks

My church keeps taking in refugees from my old church, Trinity in Miami Gardens. I keep learning new things about Trinity’s leadership, and I am more disgusted than ever.

A week or so back, I heard that someone I knew from Trinity might be visiting New Dawn. I was so glad to hear it; this was a person who worked hard at Trinity, and he was one of the unglamorous, forgotten people the leaders took for granted and ignored.

On Sunday, I was standing at my seat, and I saw a familiar face. There he was. I had expected him to take longer to decide to come. I went over to say how glad I was to see him.

During the service, our pastor called him up for prayer and a word from God. He had tears in his eyes, which was very much unlike him.

We had a powerful, Holy-Spirit-driven service. And when it was over, I saw my friend at the back, and I went over to talk to him. He was waiting for the media people to record a CD of the service for him.

He told me terrible things. He had been a Trinity employee. He said they had forced him to work extra hours without pay, as a “volunteer.” I knew all about that. Other people have told me the same thing. But he said something even more shocking. Trinity deducted ten percent from his paychecks and called it a tithe. And it was not his idea. He resented it.

I was dumbfounded. Every time I think I’ve been too hard on these…I am tempted to call them pigs…people, I find out I haven’t been harsh enough.

They have no anointing. By that I mean they do not have the authority of God. They are off on their own, trying to get rich and famous, doing whatever seems right to them. They don’t have much talent. They’re not very intelligent. They have extremely poor judgment. They are not street smart. But they don’t mind stooping to gutter tricks in order to make themselves seem successful. They’re clever enough to do that. They hire relatively desperate people, they don’t pay their unemployment insurance (so they’re afraid to quit), I am told they require them to work extra hours for nothing, and if what I’ve heard is correct, they take ten percent of their meager pay back as a kickback.

Stealing ten percent from an employee is not tithing. A tithe is voluntary, and it has to be money you give back. It can’t be money which is withheld. God wants you to have the money in your hand and decide to release it. He doesn’t want a creepy preacher with hair implants refusing to pay it to you when he owes you.

For years I’ve been saying that Trinity Church and the other prosperity whores do great damage, not just because they fail to introduce people to the Holy Spirit, but because they turn people against God. I’ve said they hurt people so badly, they turn them away from church. Well now I’ve seen it. New Dawn scoops up former Trinity members who have quit going to church! They don’t always leave Trinity for other churches. They just leave! The cruelty they experience at Trinity causes them to lose faith.

That is astounding. The Trinity people are doing the opposite of what God wants. They are anti-evangelists.

Poor sincere people want to please God. They want to know the truth. And the carnival barkers who run Trinity keep it from happening. They keep God at a distance, and they leave people so hurt they don’t want to try any more!

I have a friend who says the pastor’s son is anointed. That’s not correct. People can have gifts, and they can have anointings. As Perry Stone says, they’re not the same thing. Rich Wilkerson Jr. can preach well. On the talent scale, I would give him a B. But it’s all empty, because God is not behind it. The gift has not been taken away, but there is no anointing. These people do evil in God’s name, so there is no possibility that they have God’s authority.

By their fruit, we know them. Their fruit–hurt, discouraged people–show up at our door like stray dogs. And in our church, God rebuilds them and shows them the love they were denied at Trinity.

Today our pastors are looking at a new building. We have started churches in Honduras, Georgia, and Central Florida. We will probably have one in the Pensacola area. Our services are full of babies. We are growing. We have peace, love, and unity. That stuff doesn’t happen at Trinity. They couldn’t start a lemonade stand. God keeps snuffing out their projects. So they run to the government for grant money. They can’t get God’s blessing, so they have to go to Barack Obama. The godfather of the abortion movement.

I have restrained myself too much. God keeps telling me to be open and honest about the filth, and I don’t always listen. There are probably people who would have been free by now had I been more obedient.

I keep praying for God to depress the handle and flush the people who run Trinity. They need to go. They do so much harm. Let them try their huckster skills at car lots and appliance stores, where their kind usually works. They are not needed in the church. They are ruining people’s lives. Their undeserved jobs are not worth it.