Wow! Catholic Fundamentalism is grateful to Joel Osteen, founder of a mighty mega-church, for confirming our thoughts on cash flows produced by some of the better marketing plans in the 43,000 schisms
The story: Joel Osteen’s giant church was robbed of one Sunday’s cash donations. How much did they get? Half a million dollars! That’s only the cash. Contributions by credit card, debit card, or electronic transfers are not included.
A police report of the robbery lets us see the vast profits made from the Gullible Masses by skilled schism-masters. This link has more details: http://www.examiner.com/article/joel-osteen-s-church-theft-opens-can-of-worms-jaws-drop-as-folks-do-the-math
Multiplying the loss of one week’s collections, and adding in Christmas, Easter, and special offerings indicates an annual over sixty million dollars. And, that does not include the Joel Osteen marketing empire. That sells books, tapes, and products in mass merchandisers across America.
The intelligent observer understands: “What! Joel Osteen is squeezing sixty million a year out of his flock! They have average salaries of 40-50,000 a year! The smarter ones are going to say, ‘My family and I need our money a LOT more than Joel Osteen’s mighty mega-church!’ They’ll stop giving as much. Others will feel so angry at being bamboozled into supporting such excess that they’ll pack up and leave.”
That brings us to: “Pride goeth before a fall.” Someone on their management team would have said, “We have suffered less than a 1% loss. Assume it’s an inside job. Let’s hire a very smart investigator, find out who took the money, and say, ‘We understand temptation. Give us four hundred thousand back, sign a non-disclosure form admitting guilt. We will treat the remaining hundred thousand as a severance package, and will forgive you. Otherwise, you go to jail.’ If we go public with this, and people find out how much we’re making, we are going to lose a lot more money!”
On reflection, that may be what happened. The crook, however, may have said “No. I want you to prosecute. I didn’t take the money for my own gain but to show the world how much money you were taking from vastly poorer people while claiming to be their friend. When the jury understands that, how can they find me guilty?”
