If you’re undecided about how lucrative the church business is, don’t be anymore – because we have hard proof here to show you.
Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo, founder and head pastor of the Kingsway International Christian Centre, collected £5.8m from his congregation in 2015 alone.
And that’s just at one church, in Kent, where the church is headquartered – not to talk of the other denominations across the UK and Africa.
The church is currently embroiled in a fraud investigation, after church trustees invested £5m in a Ponzi scheme run by a former footballer, and lost £3.9m in that deal alone. London police are now investigating the issue, based on a report by UK’s the Charity Commission.
READ ALSO: London Police Investigating KICC For Fraud
The Guardian, reporting on the investigation, revealed the revenue the church raked in during the 2015 calendar year.
This is how the Guardian reported the figure…
Rufus was a leading member of the KICC whose “founder, visionary and senior pastor” is Matthew Ashimolowo, a Nigerian evangelist who preaches a “health and wealth” gospel to a congregation of thousands at his “Prayer Palace” in Kent. The largely African and Caribbean churchgoers are urged to give regular tithes and the church collected £5.8m from them in 2015, according to the latest accounts.
£5.8m from one congregation in one year is nothing to scoff at. Add in whatever they get from the other branches worldwide and you see why the church business is booming.
In 2005, a Charity Commission investigation found this was how their prestigious pastor, Ashimolowo, was spending the church’s funds.
It is the second time the Charity Commission has had to investigate the church. In 2005, when it was known as the King’s Ministries Trust, the regulator ordered Ashimolowo to repay £200,000 after it emerged he used church assets to buy a £13,000 Florida timeshare and spent £120,000 on his birthday celebrations, including £80,000 on a car. New trustees were appointed and Ashimolowo was removed from his role as chief executive.
Consider one more paragraph from the Guardian report…
One regular preacher at the KICC is the multimillionaire US TV evangelist Creflo Dollar who teaches “biblical money management” and tells worshipers “honouring the lord means trusting him enough to release our tight grip on our wallet, and giving generously”. He once asked followers of his own church to pitch in $300 each to buy him a new Gulfstream private jet.
Christianity= business. Period.