Bad News for Mark Jeske - IRS Does Not Allow a Non-Profit To Be a Den of Thieves Endless Conflicts of Interest: SynCons Are Thrivent's "Kept Women"

Mark Jeske's deluxe home is not a parsonage.

WND EXCLUSIVE

ENQUIRER: JOEL OSTEEN CAUGHT IN FINANCIAL SCANDAL

Megapastor 'leveraging the church as a money-making vehicle'

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/enquirer-joel-osteen-caught-in-financial-scandal/#bKT9xYAzxvzD7gCs.99

America’s most popular supermarket tabloid claims famous televangelist Joel Osteen “is caught up in a financial scandal,” using his Houston megachurch to sell his books.

The National Enquirer alleges that New York attorney Richard Garbarini – who previously helped two musicians in a lawsuit against Osteen and his Lakewood Church accusing the church of unauthorized use of a song – is charging that Osteen uses his Houston-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit to hawk his bestsellers.

No conflict of interest here -
WELS-ELS-LCMS offer their premises and periodicals to promote one business - Thrivent.
In return, LCMS alone gets 50 to 60 million dollars a year. Source: Matt Harrison.
Jeske is on the Thrivent board.

“He’s leveraging the church as a money-making vehicle! The church pays (to air) his sermons, which are just de facto infomercials to promote his books,” Garbarini purportedly told the Enquirer. “The Lakewood Church is a shell to funnel people to his website so he can sell his books.”

WND called Lakewood Church three times to ask for comment on the allegations, and each time the person answering offered to connect WND to a spokesperson but disconnected the phone call. The woman answering refused to provide any other contact information.

Time of Grace - book and non-profit program. 

The Lakewood Church website sells several of Osteen’s books, including his latest hot seller, “You Can, You Will.” The product listings do not indicate whether the proceeds of the sales go to the church or to Osteen himself. In 2005, Texas Monthly reported that Osteen contributed “a substantial portion of his earnings” from one of his books to the church.

The following is a screenshot of the Lakewood Church website:

Lakewood Church sells Joel Osteen’s books but does not indicate whether the proceeds go to Osteen or the church

The Internal Revenue Service states, “To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual.”

The Enquirer said, “Osteen’s rep called Garbarini’s allegations ‘false and baseless,’ adding: ‘For more than 50 years Lakewood Church has adhered to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.’”

The tabloid magazine also quotes Daniel Borochoff, head of the nonprofit watchdog Charity Watch, who argued that Garbarini may be right to be concerned.

“A non-profit needs to be acting in the public interest and not in the private personal business interests of Joel Osteen,” he explained. “The church should benefit from the royalties of these books when they are shouldering at least some of the cost of promoting them. If it isn’t getting something back, it oughta be. It’s too much a promotional vehicle for him.”

People Magazine reported that Osteen stopped taking his $200,000 salary from the church in 2005. His net worth is estimated at $40 million, and he reportedly lives in a 17,000 square-foot Houston mansion valued at $10.5 million. The home has six bedrooms, six bathrooms, three elevators, five fireplaces, a guest house and pool house.

Osteen home

The New York Times reported Lakewood Church – former home of the Houston Rockets – features a 16,000-seat arena, three enormous television screens, two waterfalls, enough carpeting to cover nine football fields, a café with wireless Internet access, 32 video game kiosks and a vault to hold the church offering. In March of this year, burglars reportedly stole at least $600,000 from the church safe, which was a portion of the donation from just one weekend of services.

Lakewood Church

According to the National Enquirer, former Illinois deputy attorney general Floyd Perkins said Osteen isn’t violating any laws.

“Typically the person who runs the church writes the rules,” he said. “My experience is that many people who participate have no idea there are no rules at all. It really becomes an ethical question rather than a legal one.”

• 
• Text smaller
• Text bigger

     457

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/enquirer-joel-osteen-caught-in-financial-scandal/#bKT9xYAzxvzD7gCs.99

Mark Jeske cries out - "But I am fifth generation WELS."

Mutatis mutandis - WELS, LCMS, ELS, CLC Following the Same Plunge into Nothingness - Aping ELCA and the Failed Church Growth Churches

The frozen chosen -
having danced with the Spirit of this Age,
bound to be a widow in the Age to Come.

Mutatis mutandis is (literally) Latin for “with those things having been changed which need to be changed.” However, it is more often translated or understood to mean “the necessary changes having been made”. It essentially indicates that new terms have been substituted or that the reader should note any differences from the original and take them into consideration.

Has the Church of England Finally Kicked the Bucket?

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
December 17, 2014

http://www.virtueonline.org/has-church-england-finally-kicked-bucket

"Is the Church of England busted flush," writes an Anglican priest.

"Of course the Church of England is busted flush and it has been so for decades: from the 1960s when it gave up believing the New Testament, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth and Our Lord's miracles; through the 1970s and 1980s when it replaced the matchless liturgy of the English Church with trash and doggerel," writes the Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen.

Continuing into the 21st century and Archbishop Rowan Williams' last sermon before he retired wherein he stated, "The Church has a lot of catching up to do with secular mores."

Whatever happened to 'Be ye not conformed to this world...' as St. Paul urges. But of course the Apostle would be deemed homophobic by today's theological and ecclesiastical standards, deemed also hate-filled and more.
According to Mullen's First Law of Ecclesiastical Polity, which states that every succeeding Archbishop of Canterbury is bound to be worse than his predecessor, Justin "Oil" Welby has cancelled the 2018 Lambeth Conference of all the bishops from the Anglican Church worldwide.

Why?

"Because he can't face the prospect of all those wonderful, faithful, orthodox, devout and true bishops from Africa coming to London and telling him that he's got it all wrong about homosexuality and women in the episcopate."
So what will happen?

VOL believes that the Church of England is following the same disastrous trajectory as The Episcopal Church, which having brokered women and sodomy into the Church in all its forms, is now, as a result, shrinking. It will vanish within a generation.

TEC is now little more than a progressive version of a Country Club with a creed held together by a bunch of mainly upwardly mobile rich and very rich folk who keep it afloat by endowing buildings and kneelers unto the next and possibly last generation.

Witness the latest manifestation of its own decline by a group picked to tell us all about where TEC is now and where it might be going. It's an admission of failure but couched in episcobabble.

Members of a Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (TREC) recently presented a 73-page report, which says that the Church's structures and governance processes have not yet responded to the profound changes occurring across the country and around the world.

INTERPRETATION. We are out of touch with the country and world (and reality), but didn't mention the fact that they are also out of touch with "the faith once for all delivered to the saints." That never arose. No mention of sin and salvation, no mention of Scripture's authority. Nope, none of the above.

Then they made the shocking revelation that a shrinking church no longer requires two bodies to govern it; just one. The HOB and the HOD would become one voice. The fancy word is unicameral.

Then it fessed up that vast numbers of parishes are no longer financially self-sufficient with many disconnected from neighbors housed in expensive buildings. They also confessed that ordinands leaving seminary cannot find fulltime stipended parishes and face a mountain of debt. A church salary will not be enough to pay back loans or to live on, especially if the priest has a wife and a couple of kids.

Then came the Great Admission -- the inclusive church has failed to address what it calls "pressing issues." Really. The high and mighty church of inclusivity, diversity, and sodomy hasn't been able to attract new members! All the hoped for hype about gays mincing and dancing into Episcopal churches has not materialized. Oh, Crew (or is that Clay), wherefore art thou? What hath gone wrong? Speak up. Tell us please what hath sodomy wrought or done to fill empty pews! Oh Gene, Oh Otis, Oh Frank, tell us please.

And the Church of England wants to follow in the footsteps of TEC! What fools! Women priests and women bishops have not led a soul to Christ in TEC and won't in the C of E, either.

Meantime TEC and the Archbishop of Canterbury want to tell the rest of the Anglican Communion how to behave, how to be nicer to gays, and to include them in everything because the culture demands it.

Accommodating to the world is precisely what we as Christians are told not to do,.."Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." -- Romans 12:2 (NIV)

What, if anything, about the Episcopal Church pleases God and does His will? Not much, if anything.
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is now the new reality with over 100,000 members.
As Mullen observes of the CofE...it has now become a shameful, politically-correct, utterly secularized, completely compromised hypocritical, PC soft left, time-serving, contemptible shambles.

The sad truth is he only had to look across the Atlantic 20 years ago to see it coming. It's been staring the CofE in the face all that time. The Episcopal Church -- and now the C. of E. - are frankly apostate -- and proud of it.
END

Funny, Harmless, and Odd Additions to the Soil - From Nope to No Way! Old Wives' Tales versus Creation Gardening

The people who make and market Epsom Salt have a long list of gardening applications for this highly attractive compound. It is pure white and melts instantly into water. Martha Stewart made a tape on scratching it into the soil (!) - a bit like scratching soap into your skin for a shower. If the soil is "old" it may need a little Epsom, but probably not. The problem is how the individual elements move into the roots rather than moving on down into the water table.

Epsom Salt makes a great foot soak and serves as the base for almost all bath salts (the legal kind). The myth assumes that inorganic compounds are going to add to the soil rather than pass through.

Adding salt to an asparagus bed is an old custom that fills many with wonder. They wonder why. Here are some posts on the topic of salt and asparagus. Salt will kill weeds and may be much better than Round Up for sidewalk cracks harboring weeds, but it is not good for the soil or any creature in the soil.

Pre-emergents (Preem) are a fancy version of salt. When I heard one gardener say he started with Preem, I wondered about the toxicity of his soil. Any pre-emergent will kill germinating seeds, so it is inherently anti-life.

Other dubious weed efforts include vinegar, Dawn detergent, and torching. Vinegar is the least dangerous but probably quite temporary, adding a wee bit of acid. Dawn detergent?! I prefer nuclear detonations to Dawn, which can only serve as an indiscriminate killer. Torching has the advantage of being limited in damage - unless dry plants cause a rapidly spreading fire.

All these are hysterical reactions to weeds. Understand them. Love them. Take one to lunch. When I see goosefoot, I eat the leaves rather than reaching for RoundUp.

Crab grass was brought over to America as a grain crop, so either mulch on top of it or let it grow for the seed-eating birds. Regular mowing will diminish crab grass in the lawn to almost nothing. Killing a big crab grass plant with some kind of poison will leave a big dead zone in the lawn.

Dandelions are herbs, not weeds. Your attitude makes them weeds. They are also diminished by regular mowing. They make a nutritious salad unless you use RoundUp as a dressing.

How many people have solemnly advised me to put egg shells in the soil to build up the calcium? When I objected that they did not break down, each person said, "But I was told it was good for the soil! Why not?" That was long before "I read it somewhere on the Internet."

The assumption is that calcium is good for plants so why not add a calcium source? Why not bones, I wonder?

The answer is too easy - earthworms manufacture usable calcium with their unique calciferous glands.

A shocking number of gardening books in print are full of bosh and baloney. All of the errors center on a misunderstanding of plants growing in soil. The key to plant health is soil health, the complex dependencies of microscopic life. If the soil is teeming with life, all the elements needed by the plants will pass between the soil creatures in a vast swap meet where the benefits add up when the gardener follows the precepts of Creation.

This swap meet depends on movement from earthworms and other taxis of the soil--and strangely--the roots offering carbon to the fungi in exchange for the nutrients and water needed for the plant. This exchange is more complicated than a Walmart Supercenter at rush hour, and continues at full speed without human management, thanks to divine design.

Our helper understands this. He came over to rake a huge pile  of leaves around the dead tree, expanding the mulched area. I had a new pile of newspapers and they needed some leaves to hold them down. He looked at our Three Sisters Garden (corn, beans, pumpkins) and said, "I can imagine all the life beneath that mulch we put down." [GJ - Note the advice in the Three Sisters link. "Turn the compost"! Ha - the soil creatures do that...no extra charge.]

That is all we needed to do, add leaves, wood mulch, and newspapers - not dump calcium or any other chemical on the soil. True, the soil will establish its balance in time, but why challenge Creation to overcome our foolishness?

Dubious uses for used coffee grounds.

The list I found for coffee grounds was full of untested claims, reminding me of Mrs. Ichabod's enthusiastic attempt to use salad dressing as a furniture polish on the kitchen cabinets. They were shiny, but the entire kitchen smelled like a giant salad. That was long ago, so maybe I can bring it up again - just for fun.

Stories like that are useful: counter-battery, as the Army would say. Knock out the shellfire before it has much effect. One memory cancels out the other.

I love the smell of coffee. I used to open the coffee barrel in the bakery basement to inhale the aroma of the Yuban and Maxwell House coffee stored there. I can picture coffee grounds being used to absorb odor. I put my used grounds in the compost, with the old tea bags, simply because non-food organic matter is going to feed the compost creatures, adding moisture and various elements they can break down.

Coffee is not likely to have any long-lasting magical  effects on the soil, but any organic amendment will help in time. Doubtless my neighbors wonder about my regular visits to the compost pile, but the dividends will be evident this summer - when sweet corn fanciers will show up faster than distant relatives after a big lottery win.

One does not simply grow Silver Queen corn.

Gardening has two great rewards. One is the constant production of roses, which is so easy to accomplish only a few enjoy its benefits. The rest are spraying, digging, weeding, and planning to turn the rose bed into an outdoor barbecue.

The other great reward is sweet corn, which retains its sweetness for a short time before turning to starch. Anyone who has eaten old corn on the cob knows the sensation - eating library paste instead of that heavenly combination of solar energy and soil wealth.

Sweet corn is a heavy feeder. The impatient want fast sweet corn, and those varieties are available.There is nothing like Silver Queen, long-growing, tender, white, and sweet. Sweet corn fans have joined me in praising Silver Queen.

Sweet corn is not hard to grow, but its characteristics need to be honored. Few plants demand so much sun, so much water, and so much soil nutrition. Sweet corn is the ultimate heavy feeder, used in experiments by Dow  Chemical to deplete nitrogen from the soil. Sweet corn is also one of the best solar energy converters, its efficiency exceeded by sunflowers.

My ingredients for the Silver Queen Three Sisters Garden are:

• Jackson Mulch, prepared months in advance and kept in place for the garden.
• Additional mulch - compost built over the last two years.
• Pumpkins growing in the rows to deter varmints of all varieties, human and animal.
• Pole beans growing up the stalks to promote nitrogen in the soil.
• Clay soil.
• Uncle Jim's red wigglers.

Should the Hit-and-Run Bishop Do the Time for the Crime?Virtue Online

MARYLAND: Suffragan Bishop Cook Should Do Time for Her Crime. Bishop Sutton Should Resign

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
December 30, 2014

http://www.virtueonline.org/maryland-suffragan-bishop-cook-should-do-time-her-crime-bishop-sutton-should-resign

It was Saturday, 2:37pm when officers were called to the 5700 block of Roland Avenue for a report of a car accident. When police arrived, avid cyclist, Thomas Palermo, 41, was lying on the side of the road still alive and barely breathing. He was immediately rushed to Sinai Hospital where he later died from his injuries. He leaves behind a wife and two young children.

The motorist, meanwhile, had fled the scene and returned only after she was reportedly chased down by other cyclists. Police described the driver as a 58-year-old woman who had been heading south on Roland Avenue. They said the decision about whether to charge her would be made after consulting with the city state's attorney's office.

The person responsible for this reprehensible act was none other than Maryland Suffragan Bishop Heather Cook. According to newspaper reports, she fled the scene and was chased by a number of cyclists forcing her to return to the scene of her crime. Was she drunk? Police reports do not say.

Moncure Lyon and other bystanders had stopped to help the badly injured cyclist when the Subaru with heavy windshield damage drove by. Lyon wondered: Was this the car that had hit Thomas Palermo and left the scene?

Lyon jumped on his bike and pedaled in pursuit. When he caught up with the car at a stoplight, "I knew it had to be the car," he said. "The extent of the windshield damage was considerable -- it was pushed in, and there was a hole."

He asked the driver if she was OK.

"She said 'Yes,' and before I could see anything, she pulled ahead," Lyon said.

Lyon said the car turned into the gated Elkridge Estates. He said a security guard allowed the vehicle to enter but stopped Lyon.

This is not Bishop Cook's first run-in with Maryland law enforcement. In 2010 she racked up an impressive list of infractions: Police said Heather Elizabeth Cook, 53, of Cabin Creek Road, was charged with marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession, driving while under the influence of alcohol, reckless driving, negligent driving and other traffic offenses. Police refuse to release report on accident, saying it could jeopardize their investigation. However the car in the crash has same vehicle tag number that was recorded in her 2010 DUI arrest.

Police said Cook's car was stopped on state Route 318, near Greenfield Court, where deputies found that the front passenger tire of her car had shredded and fallen off the rim.

Cook performed poorly on field sobriety tests, according to police. Her blood alcohol level registered at .27, more than three times the legal limit in Maryland.

According to Baltimore Police spokesman Det.Jeremy Silbert, a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey were found in her car. The whiskey bottle was nearly empty. They also recovered a metal smoking device. The woman was clearly well over the limit.

Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton has stated that Bishop Cook "did leave the scene initially, but returned after about 20 minutes to take responsibility for her actions." The truth is she only returned when she was reportedly chased down by other cyclists. Leaving aside competing claims from various commenters that Bishop Cook waited 45 minutes, not 20, before returning, and that she was tracked down by cyclists who followed her car, it would appear that Cook left Palermo, who was alive after the impact, to die on the side of the road. Some bishop.

Sutton said that because of the nature of the accident, which could result in criminal charges, he placed Bishop Cook on administrative leave, effective immediately. "I will meet shortly with the Standing Committee to discuss ways we can move forward. Also, I have decided to delay the beginning of my sabbatical to Jan. 24 to be pastorally present in this difficult time."

One hopes that the wife of Mr. Palermo sues the diocese, including Sutton, for everything it has. One canon lawyer told VOL that lawyers could go after Sutton for "failure to supervise" and get big bucks from the diocese.

She is not the first drunken, besotted bishop, of course. During his reign as Bishop of New Hampshire, sodomite Bishop Gene Robinson checked himself into rehab, declaring he was one. Carolyn Tanner Irish Bishop of Utah, was another divorcee and alcoholic. There have been others who have concealed their alcoholism. I briefly worked for the Bishop of Virginia, Robert Bruce Hall, a raging alcoholic who could barely get through a Eucharist service before hitting the bottle. None of them got caught in a hit and run accident as this woman did.

Cook also disclosed that she was being supported in her vocation by her "steady companion, Mark" whom she described as a "passionate Anglican." She said they reconnected after having dated in their twenties but found each other again two years ago. It has been a great blessing, she said. The question is, is she living with him without benefit of marriage in which case would this not constitute sexual sin? The old word is fornication. Did Bishop Sutton know this? Was the Standing Committee informed of her living arrangements? Has she ever denied that she is living with a man who is not her husband?

One piece of good news is that if Sutton ever entertained any hopes he might be the next Presiding Bishop, Cook has taken care of that. It will probably go to Bishop Michael B. Curry of North Carolina, a better choice for PB anyway, presuming that a black man can be Presiding Bishop in the current political climate.

At a deeper level, one has to ask how and why Episcopalians elect bishops from the bottom of the ecclesiastical barrel. Part of it, of course, is political correctness. The laity have been so dumbed down from the pulpit and made to feel their guilt as middle class white folk, that they elect blacks, gays and lesbians, married, divorced or whatever, in the name of a false compassion and a false inclusion. (They elected Jefferts Schori, who revealed she had had minimal theological education, but she did have a Ph.D. in science and was a woman). Whoever said they were the right qualifications? She has since proven that her theological credentials mean nothing with pronouncements about the resurrection and Jesus that are less than orthodox.

Episcopalians have been led down the primrose path of inclusivity and diversity (the Bible be damned) and told to feel the pain of men and women who might otherwise get jobs as subway ticket punchers on the NYC metro, providing, of course, that a machine had not already replaced them.

Recent elections in Central Florida, Pittsburgh and Southwestern Virginia resulted in above average choices, but barely. They were straight white males with better than average theological educations, married to women and presumably don't drink and drive.

Heather Cook should be thrown under the bus...for her own good. No second chances this time. No high-priced lawyers using political correctness and her "role" as a bishop to get a lesser sentence. She needs to do time for killing another human being. The diocese should cough up millions to Palermo's kids to cover their education and a future without a father.

Sutton should step down as an incompetent bishop for not knowing about her past. We now must wonder who else is "in the closet" among his priests that could further embarrass the diocese and The Episcopal Church.

CORRECTION: VOL has since learned that Cook did disclose her past drinking and driving violations.. Here is my correction. Citing the Christian value of forgiveness, officials of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said that Bishop Heather Cook disclosed her 2010 drunk driving and marijuana arrest, but that they decided it should not disqualify her from consideration to serve as bishop. REALLY. Of all the available options for bishop in TEC they pick a totally unqualified, overweight, single woman, with a boyfriend and a history of serious drinking as Suffragan Bishop of a prestigious diocese who wouldn’t know Jesus if she fell over him drunk. The Standing Committee could have done better had they picked ten random priests faces and stuck them on a dart board!

Abundant Food Brings All the Birds Together in the Winter

The nuthatch is purpose-built to harvest bugs in the bark.
The upside-down bird has an advantage in feeding,
as the Creator shows us all winter.

A cold spell has arrived again in Arkansas. Last winter was snowy and icy - school was canceled more than once.

The birds had suet for food for some time, and sunflower seed in the bird feeder near the window. The squirrel feeder on the tree meant corn was scattered on the ground, and that attracts the ground feeding birds. I decided to dump out the corn ears left in the bag and spread some cracked corn around.

Our yard turned into a convention for birds. We had flock of mourning doves feeding, then a flock of starlings, plus cardinals together on the ground, enjoying corn. I was happy to see a chickadee flit over to the sunflower seeds as I watched out the window. He grabbed a seed and left. In time the birds will adjust to a birdwatcher a few inches from them as they drop by the feeder.

I simply use a plastic dish or ten.

With the window open, their chirping by the feeder comes into the room with the fresh air. In Phoenix we often had birds in the house as well. I was in and out of the house, enjoying the backyard and the pool, and the dogs followed. Invariably the door was open for a time, and cross-bills came inside. They were not happy, and Mrs. Ichabod was even less happy. I had to herd birds outside again, which was not that difficult.

Birds stay away from new feeders, because they do not trust anything new and strange. They become used to feeding in certain areas, and return there in hope. When birds are fed all winter, they return to the same places for bugs, worms, and seeds during the spring and summer. Bushes and trees provide nesting areas, and they look for sources of water for bathing and preening as well.

Winter feeding favors spring nesting.

If we had consistent weather below freezing I would run a bird-bath warmer - don't laugh - so they could bathe and preen in the coldest weather. If the smirking readers could see birds lined up for a winter bath, taking turns, they would be the first to buy a unit in the frozen north. I set that up in Midland, Michigan, and it was fun to watch. I put a gallon of fresh water in the bath each day. The colder the weather, the more the birds wanted to bathe.