Note to Lord

The money changers are back in the Temple. Big Time.

In Anchorage early in October, the doors opened onto a soaring white canvas dome with room for a soccer field and a 400-meter track. Its prime-time hours are already rented well into 2011.

Business Ventures Nearby is a cold-storage facility leased to Sysco, a giant food-distribution corporation, and beside it is a warehouse serving a local contractor and another food service company.

The entrepreneur behind these businesses is the ChangePoint ministry, a 4,000-member nondenominational Christian congregation that helped develop and finance the sports dome. It has a partnership with Sysco’s landlord and owns the warehouse.

...

Among the nation’s so-called megachurches — those usually Protestant congregations with average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more — ChangePoint’s appetite for expansion into many kinds of businesses is hardly unique. An analysis by The New York Times of the online public records of just over 1,300 of these giant churches shows that their business interests are as varied as basketball schools, aviation subsidiaries, investment partnerships and a limousine service.

Piety for Profit - or do I mean prophesy for profit, is hardly a new trend in the religion racket. Presumably the idea offended Jesus enough that he scourged those offending money changers out of the Temple, but that doesn't carry much weight with ChangePoint or its fellow religious racketeers. They have more rationalizations than Tony Soprano.

“We want to turn people on to Jesus Christ through this process,” said Karl Clauson, who has led the church for more than eight years.

That's a pretty good one Karl. Mind if we check your pockets?

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