ORU pays off Richard; cutting 100 jobs

From Christianity Today magazine:
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"Just days after Oral Roberts University announced that it will give former president Richard Roberts more than $440,000 in severance pay, the Tulsa school said it will be eliminating 100 jobs, about 10% of its workforce, in January 2009. .
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“'Like any business, a university cannot spend more revenue than it collects,' wrote board chair Mart Green and interim president Ralph Fagin in a letter to the ORU family. 'We have a responsibility to all of you to be good stewards of our resources.'”
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The rest of the article can be read here..

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I interviewed ORU's Dean of the School of Theology and Missions, Thomson Mathew, for this blog. That interview can be read here. An interview I did with ORU professor of theology Larry Hart can be read here.

Need a cathedral? Pony up $24.5 million

From The Ministry Report, a Strang Communications publication:

"The property of an Atlanta megachurch founded decades ago by Earl Paulk is on sale for $24.5 million.

"Listed this month, the campus of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill, well known for its neo-Gothic, 6,000-seat sanctuary, is one of the largest religious facilities currently available in the United States, said Matt Messier, a Florida broker and principal of CNL Real Estate Services of Orlando, Fla., according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"In recent years, membership at the Cathedral at Chapel Hill has declined from 10,000 regular attendees to roughly 1,000 after a series of sexual misconduct allegations against Paulk, 81."

The rest of the article can be read here. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's coverage can be read here.

Fox News 5 in Atlanta aired a report that spells out many of Earl Paulk's troubles. That report can be seen here (Part One) and here (Part Two).

A video teaching by Paulk, entitled, "The Sound", can be seen here. It was recorded September 7, 2008. Very concerning.

Charisma magazine editor, Lee Grady, adds his thoughts today in his column, Fire In My Bones:
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"In the case of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill, many parishioners walked out 16 years ago when it became known that Earl Paulk and other staff members were involved in wife-swapping. Paulk created a bizarre culture of secrecy to cover the immorality, which included his affair with a sister-in-law—and resulted in the birth of Donnie Earl (who thought he was Earl Paulk’s nephew until last year). The church has only had a few hundred members in recent years.

"Today, Donnie Earl has embraced the inclusionist doctrines of Oklahoma pastor Carlton Pearson, who left the faith in 2003 and was labeled a heretic by a group of African-American bishops the following year. The younger Paulk now preaches that all people, not just Christians, are saved. He told Charisma last week that the Cathedral 'has expanded to include all of God’s creation—Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, gay, straight, etc.' And this distorted message is broadcast from a pulpit that hosted the premier leaders of the charismatic movement during the 1970s and 1980s."

Lee's column can be read here.