Word: osteen
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Call it the desegregation of the megachurches - and consider it a possible pivotal moment in the nation's faith. Such rapid change in such big institutions "blows my mind," says Emerson. Some of the country's largest churches are involved: the very biggest, Joel Osteen's Lakewood Community Church in Houston (43,500 members), is split evenly among blacks, Hispanics and a category containing whites and Asians. Hybels' Willow Creek is at 20% minority. Megachurches serve only 7% of American churchgoers, but they are extraordinarily influential: Willow Creek, for instance, networks another 12,000 smaller congregations through its Willow Creek...
...decade when power shifted from organizations to individuals, when writers became cheap and librarians dear, when giving things away was the most successful business model, these men used their ingenuity to organize, connect and map our planet. For these reasons, and the fact that they can keep "Joel Osteen" from popping up every time you try to find me online, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are TIME's Persons of the 2000s. It turns out writing like this is totally easy. (See pictures of the worst decade ever...
...Joel Osteen made it big in the boom times, wooing millions with the message that, as he says, "God wants you to have a big life" - or, as his critics put it, God wants you to be rich. When the financial crisis hit, some analysts blamed preachers of the so-called Prosperity Gospel for helping bring it on - and predicted that their churches' popularity would tank along with parishioners' portfolios. But Osteen, at least, is going strong: donations at Lakewood Church in Houston, where he is senior pastor, are steady. Attendance is up 10%. He preached to a sold...
...from the proliferating preachers of the "prosperity gospel," whose God wants to "prosper" you. In 2006, the runaway bestseller The Secret promised that you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, simply by using your mental powers to "attract" it. The poor listened to upbeat preachers like Joel Osteen and took out subprime mortgages. The rich paid for seminars led by motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and repackaged those mortgages into securities sold around the world. (Read "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking...
...hardly unusual for Bill Clinton to spend Sunday mornings making the rounds at black churches in primary states. But the Sunday before Hillary Clinton's squeaker victory in Texas found her husband ensconced with daughter Chelsea at Joel Osteen's Houston megachurch, which is white, black and Latino. Why the change in venues? Polls by the progressive group Faith in Public Life show that Hillary has support among white Evangelical Democrats, winning them 57% to 35% over Barack Obama in Ohio, for example. The former President didn't address Osteen's congregation, but the preacher acknowledged him from the pulpit...