God Wants Me to Be Rich

Who will save us? Who will lift us up from crushing credit-card debt and resetting mortgage payments and impending foreclosure, from increasing gas prices and decreasing health-insurance coverage? We are a nation stumbling through our worst financial crisis in a generation and our worst housing market in a lifetime. And so we come, seeking gentle salvation, inspiring prayers, steadying words, soothing notions, and calming thoughts that will allow us to become, in Joel Osteen's words, "victors, not victims."

We are in Greensboro, North Carolina, making our way into the downtown arena through the hot, buggy air, to worship with the pastor who will save us, the man anointed, by one of his congregants, as "Reverend Feelgood." Sixteen thousand will file in this evening, as have millions more to coliseums, concert venues, and baseball stadiums around the country -- all, in a way, his churches. (View a slideshow that tallies the budgets of some of the biggest churches.)

We are a diverse, representative swath of troubled America: families struggling under debt, husbands and wives seeking reconciliation, young couples on first dates, children dragged by pious grandparents who promise them popcorn and BibleMan action figures. It is religion as escapism, criticized throughout the Bible Belt as "Christianity lite" or "prosperity gospel." But this murmuring crowd, slouching toward a kinder, gentler salvation, is a more telling indicator of the state of our union than consumer durables purchased or capital goods ordered. Unemployment they know; they don't need to wait for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to publish a monthly number. O, but come to Joel, lift your hands to Jesus, banish your negative thoughts, and you can find in these dark times a beacon.

If, in this country, there is great hurting, then Osteen is here to soothe that suffering. He does not wish that pain on any of us, and the sight or thought of it will bring forth from him great torrents of tears -- his eyes clamped shut, his fingers pressed into narrow eye sockets, his lips pulled back over pink gums as he grimaces. The crying has become a visual touchstone of an Osteen sermon, the born-again equivalent of James Brown's pre-encore collapse from "exhaustion."

Joel feels our pain and has made himself wealthy (reportedly earning $13 million for his last book advance alone) and his church prosperous ($75 million and counting in annual revenue) by urging us to let go of it, to turn it over to God, to accept God's favor so that we may be as prosperous as Joel.

There was always a strain of American Puritanism that pointed to Scripture as justification for asserting that wealth is somehow godly. But ever since evangelical Christianity separated from the mainline faiths in the early 20th ­century, some preachers have gone further and linked their focus on personal piety to financial success. The big-tent revivals of the 1930s promised the dust-bowl destitute the possibility of finding Jesus and their next meal just by listening to a fire-and-brimstone message. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, televangelists like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart made prosperity gospel big business, capitalizing on that era's economic uncertainties to win over a new generation of acolytes, before those ministries were brought down by scandal.

Osteen is one of a new breed of televangelists -- Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and Creflo Dollar are also rising stars -- who are preaching a less sanctimonious, more inclusive message. His church is in that part of the economy that thrives in troubled times, that can count on full pews when wallets are empty and an ever more receptive audience if we do go into a full-on recession.

Osteen hasn't necessarily tailored his message for the downturn. Instead, he has continued his feel-good preaching, his exhortations to focus on the positive and banish negative thoughts, his reminders that God wants you to have a good job, a beautiful home, and decent cash flow. His vast ministry has become, in effect, shelter from the storm. "God wants you to have a big life," Osteen reminds his flock. "That is his blessing. God has a big dream for your life."

We live in a time of miraculous congregations. Osteen's Lakewood Church, in Houston, is the largest in the United States, with 45,000 regular weekly attendees and 7 million more tuning in. His television show is the most-watched inspirational program in America and is seen in 100 countries around the world. He has sold 7 million copies of his two books, 'Your Best Life Now' and 'Become a Better You.' Podcasts of his sermons are downloaded 4.5 million times a month. He preaches to more than 15,000 people at a time in the basketball arena turned sanctuary that is Lakewood Church. His pulpit stands near the spot where Hakeem Olajuwon helped the Houston Rockets win two consecutive N.B.A. titles. But the Rockets, who have since moved across town, never put as many people in the seats as Osteen does.

Osteen will tell you that his success is a result of God’s favor, that his message is God's message, and that all that he has achieved is a blessing from God. Clearly, he is more than just an inspiring pastor; he is also a master marketer and -- pardon me for saying this, Joel -- a damn good chief executive.

He presides over an empire that takes in tens of millions of dollars a year and has been growing at a boom-time pace. (Though Osteen gives a significant portion of his book and CD earnings to the church, his take is still ample enough to allow him and his family to live in 5,000 square feet of leopard-skinned luxury in one of Houston's tonier neighborhoods.) Rough economic times, Osteen believes, make the business of saving souls that much richer. "I would think that our message would have increased relevancy in a time of economic uncertainty. I think people want to know that God is taking care of you. As it gets darker, I think the brighter message shines."

Joel's father, John Osteen, was a pastor who dissociated himself from the Southern Baptist Church to start his own congregation, Lakewood, in an abandoned feedstore in 1959. It was John who started the family march toward a more gentle Jesus, focusing on the goodness and love of God and downplaying the Old Testament anger and wrath. One of John's prevailing themes, and the underpinning for much of Lakewood's current message, can be found in one of his sermons: "It's God's will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It's God's will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt. It's God's will for you to live in health and not in sickness all the days of your life."

Joel is the second youngest of six siblings, and the one considered least likely to take the pulpit. To say that he was a quiet child would be an understatement. The diminutive boy -- he would grow six inches after he graduated from high school -- was easy to underestimate. As his lifelong friend Johnny McGowan says, "On the basketball court, guys would take a look at Joel and say, 'I'll guard him,' and then Joel would go right by them."

After a year at Oral Roberts University, Osteen dropped out to return to Houston, in part to care for his mother, Dodie, who was then recovering from cancer (a miracle regularly cited at Lakewood Church). He then married his wife, Victoria, and took a formal position at Lakewood, helping out with the television show and the design of the platform, as the stage around the pulpit is known, and eventually becoming the producer of Lakewood's Sunday service. "Victoria would kid me because I would spend four hours adjusting a light," Osteen says. "I learned you can't separate the message from the presentation of that message."

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