Trinity Foundation

Snake image from Pixabay, screen shot of Benny Hinn on Daystar, Joni Table Talk

Teflon televangelist Benny Hinn is back in the international crusades numbers game again.

From July 30, 2025: “Beloved Partner… Right now, our ministry is making preparations for a massive tent revival in England, where we expect tens of thousands (really??) to gather for a divine encounter with Jesus. Simultaneously, I’m about to depart for Ghana, where I will minister to over 25,000 pastors (is that true??), equipping them to carry the fire of the Gospel to their nations.”

AND from June 30, 2025, “My Precious Partner (if he only knew)… What we have just witnessed in Uganda is nothing short of a divine visitation—a historic moment in the Kingdom of God. Over the course of three unforgettable nights, more than 1.5 million people attended (who was doing the counting??), and one single service drew a staggering crowd of 700,000 hungry souls (you don’t say… ??) crying out to the Lord. The atmosphere was saturated with worship, miracles, and the unmistakable presence of the Holy Spirit…  Over 15 million people watched (if truth be told, how many??) the crusade via television and social media platforms.”

Background and Broken Promises

Before 1991 Benny was already performing healing “crusades” to sold-out crowds in auditoriums and other churches, and soon thereafter, not just in America but in other countries around the world.

Inside Edition did an exposé about Hinn in 1993.  Hinn promised Trinity Foundation president Ole Anthony and Inside Edition cameras he would have medical verification of the healings before televising testimonials (he didn’t) and he said he would stop driving a Mercedes Benz and start driving a Honda (he didn’t).

He told his congregation “I think I’m going to stop preaching healing and start preaching Jesus.” (he didn’t) A month later he also said, “Preachers who live in big houses and drive big cars have to reexamine their calling.  Some of God’s saints lived in caves!”  (he never stopped living in mansions, either).

False Prophecies: Hinn made several unfulfilled prophecies during the 1990s, including predictions about the timing of Fidel Castro’s death and the destruction of the homosexual community in America.

After working undercover in Hinn’s ministry and conducting nighttime dumpster diving at his brother Chris Hinn’s travel agency, Trinity Foundation and Pete Evans assisted CNN with an exposé about Hinn in 1996-1997.

In April 2001, HBO aired a documentary entitled A Question of Miracles that focused on Hinn and another televangelist. The film’s director, Antony Thomas, said they did not find any cases where people were actually healed by Hinn (Wikipedia).

In November 2004, a a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television show The Fifth Estate did a special titled “Do You Believe in Miracles” on the apparent transgressions committed by Hinn’s ministry.  In particular, the investigation highlighted the fact that the most desperate miracle seekers who attend a Hinn crusade—the quadriplegics, the brain-damaged, virtually anyone with a visibly obvious physical condition—are never allowed on stage (also cited by Wikipedia).

In 2002 and 2004, Trinity Foundation assisted Dateline NBC with exposés on Hinn, highlighting his ostentatious preaching/“healing” and his lavish lifestyle.

In 2017, Hinn’s nephew Costi Hinn criticized Benny’s prosperity gospel –the lavish mansions, the expensive cars, etc. and later came out with a book titled God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel with more details on the topic.

In September 2019, Benny Hinn said he no longer believed in prosperity theology and decided to stop teaching it. (he didn’t)

We have more to say about Hinn.  Next month’s Trinity Foundation video will focus on Hinn and we hope to unveil our “Vault” project with court documents, government reports, and documents we’ve found in the trash over the years.

(Screenshot: Right to left, documentary filmmaker Nathan Apffel, Trinity Foundation president Pete Evans and Trinity Foundation staff investigator Barry Bowen discuss Samaritan’s Purse’s Alaskan operations in Episode Two.)

Trinity Foundation collaborated with filmmaker Nathan Apffel on a seven-part documentary series called The Religion Business, which was released this week.

The wide-ranging documentary focuses on religious fraud and offers a withering examination of the failures of megachurch/ prosperity gospel ministries with contributions from scholars, legal experts and journalists.

The series is available for purchase on the film’s website before reaching Amazon, Apple TV and Roku streaming platforms in two weeks.

Filmmaker Nathan Apffel grew up attending a non-denominational church, was part of the church group, and in his adulthood began to seriously question how and why churches operate the way they do: “I need to ask the toughest questions of my own faith. You might ask, ‘Why?’ Because I hold my faith institution to the highest standards and judgment begins with the Church. All I can say for the moment is good intentions can have devastating consequences. The wolves will feed, the saints will sacrifice, and rivers of endless money will flow.”

Continue reading “Documentary Series “The Religion Business” Exposes Corruption in Megachurches and Ministries”

(Photo: Sammy-Sander/Pixabay)

Trinity Foundation has identified more than 60 religious non-profit organizations with assets totaling almost $1.8 billion that have stopped filing Form 990 information returns with the IRS.

990s disclose program services expenses and other important financial information, helping informed donors evaluate the effectiveness of non-profit organizations.

Program services are determined by subtracting fundraising and management expenses from total expenses to derive the amount spent on the non-profit organization’s mission.

When Charity Navigator rates non-profit organizations, it deducts points for charities that spend less than 70 percent on their mission.

As an example, in 2023 Hal Lindsey Website Ministries program services expenses reached only 55.96 percent, and as a result they received 7 points out of 25 from Charity Navigator. That year Hal Lindsey’s wife Jo Lynn Lindsey received $1,238,924 in compensation which was almost a third of the ministry’s spending and more than half the ministry’s revenue. The ministry had $23 million in assets at the end of 2023, including more than $3 million in cash.

Following Hal Lindsey’s 2024 death, Trinity Foundation reported, “From 2013 to 2023, Hal and his wife JoLynne Lindsey received $18.5 million of compensation from Hal Lindsey Website Ministries. During those eleven years, the ministry spent only $1,105,360 in charitable assistance to groups and individuals.”

However, American churches and related organizations classified as integrated auxiliaries are not required by law to disclose program services expenses or billions of dollars of assets to their donors or to the IRS.

Therefore, if Hal Lindsey Website Ministries was a church and didn’t file 990s, donors would have no way of knowing about the massive accumulation of wealth from ministry donations.

Continue reading “Dark Money: Billions of Dollars of Ministry Assets No Longer Reported to IRS”

(Screenshot: Garth Coonce, founder of TCT Ministries, died in 2023. Coonce acquired a beach condo from Dove Communications for $100.)

In a rare disciplinary action, the IRS has revoked the tax exemption of religious cable TV broadcaster Dove Communications, Inc. after ministry leadership engaged in excess benefit transactions and other misconduct.

The IRS announcement was reported in the latest issue of the Internal Revenue Bulletin which also revealed that Center of New Life Philosophy  Church & Education (Akron, Ohio), Praise Place (Kentwood, Michigan), and Live Ministries (Rocklin, California) lost their tax exemptions due to violations of the United States tax code.

Dove Communications is an affiliate organization of TCT Ministries, based in Marion, Illinois, which broadcasts the cable channel TCT.

Normally, the reason for the revocation would be a secret because IRS revocation letters sent to penalized non-profit organizations are subject to government secrecy due to the 1974 Privacy Act. Investigative reporters are unable to obtain IRS revocation letters with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

However, TCT Ministries disclosed in their 2022 and 2023 Form 990s that ministry leadership engaged in excess benefit transactions and litigation exposed some of the ministry’s financial abuses.

In January of 2024, MinistryWatch reported, “TCT Ministries, a nonprofit, faith-based television network, has sued four of its board members for abusing their board positions and violating their fiduciary duties for their own financial benefit.”

Continue reading “IRS Revokes Tax Exemption of Religious Broadcaster”

(Screenshot: Shannon Hurley giving a video tour of his church building under construction in Uganda.)

In recent years, millions of dollars have been donated to Sufficiency of Scripture Ministries, an American non-profit filing questionable Form 990s with the IRS and building a church in Uganda with a prison cell.

In July 2024, Sufficiency of Scripture Ministries President Shannon Hurley produced a video tour highlighting construction at Community Bible Church of Kubamitwe.

Hurley explained to his viewers, “As you enter our property, this is the front gate. This is actually where security will be. Security will be on the bottom. We actually, through that little window there, we have a little jail cell. So if somebody is drunk, they can sit there. Or if we capture somebody that’s doing something wrong, they can stay there till police come.”

A church jail cell sounds incompatible with the Bible.

When Jesus entered the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus read a biblical prophecy which he would fulfill: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” – Luke 4:18-19 NIV and Isaiah 61:1-2

According to the Ugandan Constitution, “A person arrested, restricted or detained shall be kept in a place authorised by law.”

Continue reading “Who Would Jesus Imprison? Ministry Builds Ugandan Church with Jail Cell. Money Raised for Ministry Goes into Black Hole.”

(Screenshot: YouTube channel TruthBacker)

Recently, Living Word Christian Church in LaCrosse WI, gifted Pastor Mark Barclay a gold-plated AR-15 engraved with President Donald Trump’s words, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The gun given to Barclay may have cost between $1,330 to $1,700, according to the Black Rain Ordnance gun manufacturer website.

When American churches present gifts to pastors for their birthdays, during Pastor Appreciation Month (October) and when they retire, sometimes they are required to report these gifts as compensation.

(Screenshot: U.S. Code Title 26 Section 102)

Small gifts such as snacks and a T-shirt provided occasionally at work are considered de minimis, and not subject to taxation.

Meanwhile, gifts to non-employees are handled differently.

Some of the gifts to televangelists are very extravagant:

• Paula White gave T.D. Jakes a Bentley convertible.
• Oral Roberts gave fundraising consultant James Eugene Ewing an aircraft.
• Creflo Dollar attempted to raise $2 million for Kenneth Copeland to celebrate Copeland’s 40^th ministry anniversary.
• Daystar Television Network’s only independent board member Tom Calendar gifted the network president Joni Lamb $100,000 for honeymoon, which she claims to have reimbursed.

The Danger of Tax Evasion

In 2011, the Senate Finance Committee published a 61-page report identifying financial loopholes exploited by religious organizations. One of the loopholes was pastors receiving “love offerings” rather than a salary so that their compensation was not taxed.

There also appears to be widespread confusion in the church world regarding speaking honorariums. They are often treated as gifts when they are compensation, and the recipient should be given a Form 1099 for tax purposes.

Televangelist Todd Coontz and Gregory L. Clarke, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, both served jail time for tax evasion as a result of treating speaking honorariums as gifts rather than taxable income.

However, the courts are not always consistent. An indictment of the late televangelist Morris Cerullo was dismissed because a prosecutor failed to give the grand jury complete information.

Tax Notes reported, “During the prosecutor’s presentation, the grand jury asked at least three times about how to differentiate between earned income and gifts. Each time the prosecutor answered without mentioning the most critical factor: the donor’s intent.”

Reporting Requirements

For 2025, the gift tax exclusion is $19,000. With a couple exceptions, gifts exceeding this amount are taxable and require the donor to complete the IRS Form 709 and pay the gift tax.

Not subject to taxation are gifts to spouses and gifts to pay for school tuition or medical expenses.

While churches, synagogues and mosques are not required to report gift expenses to the Internal Revenue Service on a Form 990, other religious non-profits such as Christian colleges do include them in the 990 Statement of Expenses Page.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, Liberty University provided $341 million in grants and scholarships to its American students.

The IRS website features a Frequently Asked Questions page for gift taxes and the IRS Publication 559 provides more in-depth information about gift taxes for accountants and bookkeepers.

* This article features a correction. It originally incorrectly reported that Living Word Church in Midland, Michigan, gifted Pastor Mark Barclay a gold-plated AR-15. Instead, Living Word Christian Church in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, was responsible for the gun gift.