A Georgia megachuch pastor is praying for angels to help keep him aloft.
Creflo Dollar, who heads the Atlanta-area World Changers Church International, asked congregants to donate to Project G650, a campaign to buy a $65 million Gulfstream G650 airplane. The church said it needs 200,000 people to give at least $300 U.S. dollars to fund the 18-passanger luxury plane.
The project page was deleted from the church’s website shortly after it launched Friday.
An engine on the ministry’s former plane, a 1984 model purchased in 1999, recently failed during a trip to Europe, taking it out of service. While no one was injured during the incident, it means the church has been without a private plane ever since.
“It’s not like a car where you can pull over on the side when something goes wrong,” Dollar said in a YouTube video explaining the project. “I knew it was time to begin to believe God for a new airplane.”
The brand-new Gulfstream is “the biggest, fastest, most luxurious, longest range and most technologically advanced jet — by far,” the company says on its website. It lists an asking price of $67,950,000 for a G650 with a flight record of 1,616 hours and 625 landings since it entered service in mid-December.
Dollar — who claims that is his real name — said his church will use the new plane so he can minister across borders. The ministry’s last jet logged more than 4 million miles in the air as Dollar and his pastor wife visited worshipers in Africa, Europe and across North America.
“A plane is a vital part of the mission of our ministry,” the promotional video for the plane project said.
Dollar, a dad of five, says he received a vision for the church in 1986, which he founded on prosperity gospel, a form of religion that promises good lives to those who tithe generously.
He held the first service in front of eight people in an elementary school cafeteria, but the ministry grew quickly and the church moved into its current 8,500-seat sanctuary in 1995.
Dollar claims he makes no money from his ministry, and instead gains wealth from personal investments and outside-church activities, such as his horse-breeding company called Dollar Ranch and his 30 published books.
Dollar, who fetches up to $100,000 for a single speaking engagement, was once arrested for allegedly beating up one of his teenage daughters.
With News Wire Services
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