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THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL

Pastor's Empire Built on Acts of Faith, and Cash

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To serve this diverse audience, translators at the network's International Production Center in Irving, Texas, dub programs into Spanish, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Hebrew, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Hindi and Chinese.

A typical day of TBN programming includes health and lifestyle shows, Bible study, religious movies and late-night Christian rock videos. Pentecostal pastors espouse the prosperity gospel and offer prophecies about the Second Coming of Jesus.

Mainstream evangelists such as Robertson, Billy Graham and Robert H. Schuller appear on the network. Some lease their air time. Such payments bring in more than $35 million a year, nearly one-fifth of TBN's revenue. So many preachers want air time that the network keeps a waiting list.

The most popular offering is "Praise the Lord," a nightly, two-hour mix of talk, prayer and music. The Crouches and a revolving cast of guest hosts hold forth on a set decorated with stained-glass windows, chandeliers, imitation French antiques and a gold-painted piano.

With his silver hair, mustache and bifocals, Paul Crouch comes across as a grandfatherly sort. What he calls his "German temper" can rise quickly, however. He often punctuates a point by shaking a finger at the camera.

Jan Crouch wears heavy makeup, long false lashes and champagne-colored wigs piled high on her head. She speaks in a sing-song voice and lets tears flow freely, whether reading a viewer's letter or recalling how God resurrected her pet chicken when she was a child.

She and Paul project the image of a happily married couple. But off the air, they lead separate lives and rarely stay under the same roof, according to former TBN employees and others who have spent time with the couple.

The Crouches also present themselves as thrifty and budget-conscious. During one telethon, Paul said his personal $50,000 donation to TBN had wiped out the family checking account. He often says that he and his wife live in the same Newport Beach tract house they bought 33 years ago for $38,500.

But nowadays, neither of the Crouches uses that home much. Whether in Southern California or on the road, they live in a variety of other TBN-owned homes. In all, the network owns 30 residences in California, Texas, Tennessee and Ohio — all paid for in cash, property records show.

These include two Newport Beach mansions in a gated community overlooking the Pacific. One of them was recently on the market for an asking price of $8 million. A real estate advertisement said it featured "11,000 square feet of opulent European luxury with regulation tennis courts and a rambling terraced hillside orchard with view of the blue Pacific."

In Costa Mesa, the ministry owns 11 homes in a gated development adjacent to Trinity Christian City International.

In Sky Forest, a resort community in the San Bernardino National Forest, the network owns a four-bedroom, five-bath home.

TBN officials say the real estate purchases were consistent with the network's charitable mission, because the homes serve as venues for broadcasts and provide lodging for the Crouches and fellow televangelists as they travel across the country. The properties have also been good investments, they said.

From 1994 to 1996, TBN spent $13.7 million to acquire Twitty City, a tourist attraction on the former Nashville-area estate of country singer Conway Twitty, along with some adjacent property. After extensive renovations, the site reopened as Trinity Music City USA, a Christian entertainment park with TV studios, a church, a concert hall and a movie theater.

The amenities include a pair of condominiums for the Crouches. One is furnished in Paul's taste, the other in Jan's, former employees said.

In Colleyville, Texas, near the network's International Production Center, TBN owns nine homes on 66 acres along a country road, a spread called Shiloh Ranch. Six horses graze in a pasture; TBN officials say they were gifts from admirers.

Paul and Jan visit from time to time, and TBN occasionally broadcasts specials from the ranch.

Ministry officials say that a Christian drug treatment program also uses the property, but former employees say the program left years ago and Colleyville officials say there is no permit for such an operation.

A Passion for Antiques

Wherever they happen to be staying, the Crouches indulge expensive tastes courtesy of TBN donors, former employees say.

Kelly Whitmore, a former personal assistant to Jan Crouch, said in interviews with The Times that she used a TBN American Express card to make numerous personal purchases for Jan and Paul, including groceries, clothes, cosmetics, alcohol and a tanning bed.

Whitmore, 43, who lives outside Nashville, worked at TBN from 1992 to 1997. On the air, Jan once called her "my right arm."

TBN officials now describe her as a disgruntled ex-employee whose word cannot be trusted. Whitmore acknowledged that she has hired an agent and hopes to sell her story to TV or film producers.

Whitmore and another former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Jan Crouch's special passion was antiques.

Credit card receipts show that in December 1994, TBN bought about 40 items from Cool Springs Antiques in Brentwood, Tennessee, including a three-piece wine cabinet for $10,000, a $2,800 candelabrum, a $350 birdbath and a seven-piece bedroom suite that cost $3,995.

At Harris Antiques and Imports in Forth Worth, Texas, TBN spent $32,851 in a single day in 1995. The purchases included two French chests for about $1,900 each, a $1,650 brass planter and a $1,095 bronze urn.

TBN officials said the items were reproductions, not antiques, and were used to furnish studio sets and network-owned houses. They said the tanning bed was used to darken the skin of 25 actors cast in TBN stage productions set in Biblical times.