Ex-employees: Copeland ministry followers being misled
12:07 PM CST on Thursday, November 8, 2007
By BRETT SHIPP / WFAA-TV
Days after the announcement of a congressional investigation into the finances of Fort Worth televangelists Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, former ministry insiders say that Mr. Copeland's faithful followers are being misled.
WFAA-TV (Ch.
first reported on the private use of the Copeland ministry's $20 million jet, trips made to a ski resort and exotic game hunting ranch. But the real turbulence for Mr. Copeland's ministry may come from within the gates of his Eagle Mountain Church and Ministry Headquarters north of Fort Worth.
Former employees told WFAA-TV that the Copelands one sees on television are not the same Copelands in real life.
Four former Copeland ministry employees said they were disappointed after seeing how the ministry operates.
Jeff Spradlin said he grew up admiring the Copelands and was excited to work for them. “Within 90 days, I started realizing this was a huge mistake," he said.
For nearly two years, Mr. Spradlin said he worked in the mail processing center where prayer request envelopes stuffed with cash would arrive. He said a group of ministers, not the Copelands, would pray over the unopened envelopes.
Mr. Spradlin said he and other mail processors were the ones who read the requests. “I was sitting there getting this paperwork all the day thinking, Kenneth and Gloria don't see a word of this," he said.
Another person who has worked with the ministry, Nathan Boutwell, said followers were being misled. "They think that when they get the letter back that someone has actually prayed,” he said.
Mr. Boutwell also said it was he, not Mr. Copeland, who read the prison ministry prayer requests.
"There was no actual human contact with that letter besides my eyes," he said. "But that's OK, Copeland gets 10,000 letters a week. But admit that. Don't imply that you read these personally when you don't."
Mr. Copeland told WFAA-TV he did pray over some of his requests but not over all of them due to the volume of mail. He said he had a prayer team pray over the requests when he couldn’t.
Former employees also said their spirits sank after learning the Copelands have little if any contact with staff.
"The one time I saw the man was at the Christmas party," Mr. Boutwell said.
Another former employee, Barbara Pierce, said workers were told to avoid the Copelands if they ever encountered them.
"It was an unwritten law that if Kenneth or Gloria walked into the office you don't see them, you don't speak to them," she said.
Former employees also said that when the Copelands weren't on the road, they spent their days inside their 18,000-square-foot parsonage on the shores of Eagle Mountain Lake, surrounded by hundreds of acres of range and ranch land not far from their tennis courts and boat house.
Mr. Copeland said he had little contact with his staff because he and Gloria were private people who were on the road preaching much of the time.
"You don't want to talk about the productive side of the ministry, you just want to run me down,” he told WFAA-TV. “You want to tear down everything you can, and I don't understand that."
