Pimping in the Pulpit

This is a term I have heard since news from Georgia came out. I am not commenting on that sad case. The Klieg lights are on, the press is in a feeding frenzy, Lawyers are everywhere, auditors are loosed, the whole catastrophe. This will either be a gross embarrassment for the DA in the state of Georgia or a sad end to a Ministry I have loved. I am willing to stand aside until it is settled one way or another.

The media is talking of the Bishop as a Pulpit Pimp. I don't think that's fair.

NO, Pulpit Pimps are worse than what this situation is. I know a bit about pimps. Met a few. Know how they work. They keep the Girls hopeful but poor while they use them to keep him in big cars, nice houses and extravagent clothes. The pimps I know are very protective of their territory. They protect their harem to make sure the income is steady. Once a girl is no longer of use they are discarded like a bad penny.

At least a street pimp is honest. You know what you got. If you get involved with him you understand the rules of the game. As long as you can put out he will keep you around. When you can't it's goodbye.

Pulpit pimps are easy to spot too. They act a lot like the street pimp in many ways:

• The folks can barely afford cab fare or a clunker to drive and the pimp drives a Bentley
• The folks are living with mom, in foreclosure or on the street and the pimp lives in a million dollar house in the burbs
• The folks live check to check and never enough while the pimps press them hard for his "Cut". Ten percent of nothing should be nothing, but not for the pulpit pimp. He will have his no matter what.
• The folks go to goodwill to find clothes suitable to wear to Church while the pulpit pimp has 30 seven hundred dollar suits in the closet to wear to impress folks.
• The folks are promised that if they just dig a little deeper, if they just sacrifice more, somehow God will bless the effort. You see this during TBN's fund raising all the time. Mike Murdock is famous for this tactic. Yet nothing is ever done to set the people free from their bondage.
• The people pulpit pimps attract are those who believe that if they buy into the vision and mission the pulpit pimp proposes. They become addicts. Prisoners of Hope. They whoop and holler at the hope given but deferred by the circumstantial circuit they are in.
• The pulpit pimp will encourage the folks to vote against their best interests. They will be encouraged to support candidates who are secular platform pimps.

I thought slavery was abolished. Pimping is illegal because it is considered enslavement.

Why isn't pulpit pimping? It's the same deal. Shouldn't we stand against this?

I must report the ministries I am in fellowship with in the city of Chicago are NOT pulpit pimps. But I know some, and so do YOU.