![]() That's a desire I have, but to block out time to do that on a consistent basis just hasn't come around yet. You've mentioned a goal of learning to fly the airplane. So the longer my life is extended, that's a benefit to the ministry. And we're labor intensive-we're not making widgets or automobile parts-this is a person deal. From the time we flew on private planes, she was chipper and ready to go play golf. And my wife, when we would get off the plane, would immediately have to go to the hotel and crash-she was zonked out. As I said, flying on commercial airlines used to beat me up. I'm not a spring chicken anymore and we have a church in New York City, so we're talking about a five-hour flight one way. You've said the payback for your jet far exceeds the cost. Then, once we get to the continent, we charter. We usually fly commercial because you get to fly on the big planes. We go to Africa maybe every two or three years. was in the kind of price range that best suited us at the time and performance-wise, it was a good aircraft. We flew on one a couple of times and really, really liked it. We felt we needed our own aircraft so we could go when we wanted to go and not have to face the possibility of not being able to fly on the kind of aircraft we wanted when we wanted to fly. Why did you decide to buy your own aircraft rather than stick with charter or use a jet card or whatever? So it was quite an exhilarating experience. I felt like I'd been riding in my car a couple of blocks. The first time I took a long flight on a charter plane, I didn't get out of it tired. Well, the pressurization in a commercial airliner is quite different, and that's actually what beats you up and gives you that continuous feeling of fatigue. The process of chartering was fine and, of course, the private plane was even better-it was a lifesaver. But we had to charter to figure out what best suited our needs. Actually, she was thinking we needed to buy an aircraft. You have too much to offer." She was really the spark that ignited the interest in finding another possibility, which was charter. But when I told my daughter who runs the ministry-she's the COO-that I wasn't going to travel anymore, she said, "Dad, you can't do that. I was tired of airports, tired of flights being cancelled, tired of having to change planes-just fed up with the whole thing. You were ready to give up flying when you turned 65, I understand. Since I've been tithing, we are blessed beyond imagination." When I was not tithing years ago, I was robbing God and we were cursed financially. But the bulk of its income may come from tithing: the church's Web site tells parishioners that they should tithe 10 percent of their incomes and then pay for the cruises and other products out of the other 90 percent. PASTOR FRED PRICE SERIESThe church, which he described as a $40 million corporation, undoubtedly earns substantial sums from those books and from the dozens of products and services touted on its Web site-everything from an "Answered Prayer Guaranteed!" DVD series to a "Ministry at Sea" Caribbean cruise. According to his Web site, he has also written more than 50 books, selling 2.1 million copies. PASTOR FRED PRICE TVPrice, now 75, reaches additional believers with TV broadcasts that are heard on nearly a hundred stations in 29 states. Today, Price's Crenshaw Christian Center-which also employs his wife, four children and all of their spouses-is among the country's largest churches, with a congregation of 22,000 and facilities in Los Angeles and New York City. So after a period of time, the Lord began to deal with me about coming out of the denominational church world and setting up an independent church." "Because I wasn't brought up in the church, I didn't accept things just because 'we've always done it that way.' And when I would question them, I got booted out. "I matriculated to several denominations over a 17-year period, trying to find a place where I could fit in," Price recalled. Then came marriage to a devout Baptist and, said Price, "I was divinely called to the ministry." Exactly what kind of ministry took a while to figure out, though. "I was a paper cutter," he told us, "meaning that when they took some of the bulk paper off the rolls and rolled it out into sheets, my job was to cut it up into the different-sized forms." He grew up poor, in a nonreligious household, with an alcoholic father, and he suffered during childhood from an inferiority complex and a variety of phobias.ĭropping out of college after two years-the "Dr." that often appears before his name refers to an honorary degree from Oral Roberts University-he began toiling in a factory that made typewriter and business machine ribbons and forms. Nothing in Frederick Price's early life suggested that he would one day lead a congregation of thousands and fly around in a private jet. ![]()
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