ANOTHER day, another story about alleged dodgy dealings in the Machiavellian world of religion.

Blinking in the harsh glare of publicity this week are Bill and Sharon “The Mother of Nations” Predovich, senior pastors of the Resurrection Life Church and World Ministry Center in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, who claim that the Almighty told them to flog their church and that their flock should now worship in “micro churches” – their very own homes – because that’s a new trend.

On the church’s website, a speaker named the Rev Chris Harken told the congregation in a sermon in July:

This is God’s plan! It’s not Pastor Sharon, Pastor Bill’s plan. It’s God’s plan. And that’s what we have to remember.

Saying that “God is changing the face of the church” with “micro churches”, Harken, who has been with the outfit for 28 years, said:

We have to embrace the change; you can’t stop it. It’s God and so we might as well yield and embrace what God has in store … When you fight or when you murmur or when you don’t yield to it, you’re really coming against God.

Real estate records show that the pastors, who are both in their 70s, bought their luxury home located on Reitz Lake in Waconia with $1-m in cash on September 28, 2018. That same day, the Resurrection Life Church and World Ministry Center received $1-m from a developer who was buying the church’s land.

The five-bedroom, three-bathroom home, which covers 4,200 square feet, sits on a more than 10-acre lot. The private yard of the home also contains an in-ground pool, a sand volleyball court, as well as an insulated three car garage.

Attorney Jennifer Urban, who teaches the Nonprofit Law Clinic at the University of St Thomas, said:

The appearance of impropriety is very bad.

Since the transactions, the pastors have deeded the home to their church and it is now listed as a “church resident” in public records.

Speaking to their former congregation in a message posted on the church’s website in July, Sharon Predovich assured them that they weren’t “quitting.”

We’re not quitting, we’re repositioning. We’ll no longer be your pastors, we’ll be your apostles over smaller works.

The couple allege they prayed for two years before they were led to believe to believe that:

Maybe God had a new vision a new way, some other ideas.

Longtime church member Jeff Proctor said that he and his wife declined a request to host a “micro church” at their home and raised concern about how the church’s finances would be managed.

We were all really disappointed … They kept us all in the dark about the sale of the church. As long as the money is being used to spread the gospel – if they’re spending it on personal things, I have a problem.

The couple, who founded 30 years ago, were not immediately available to discuss their new vision with The Christian Post on Monday, but insisted in an ABC 5 report that the real estate transactions were appropriate.