Fleecing the Flock, or Victim of Stereotype?

Hammond used his Sunday morning, 2/11/07 platform to further respond to the complaint filed by CREW and the resulting news coverage.

KARE-11 TV, the station on which LWCC’s church service was being broadcast at the time, put a story on its website.

A nationally known pastor from Brooklyn Park dramatically defended himself and his church Sunday morning.

Mac Hammond spent nearly his entire hour-long sermon, which is broadcast on KARE 11, refuting allegations made by a Washington watchdog group.

That group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, claims the Living Word Christian Center broke federal tax laws by arranging certain lucrative financial deals for Hammond.

"I can understand why a lot of people would look at us with skepticism," Hammond said.

…

Hammond says because of the church's success, he may be falling victim to a common stereotype.

"Irresponsibly using the pulpit authority to fleece the unsuspecting flock of God," Hammond preached. "That's very often the stereotype that is attached to a ministry such as we are."

...

"We have gone to every extreme to make sure every legal requirement, every regulatory statute has been addressed, amen," Hammond said.

The watchdog group says it has provided the I.R.S. with "startling" information that should lead to an investigation.

Video of a portion of Hammond’s “sermon” on the charges was later posted on YouTube:

In the video, Hammond can be seen arguing that his “compensation” or “salary” is reviewed by attorneys and compared with the compensation at churches of similar size, and that his compensation is within “safe harbor.”

[My thought: Here’s another straw man argument. The CREW complaint did not deal with Hammond’s compensation or salary, but rather with the many lucrative side deals, special loans and leases that benefited him as an insider.]

Hammond said, “I would almost welcome an IRS audit” because “when you’ve dotted every I and crossed every T you can’t wait” to show it.

I've labored for 25 years to dot every legal I and cross every legal T, and if they came and did an audit, I would like to know if there's something wrong. I want to change it, man, because I want to comply with the law. Amen.

Hammond claimed that “the board is an independent entity. They don’t answer to me.”

[My thought: Again, he was not fully honest. He neglected to add that the board consisted of Hammond himself, his wife, the minister of an LWCC franchise church in northern MN, the son of his friend Kenneth Copeland, and other close associates.]

Hammond said that the real question is not what someone makes, but what he does with the money. “I’m the largest contributor in the history of this church,” over 25 years, he said. He said that he and his wife Lynne had given LWCC $2 million over the previous 5 years.

As for the bankruptcy of his aviation business, which preceded the founding of LWCC, he explained that “I was personally liable” for the corporation’s $100,000 in “unpaid employee withholding taxes.” He added, “Every dime of that was paid.”

[In other words, the business he owned and ran before he founded LWCC was not paying its employee withholding taxes for quite some time, if a balance of $100,000 was allowed to accrue.]

The Porsche, he said, he paid for with "four speeding tickets and a suspended license."