Can ORU Be Saved? In Green We Trust!

Oral Roberts University has been in a bit of a cash crunch lately. Who will come up with the green? Oral Roberts? Not this time.

To relieve that worrisome cash crunch crisis, ORU has been promised a gift of $70 million by Mart Green, the founder and CEO of Mardel Christian educational stores.

David Green (pictured left), father of Mart Green, is CEO of Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma businessman who founded the Green family Hobby Lobby retail chain, with one small store in the early 1970s.

David Green also happens to be who bought Ambassador College Big Sandy. He took this campus off the books of the WCG at a very good price through a purchase by the Green Family Trust, which owns the 390+ Hobby Lobby retail chain of stores Green built. (David Green then somehow wound up leasing the AC Big Sandy campus to evangelical Bill Gothard, who founded Big Sandy's Alert Academy).

Green said ORU will receive $8 million immediately to meet pressing financial needs. ORU is currently at least $52 million in debt, but who's counting?


The remainder will come after a 90-day review of ORU's accountability practices.

Green said that ORU must demonstrate "good governance'' before the remaining $62 million will be gifted.

Meanwhile, the ORU regents have voted to separate the school from the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.

''This has truly been a great day for Oral Roberts University,'' said George Pearsons, chairman of the ORU board of regents.

Richard Roberts resigned as ORU's president, but carries on as president of Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, OREA.

In 2006, the OREA ministry brought in $12.7 million. While the evangelistic association spent most of that on its weekly television shows, direct mail, crusades and other outreach, many donors give directly to ORU because of the ministry, according to Roberts.

ORU received cash donations totaling $14.3 million from 173 persons last year. Most gifts were in the $10,000 range or more, including three of at least $1 million.

In terms of separating the intertwined ministry and university, out of 15 key officers and trustees of the OREA ministry, 14 are now key officers and trustees of ORU.

Richard Roberts has said the university and the evangelistic association cannot be separated and must not be separated.

Roberts said frequently, people believe they are giving to the ministry and make a check out to ORU. In those cases, the funds go to ORU, he said.

''I will go somewhere to preach or I will go somewhere for a healing service and they will raise an offering and they will make the check out to ORU.''

He said the ministry has traditionally raised funds for campus projects, such as the prayer tower or new carpet in the dorms.

Can ORU Be Saved?

Richard Roberts Resigns From Oral Roberts University

Richard Roberts in 'the bonds of Satan'?

Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University since 1993, resigned from his position Friday effective immediately, according to a statement by the chairman of the school's Board of Regents.

Roberts and ORU have come under fire since a lawsuit was filed by three former professors.

The lawsuit includes allegations of financial malfeasance by Oral and Lindsay Roberts and other forms of misconduct.

Roberts, son of school founder and televangelist Oral Roberts, had taken a temporary leave before resigning from the evangelical university, fighting the accusations against him. The couple denies wrongdoing.

Richard Roberts is the CEO of Oral Roberts Ministries, an Oklahoma corporation. Robert's wife Lindsay Roberts is a director of the Oral Roberts Ministries.

ORU Hit With 3 New Lawsuits

Does Richard Roberts have a prayer?

A senior accountant for Oral Roberts University, Trent Huddleston was ordered to help school president Richard Roberts and his wife, Lindsay, “cook the books,” by hiding improper and illegal financial wrongdoing from the authorities and the public, a lawsuit claims, filed November 21st in Tulsa.

Huddleston was hired in 2006 and spent 15 months at the school. He was responsible for recording the fixed assets of the university and delegating them to several corporations formed by the defendants named in the suit, which include the Robertses, the university, the ministry and school’s board of regents.

Huddleston claims in the wrongful termination lawsuit that he was directed against his will to falsely list thousands of dollars as expenses rather than assets — which were spent remodeling the home of Richard and Lindsay Roberts — in order to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.

He says the couple co-mingled and spent university and ministry funds, and that funds donated by one church were spent on the Roberts’ home.

He claims nearly $123,000 in expenditures were paid by Oral Roberts University and Oral Roberts Ministries for remodeling the home. He said more than $40,000 of university and ministry money went for a new swimming pool and nearly $5,000 was spent on a pool table.

Huddleston claims he was instructed not to contact certain departments or individuals about expenditures and was not allowed to question their authenticity.

He claims he was discharged on the day an audit was to take place. The audit was ordered by the school’s regents two weeks after three professors brought a wrongful termination lawsuit against ORU accusing Richard Roberts of misusing school funds to support a lavish lifestyle.

Huddleston’s lawsuit states that his discharge came “in retaliation for his refusal to remain silent about the fact that the defendants were committing illegal acts with regard to the finances of the various parties.”

Causes of action set forth in the lawsuit include constructive discharge, fraud, civil conspiracy, tortious interference with business relationships, naming Richard and Lindsay Roberts, ORU, Oral Roberts University and Ministry Boards, and Oral Roberts Ministries.

Two others were filed on behalf of ORU students Cornell Cross II and David Brown. Both claim ORU’s wrongful termination of the three professors, John Swails and Tim and Paulita Brooker, ruined the reputation of their degrees. Brown states that he cannot complete his degree at ORU because of Swails’ termination and is looking to transfer schools. Cross says an attempt to transfer will invalidate half the credits he earned at ORU.

“This was a complete, 100 percent destruction of the degree,” Cross said Wednesday.

The lawsuits come after more than 80 percent of ORU faculty voted this week against Roberts continuing as president at the 5,700-student school.

Next week, the school’s regents are expected to discuss that vote, as well as a similar one cast last week by tenured faculty members giving Roberts a “no confidence” vote as president, regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.

To read the latest ORU lawsuits in the original Hebrew ;-), click here.

WCG Pocono Feast Site Condemned - Now A Corporate Business Park!

The Pocono Feast site has been condemned and is being turned into a new corporate business park - called Pocono Mountains Corporate Center East.

As many Worldwiders will recall, the Pocono property was originally a WCG Feast of Tabernacles site. The 247 acre site was owned, developed and constructed by the WCG with much unpaid, volunteer, "sweat equity" labor from the church. One year after HWA died, Tkach Sr. sold it in a very mysterious transaction to the also mysterious US Senda Corporation, which supposedly had intended to develop and market the facility. The WCG property deed wording recorded claimed Pocono was sold for just "one dollar" and other valuable consideration. Just what other valuable consideration?

Property taxes declared on the sale were far, far lower than the estimated sales value of the property, Tkach hasn't released the 1987 WCG financial statements to show what money the WCG received for selling off the Pocono property. After the WCG sold it to US Senda, the property sat undeveloped, and it endured periodic vandalism, making it a blighted property. Monroe County, PA completed a redevelopment plan and the redevelopment authority of the county began the process of condemnation of the Poconos site. It would be interesting to know who really owned US Senda corporate stock, what US Senda paid Tkach for the Pocono property and compare the difference with what US Senda received for the condemned site from Monroe County. But with the Tkachs not responsibly releasing financial statements of their secretive cult, it's anybody's guess what the WCG actually got for the Pocono property, that is besides "one dollar".

The former feast site project was unique because it was one of the few times in the Commonwealth of PA that a redevelopment authority has condemned property and sold it to a public entity, like Pocono Mountains Industries (PMI), for development. Condemned properties are typically sold directly to the private sector. A 54,000 sq. foot Mountain Health Care facility has already been completed off Rt. 610 in the business park.

US Senda was a subsidiary of a Japanese corporation formed in California on 2/9/87 - in other words, formed only weeks prior to the time the Pocono deal was completed. The CA corporation in question could have been was formed for the specific purpose of buying Pocono from the WCG. The Calfornia private corporation US Senda in the WCG Pocono land deal has since been dissolved and disappeared without a trace. Believe it or not, US Senda corporate offices in California were listed in the Pocono property sale records as strangely being located in a warehouse, right across from the WCG campus on the other side of freeway, opposite Waverly Drive, directly behind Mijares Mexican Restaurant. How very odd. John Trechak then discovered where U.S. Senda moved to (at 200 E. Del Mar Blvd. in Pasadena) the exact suite at which the Senda Group received mail is also an address where Osamu Gotoh and associates received mail!

Tkach Jr. undoubtedly knows how much the WCG was paid for the Pocono feast site; for what reason the mysterious US Senda corporation was formed, with offices adjacent to the WCG Pasadena campus; how this mysterious US Senda corporation got the winning bid for the property; and who really benefited from the sale of the Pocono site. Certainly not the rank and file members. But Tkach isn't talking, he's taking the fifth.