After worshipping at the Prayer Palace this morning, Hyacinthe Houghron will, as she does every second Sunday, stuff her tired green minivan with a small feast: six coolers of homemade soup, a mountain of sandwiches, cakes and sweets.Loaded down with second-hand clothes pulled from the ceiling-high piles in her hair salon, she'll give out the goods to homeless people on downtown Toronto's grittiest streets.
Missions like this aren't cheap for people like her and other volunteers at the church. "We're poor folks," says Houghron, describing the majority of the 3,000-strong congregation who attend the spaceship-shaped church at Hwy. 400 and Finch Ave.
The hairdresser scrapes together $600 of her own money each month to keep up the program because the Prayer Palace – one of Canada's largest evangelical churches – stopped running it five years ago. Other charitable works, like a promised orphanage in Brazil, either dried up or never materialized.
Meanwhile, the three white pastors – Paul Melnichuk and his 40-year-old twin sons, Tim and Tom – lead lavish lives in contrast to the mainly working-class black families that make up the bulk of the church.
Between them, the pastors have amassed a real estate fortune worth about $12 million. Each owns a multi-million-dollar country estate north of Toronto (Tim's is worth as much as $5.5 million), they share a Florida vacation villa, and the pastors and their wives drive luxurious cars – among them a Porsche Cayenne SUV, a Lexus RX 330 SUV and a Mercedes-Benz CLK 320 convertible.
Congregants are largely unaware of the pastors' extravagant lifestyles.
"Wow," says Leslie Stewart, 63, who works in a paint factory six days a week and gives 10 per cent of his income to the church. "I never heard of anything like that. But if I release my tithe and they misuse it, they have to face God."
The Prayer Palace has a devoted congregation. Most worshippers believe in tithing, the practice of donating 10 per cent of one's income to the church, and each year they give a reported $3 million. "The people love (the Melnichuks)," Houghron says. "Pastor Paul ... loves the Lord. He does God's work."
In addition to personally funding the homeless program, Houghron – a staunch supporter of Pastor Paul – tithes and also gives him $100 to $200 cash for his birthday. "He's never given me gifts like that but he's given me spiritual gifts," says Houghron. "He encourages the work I do for the homeless."
The Prayer Palace offers several exuberant religious services each week. Conducting them, combined with the pastor's church-building efforts, qualifies the Prayer Palace as a charity under federal law, making the church exempt from taxes.
However, a continuing Star investigation into Canadian charities has found the church devotes little money to charitable work. In fact, the church's most recent financial statements show that only $9,443 was spent on "benevolent and charity" activities in 2005. The church's annual "missions" fluctuate between $500 and $36,704 in the past few years.
The Star was unable to get access to the Prayer Palace's internal documents, and so could not determine if money donated by congregants went into the pastors' houses.
The church and the pastors refused requests for an interview. In response to a series of written questions, the Star was told that the church exists "to point people to a better life through Jesus Christ." The church provided a long list of charitable works, including Houghron's homeless work, which were counted as its own.
During sermons the pastors exhort worshippers to give generously if they want the Lord's blessing. "What's half a million dollars to a congregation like this? Peanuts," 72-year-old Pastor Paul thundered one recent Sunday morning, asking members to help fund an "evangelical explosion" in Toronto. In another sermon, he said: "Abraham received wealth, blessing and prosperity – not because he worked, but because he believed in a God that was bigger than the economy."
The Canada Revenue Agency, which regulates charities, has a policy that forbids it from discussing specific charities. In response to a general question, a CRA official said strict rules govern the use of charitable donations and assets. People involved in a charity cannot financially benefit from their efforts.
Asked how the pastors could afford their lifestyle, Prayer Palace officials responded that the question "is not related to charities."
In his sermons, Pastor Paul works hard to convey to his flock the notion that he and his family are simple people who shop at discount stores. However, the Star found that the three pastors' houses are extravagantly appointed. Tim's King City house boasts nine-metre ceilings, a state-of-the-art, nine-seat home cinema, Italian onyx floors and a five-car garage, and was recently put on the market for $5.5 million.
What's more, Pastor Paul and his twins fly to family reunions in a helicopter, and they frequently travel to their Florida vacation villa, which was built last year.
Church financial documents show a number of items related to the family's recent flurry of activity in the U.S. Those include a $1-million transfer of Prayer Palace funds to a "Florida mission" during the same time the pastors built a Spanish-style waterfront home there and bought a small church.
In researching this story, the Star interviewed more than three dozen current and former church members, contractors who worked on the Prayer Palace and other Melnichuk building projects, and other family associates.
The church's most devout followers say that if wealth ends up in the pastors' hands, it's because God sees fit. Still, in looking at the church construction and several of Melnichuk's personal house-building projects that overlapped it, the Star found the lines between the two often blurred.
For example, as the church prepared to turn sod on the $27-million Prayer Palace, Melnichuk had a construction company pave his own driveway instead of paying the full cost of renting space on church property for storing equipment. Also, a valuable strip of Prayer Palace land was sold to a company connected to the Melnichuks.
The church's financial documents raise numerous questions. Total salaries for the pastors and other staff (it's unclear how many are paid) was listed on Prayer Palace documents as more than $1 million in 2005, the last year reported, up from about $750,000 two years earlier. The most recent documents show one salary of more than $119,000 – likely that of Pastor Paul – and three salaries between $80,000 and $119,000.
In addition, Prayer Palace financial statements show "housing allowances" of more than $125,000, but the documents don't specify the recipients.
The documents also show annual vehicle and travel expenses have doubled in the past two years, jumping to more than $175,000. The original cost of the vehicles in the Prayer Palace fleet is over $500,000. Documents obtained by the Star show the red Mercedes convertible is registered to the Canadian church but kept at the pastor's Florida villa.
The Star found the pastors and their wives also drive, besides the Lexus and Porsche SUVs, an Audi A6S sedan, BMW 7 Series and 3 Series sedans, a Lincoln LS and Towncar, and a red, oversized Dodge pickup. The Lexus is also kept in Florida.
With pastor Tom contemplating construction of a helipad at his Caledon home, the family's opulence is on an upswing at a time when the Canada Revenue Agency has recently removed the charitable status of several religious charities. Audits obtained by the Star show they got in trouble by using vehicles for non-charity business, sending money out of country for work deemed not charitable, and paying high salaries to leaders.
John Pellowe, head of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities, said laws don't compel churches to be open about their finances. Speaking in general terms about accountability, he said church members must themselves press their boards for transparency: "Are they doing what they said they would do with your money?" Pellowe's group conducts audits of council members who voluntarily provide their financial information. The Prayer Palace is not a certified member of the group.
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