Creflo Dollar's 'Uncharted' Film Promises to Show How Donations to His Church Fulfill 'Mandate From God'
Televangelist Creflo Dollar of World Changers Church International in Atlanta, Georgia, is set to release a documentary film, titled "Uncharted," which promises to show how donations to his church help reach people around the world.
"I think this movie, 'Uncharted,' is going to be great because now they will get a chance to see after they put that donation into the offering bucket, or after they send that donation into the church, what happens from that point on," Bashun Lavendar of Creflo Dollar Global Missions says in a video segment.
"This is going to complete the picture, it's going to make everything full circle, and I think it will make them want to participate more."
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The website for "Uncharted" says that Creflo Dollar Global Missions seeks to "go where no one else will go and do what no one else will do," explaining that that's the "mandate from God" the ministry has been tasked with.
The ministry team says that it assists with people's "practical needs," offering simplicity and understanding "to the Fatherless, the Widow and the Stranger."
The documentary promises to show how the Creflo Dollar team helps people both locally and internationally.
"Some people only do disaster relief; some people go and they only teach. I think that for us at Creflo Dollar Global Missions, it's all-encompassing," Lavendar added.
"It's a complete missions team — we don't just go in and do Bible study, we don't just go in, construct something, and leave the people with no influence or no impact," he continued. "Where we go, we leave a mark. We don't just do that in words and in conversations, we're also doing it in our actions."
The Christian Post attempted to reach Creflo Dollar Global Missions for comments, but was told that the person directly connected to the "Uncharted" movie was not on campus, and could not respond by press time.
Dollar, who has been criticized by some evangelicals for his prosperity gospel preaching, was among six televangelists in 2007 who was probed by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance over alleged opulent spending and possible abuse of nonprofit status. Dollar contested the probe, arguing that the proper governmental entity to examine religious groups is the IRS, not the Committee on Finance. The inquiry concluded in 2011 with Dollar's and three other televangelists' ministries refusing to cooperate fully.
Dollar defended his lavish lifestyle to CNN at the time, saying that he has separate income that is provided by businesses he owns and from investments and real estate. "… Just because it is excessive doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong," he said.
More recently, in 2015, Dollar asked for 200,000 people to donate $300 or more each to raise $65 million to help his ministry purchase a luxury jet. His ministry stated that they needed to replace their old private jet and their goal was "to acquire a Gulfstream G650 airplane so that Pastors Creflo and Taffi and World Changers Church International can continue to blanket the globe with the Gospel of grace."
Albert Little, a 31-year-old evangelical convert to Catholicism living in Ontario, Canada, said that such controversies pushed him to become a Catholic.
"While it might be a stretch to say that someone like Creflo Dollar made me a Catholic it would be accurate to say that the possibility of theological interpretations like Dollar's are, in large part, what's driven me in my search for deeper truth," Little wrote recently on his Patheos blog "The Cordial Catholic."
Dollar, meanwhile, has argued that "there is no such thing as the prosperity gospel" and the money in his pocket belongs to God.
"It came from Him. He is the source behind everything we have that is good. He loves to be trusted; He loves to be the one that you lean on. He loves to be the one that you rely on and He wants to be the one that you lean on and rely on first," the megachurch pastor said in April 2015.
"Uncharted" will be released in April.
