Transcript: Nathan Apffel – Inside the Dark World of Megachurches and Corrupt Pastors – SRS #233

The system is cloaked in the concept of Christ as our savior, salvation and generosity and love. It’s the perfect mask for abusing people.

Not only abusing people, but abusing people at their most vulnerable state, which is “I am here to explore my faith and my salvation and my brokenness.” When you meet someone in that spot, there are wolves that will feed. Christ speaks heavily on this in the Bible.

I’ll preface this right now: we are here to do two things – encourage your faith and encourage your generosity. Outside of that, everything’s fair game.

Trust But Verify

SHAWN RYAN: The words that come to my mind are “trust but verify.” I know what you’re saying. What you are about to talk about is going to destroy… maybe that’s too strong, but people put a lot of faith into these organizations.

We saw this in the medical community with COVID. Everybody put so much trust into the medical institutions that when it came out that maybe this isn’t exactly how it was portrayed to be, it blew the doors off and created a tremendous amount of distrust. There’s a large number of people who just couldn’t handle it. Everything they know has been destroyed in a system that they have believed in for years, especially the baby boomer generation.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I think the impact of what this is follows those same lines. People grew up from infant to whatever age they are now in particular churches and organizations. To see the dirty side of what’s going on in some of these organizations is going to be a hard watch.

NATHAN APFFEL: We’re born and raised in the systems, and then we have our biased lens of reality.

SHAWN RYAN: Right.

What Is Church?

NATHAN APFFEL: If I go to a mega church in Los Angeles or Dallas or New York, that is church to me. If I’m raised in the backwoods of Mississippi, that small, struggling, rural church is church to me. If I go to the LDS church, this temple is church to me.

We start the show off with “what is church?” because those aren’t the biblical form of church. Those are just culture. It’s whatever… wherever I’m born and raised, or whatever group I’m raised in or ethnic group or political group, that just shapes and molds what I think is truth and reality. But that’s not necessarily truth and reality.

You have to take a slice of humble pie. I had to do this, and I firmly believe the way God did it, because he knew I wouldn’t do it, is he just broke me over and over and over again until he’s like, “You want to get kicked again?” I said no. Then he goes, “Okay, let’s rebuild it.”

He rebuilt me with this new unbiased lens. When you look at the biblical definition of church, which is ecclesia, it’s literally a gathering of people. That is the body of Christ. It’s just the people. Christ is the head of that gathering.

Everything outside of that, everything layered on top of that – whether that be your theology on giving, whether that be the building, the stages – that is all just tradition of you and I. That is what we look at. We need to dissect that. In the religion business, we go straight down to the foundation of it, which is the IRS tax code in the US.

Churches vs. Corporations

SHAWN RYAN: Before we get started here, I’m curious – are you against all churches?

NATHAN APFFEL: What’s a church?

SHAWN RYAN: I’m asking you, I’m talking about the modern day.

NATHAN APFFEL: So the institution.

SHAWN RYAN: The institution.

NATHAN APFFEL: I’m going to be very clear that that is a corporation. They file corporate documents with the state. That is a business. The church can use that business, but it’s not the church. It’s got money coming in and money going out.

That system that we’ve built – the building, the stage, the parking lots, the lights, the fog machines, the childcare, the coffee and donuts – that is not in and of itself bad. But that is not the church.

I always ask people, “Do you go to church?” They say yes. I go, “No, you are the church.” That is a place where the church can meet up, but that is not the church. You have to separate the two because one of the two… well, both have to be held accountable.

The body of Christ needs to be held accountable to Christ, but then the body needs to regulate the business. Right now we’ve muddied the two. I call it an infection. It’s an infection where no one has any clear definitions anymore. Where there’s disease or infection, abuse grows. Bad things happen.

Right now we’re just at a tipping point where too many bad things are happening in the system that most people go, “Something’s wrong, and I can’t articulate it.” What do they do? They just up and leave and say, “I’m not a Christian anymore, I’m over religion.”

I don’t think you’re over Christ. I think you’re over the system we built on top of him.

The Fear of Driving People Away

SHAWN RYAN: It’s essentially indoctrination, right?

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Regardless of all the misuse of the money that’s going on, there is still good, in my opinion. I want to hear about all this stuff. I just want to be careful. Like I said, it’s all about him up there.

When I was thinking about this interview, am I going to drive people away? Me as a baby Christian, I don’t know much. I have had a lot of talks about what the church actually is, which you just described perfectly, and I 100% agree with that.

My fear is… me as a baby Christian and other baby Christians that I have influenced or that I’ve spoken to in our journeys, a lot of the people that come on the show wind up coming to the Lord. What does everybody do that’s a baby Christian, including myself? We do a Bible study at my house. That is church to me, where we can ask any questions without fear. You can ask the tough questions that you’ll get the stink eye for in a church or, as you call it, an institution or corporation.

Basically what I’m getting at is baby Christians – where do we go to learn? We go to the church because that’s what we’re indoctrinated into thinking. If we blast the institution, the corporation that calls itself the church, are we turning off a funnel of people to become educated in what this is really all about?

That is my fear. That’s something I would have taken in, and I’d be like, “You know what, man, forget this. I’m not going to be a part of this. This whole thing’s a scam.” It could have tilted me the other way.

We do see this massive wave of revival and Christianity across the globe. I see it almost every day. More and more people are coming, and I think that’s a good thing.

NATHAN APFFEL: 100%, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I just want to be very careful not to turn people off from that.

You’re Not a Baby Christian

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s definitely not our goal. You said, “I’m a baby Christian.” If you’re holding a Bible study at your house, I don’t think you’re a baby Christian. I think you cut right through the nonsense and hit that bullseye on the board.

You might be three feet from the board right now, and eventually you want to get eight feet from it, so to speak, but you’re on the bullseye. Can I give you something?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, of course.

NATHAN APFFEL: This Bible is a gift.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, whoa.

NATHAN APFFEL: It’s printed in 1660.

SHAWN RYAN: 1660.

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s a King James. It doesn’t come in one Bible. It comes in two because it’s so big. This Bible is printed 49 years after the first printing of the King James in England.

SHAWN RYAN: Whoa.

A Gift from History

NATHAN APFFEL: Gift for you. It’s got the Apocrypha in it, massive wood carvings of Jerusalem and of the Levites preparing the tithes, ironically. This is what people need to read. They need to read the Scriptures, nothing else.

This is where you find God – one of the two places you find God is in the scriptures and in prayer. If you’re doing those two things, you’re far ahead of 99% of Christians. This Bible is 1660.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, I don’t even know what this… This is… Wow. Thank you.

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s used in “The Religion Business.” We printed or we scanned some of the wood carvings to tell the story. That Bible is older than America.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you serious?

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. That’s a gift from Chris and I, my business partner and I.

SHAWN RYAN: This is like the coolest thing anybody’s ever given me. Thank you.

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s humanity’s history. If you have a way to see the world and you explore your faith and why we’re here and why I have consciousness and why I put value in your life and in my daughter’s life, as opposed to just being an animal, that book tells the story in one of the most profound ways that’s radically shaped the world.

It’s shaped everybody’s life on Earth. Chris and I thought, what better gift than a piece of history.

SHAWN RYAN: This is amazing.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. Thank you.

The True Church and Direct Connection with God

NATHAN APFFEL: You’re welcome. And so I say I give that to you right now because you said you don’t want people to turn off from Christianity, but those scriptures are all you need. And then you can connect directly with God, our creator. And Jesus says, “Pray and I’ll show up where two or more gathered in my name. I’ll be there.” And that is the true church. Everything else is just culture and tradition.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Thank you. This is incredible. Thank you.

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, when I saw the new set, I was like, it’d be really cool if he had a cool Bible sitting somewhere.

SHAWN RYAN: We got a bunch of Bibles. Oh, there we go. I might. These might. I think these are coming home with me.

NATHAN APFFEL: There you go.

SHAWN RYAN: So I can dig in.

Faith in God vs. Faith in Institutions

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, but that’s what everything’s. Well, everything’s based off Christ. And that book, that collection of scriptures has radically transformed the world. And the problem is very few Christians go back to that anymore.

Dan Bremer in the religion business says, “We put faith in our faith in God, but not in the God of our faith.” Because if you put faith in your faith, you’re putting faith in the institution. This is what I’m used to. This is what I was raised in. It’s safe. It’ll raise my children in the way I want them to be raised. But that’s not what God said.

So we have to put our faith in the Creator and in the God of our faith. And as soon as you do that, things get very dangerous, because it means I am no longer in control of anything. And if I firmly believe in this Creator who’s whispering in my ear and guiding me, I’m going to have to do what he says.

Whether that be pouring everything you have into a show 15 years of your life, whether that be making a ton of money and be like, “Man, you’ve blessed me.” And then him saying, “Dude, you’re going to risk it all right now,” you know, or, “Hey, like, my brother was a sniper, you know, don’t pull the trigger or pull the trigger.” You know, you’re starting to listen.

And that’s a dangerous position to be in because you are now a danger to government, you’re a danger to institutions, because you no longer are appeasing them. You’re appeasing God. Whether that be Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, the God of your faith is a dangerous God. And so the God of that Bible is a dangerous God.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. It’s a good way to put it.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

Introduction and Community Questions

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. Everybody starts off with an introduction. You ready?

Nathan Apffel, filmmaker and world traveler who turned a traumatic brain injury at 16 into a 20 year odyssey of documenting stories that make audiences question everything. Creator of “The Religion Business,” a seven part docu series revealing the trillion dollar machine behind Christian institutions on a mission to shine a light on the business of religion. And most importantly, you yourself are a Christian.

So how did this actually. A couple things, couple things we got to get through here. So I got a Patreon account, we’ve turned it into community. And they’ve been here with me since. A lot of them have been here since the beginning. And so I. One of the things that we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

So this is from Eric Alger: “Do you feel a filmmaker’s responsibility ends at exposing problems or can it include building tools that create change? And from your perspective, do mega churches and the Catholic church struggle with the same accountability issues or are they worlds apart?”

Solutions Beyond Exposing Problems

NATHAN APFFEL: So let’s talk about the problem. A filmmaker is here to do what they want, right? That is, they’re here to make a film. Some just expose problems. But that’s not what we were here to do with “The Religion Business.” And we’ll get into why I feel God led me down this course that he did and he put some big milestones in my life and tribulation in my life to guide me to this.

So the docuseries presents a massive problem. The reason why my business partner Chris came on board is because we built a tech solution that’s non governmental, that donors and congregants can use that drives a stake of accountability right through the whole system. And so we have a problem and a solution.

So this is, we’re not just here to point out a problem because there’s a lot of. You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. So it’s yes, there’s a massive trillion dollar a year problem, but there’s also solutions to that problem. And we just want to be, I’ll call it the first to the table to say, “Hey, we can solve this problem.” And it just takes creative thinking and I’ll say God inspired ideas. But yeah. So we are not here just to point out a problem. We’re here to bring a solution.

The Pastor Who Stood Against the System

SHAWN RYAN: You know what’s interesting is it just came to me, the guy that runs my Bible study, his name’s Todd and he’s his OG original Gangster Tennessee and has been a preacher, I think damn near his whole life. And he got ran out of the circle because he was publicly saying in his ministries at churches that pastors should not be pastors, ministers, you know, all these figures should not be making any money.

And so he couldn’t preach at any church. That’s who leads our Bible study. And then he just got into, he just got into a very small one. I think he’s really happy about it. So he’s back preaching again. But he stands for pretty much exactly what I think you’re about to reveal here.

NATHAN APFFEL: I’d like to meet Todd for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: I’d love to connect you. Yeah. But so how did you get into this whole thing? What was it that caught your attention, that initially grabbed you?

NATHAN APFFEL: Into the religion business?

SHAWN RYAN: Into the religion. What did you start diving in? What was it that caught your attention, that initially grabbed you?

The Journey Begins: From California Churches to Global Awakening

NATHAN APFFEL: I was born and raised in large churches in California. Loved it. Singing choir, you know, did the Awana side of things. Was like the champion of the three legged race with my elementary buddy. I loved it. I went to every summer camp. Always got a new girlfriend at summer camp. You know, it’s just the youth experience of modern Christianity.

We moved to San Diego to a little town called Carlsbad and went to a church. The youth pastor was awesome, super outspoken, gregarious, loud. He became the high school pastor. So with his kind of moving up the ladder, I was aging and so he was always my pastor. When I was 16, I had a brain injury. We get into that a little later. But that’s what got me into filmmaking.

And then in my 20s, I started traveling the world. I worked for Oakley, the Sunglass Company and Burton Snowboards. And I would just travel the world working on surf movies, snowboard, ski movies, you name it. A mentor of mine, Ira Opper, hired me and I’ve worked with him for almost 20 years now, this old legend from north county. And we would just travel the world together. And everywhere I’d go, I just want to visit churches.

And then my dad was running a nonprofit and he just likes adventure, you know, and so most of his nonprofit work was done in the rural mountain regions of Central and South America. And so I would shoot for him, I’d go out and film for him. And you know, we’d be hanging out with literal drug runners in the middle of the Honduran jungles where you got to take dugout canoes to get there and sleep on the ground. And no electricity. It was. I live for that.

Finding God in the Slums

And so I had about a decade of that where I was in the favelas in Brazil, so the poorest slums of Brazil. And in the backwoods, you know, literal pine woods in Honduras, hanging out with drug runners. And you’d end up in these tin roof churches with no walls and dirt floors. And then these seminaries in Brazil that never took a dollar. There was no focus on money ever. It was just, “How do we connect with our creator?”

And man, I have usually physical needs. Either my daughter or son is dying or my husband just died, or you know, destitute individuals looking for purpose. And so I just fell in love with these types of churches and seminaries.

And so for 10 years, I believe God gave me breadcrumbs and I just traveled the world and I’d sit with the. There’s one story in particular where I was in Mexico sitting at a convent. And the train that runs from the border to us is called El Tigre, and MS-13 runs it. And anybody from Central America would climb on top that want to get to the US border.

And you know, MS-13 is raping kids, raping women, you know, throwing women with new babies off if they wouldn’t let them have sex. They just chuck the baby off, you know, kill people. And there was fees. And so I’ve talked to one girl who brought her cousin along, and she gave her cousin as payment to get her to the border.

A Life-Changing Encounter with MS-13

And so we were at this convent, and the convent, Catholic convent, will take anybody in, whether that be traveler or MS-13, anybody who’s hurting. And so this is when I was 22, I was shooting interviews, and I had a translator, and I was sitting there with this MS-13 member.

And he goes, “Nathan, the one thing I want to tell you is you’re 10 steps away from murder.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” And he goes, “You will kill someone with 10 bad decisions.” And he goes, “I was raised on the streets in Hungary. MS-13 took me in,” and he walked me through his life. And he goes, “You are 10 steps away from murdering someone. 10 bad decisions.”

And that radically transformed how I look at whether that be sinners or anybody I meet on this journey. And I’d rather sit with them because I know them. They’re being honest with me, right? Oh, yeah, you’re going to kill me. If you’re threatening to kill me, you’re probably going to kill me. But a pastor in the US might smile at me as they’re completely abusing the system, if that makes sense.

And so I always say, because I shot with on Warped Tour too, so I would shoot music videos on Warped Tour. And I’m like, I’d rather hang out with the punk rock guys who are doing drugs and just doing whatever they want because that’s what they sing about. But then I go into country music or into Christian music and they sing about the greatest things and then they’re just complete pieces of shit behind the scene.

And so I’m like, I was just searching for truth and I found God in these seminaries and churches in the slums. And then I’d come back to the US and I’d stand in this 30 million dollar a year church and I’m like, “You’re not doing anything for your community. But you did build that new arena, you know, you did buy that new sound system.”

The Breaking Point: Personal Betrayal

And then at that same time, so everything’s coming to a head and I’m getting frustrated. Two other things are happening in my life. That youth pastor I told you about was arrested for sexually assaulting his adopted children. He’s still in.

SHAWN RYAN: Say that again.

The Catalyst for Change

NATHAN APFFEL: The youth pastor that raised me, that was mentoring me, sexually abused his adopted children for years. And so that news comes out and he was being trained to take over this mega church at this point. And so he’s in jail to this day.

And I’m sitting here going, how is this pervert able to sit around children his whole life? And we can, parents can look at this and be like, “He’s a pastor, they’re safe with him.” And he’s sexually abusing his adopted children from Africa.

And so that happens. My world travels are happening. And then my brother in law, the only pastor who would ever listen to my questions about like, “How does the system work? Like, why does everybody say you get double honor? Why does everybody say you have the hardest job?” And these are juvenile questions. You know, I’m like 20, he’s the only guy, he’s about 10 years older than me. The only paid pastor that would field any of my questions.

And he’s a full time pastor getting paid and he has a disease called Huntington’s. It’s a super rare genetic disease. And he’s pretty far along now. But he was the one guy in the system who would listen. And so he’d come over and we’d sit and we’d drink whiskey on my little deck, and we would just talk theology for hours.

And a couple years pass, and he calls me. He’s like, “Hey, I finally understand what you mean.” And I’m like, “Well, what do you mean?” He goes, “I quit my job today.” And he’s like, “I got a job at Trader Joe’s.” And he goes, “I preached my last sermon because I went back through Paul’s letters, and I get it. Like, he preached unencumbered of needing anything from the people he preached to because he wanted to present Christ as Christ alone, with no institution or no demand behind him.”

So the one guy who inspired, really inspired this whole journey, and this is the messed up part of it. Like, he lost both his parents young. Like, this guy had everything to be angry about, and instead, the one thing he wanted to present to the world was Christ. And I’m like, “That’s a man of God.”

And he’s dying today, almost on his deathbed, and it’s like, how did that guy get painted with so much baggage and crap? And then a person like me, who literally is just a train wreck, wanting to kind of go out with a bang, God’s, for some reason, keeping his hand over me.

And so all these three storylines and experiences collided at once. And so 25, I bought the religion business. So 16 years ago, I bought the Domain. And I’m like, “Maybe I’ll write a book one day. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.” But that was the catalyst, and that’s where I tasted righteous anger for the first time, not only for the institution, but for God. You know, I was like, “Why would you take so much from this guy who just gives to everybody in that?” Like, that was the catalyst for the religion business.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Yeah, man. So the whole world got flipped upside down with them. Then the pastor that mentored you got picked up for that.

NATHAN APFFEL: That wasn’t. That was more just like, I knew it, you know? You know, you knew it. Well, no, I’m saying, like, this is the good guys, you know, the guys that look the best. You know, the Bible talks about the Pharisees walking around in long robes and wanting the respectful greetings in the marketplaces. You know, they come dressed as sheep, but inside they’re ravenous wolves.

You know, it’s like, of course, the one person that everybody thought was, you know, this man of God is this ravenous wolf, and he’s making good money. He’s, you know, he is the picturesque ideal of the modern American pastor. And then the one who’s being shunned and eventually just leaves the system sounds like Todd, a little bit like, gets a literal death sentence, you know, and yet he smiles in the face of death. And I don’t know, it’s a fascinating world, you know?

The Money Question

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I mean, let me ask you this. Are you against pastors, ministers, any religious figures? Are you against them making money?

NATHAN APFFEL: I’m going to set the show aside for now. I don’t think anybody can take money, especially over a career from this system, and not get eaten by it. And those aren’t my words. Those are men and women that have spent their entire life in ministry or at a church and having discussions for years with them. They’re like, “No one gets away from it.”

SHAWN RYAN: What do you mean by that? Nobody gets away from what?

NATHAN APFFEL: From getting eaten by the machine.

SHAWN RYAN: So this is like. This is very similar to politics. Come in with great intentions and then you’re corrupted.

The Machine That Corrupts

NATHAN APFFEL: Yes, and here’s why. Or I’ll give you my thought. I’m a young pastor, or Sean’s a young man ready to spread the gospel. He’s been indoctrinated, I’ll use your word, into the system. He’s been to seminary. He wants to, quote, unquote, save souls. And so he’s. What’s the first thing he’s going to do? He’s going to look for a job. He’s going to get that job.

And as soon as he starts preaching, he’s going to tell about Christ and how Christ does save you, how Christ is the person you should mirror. You know, “I want to die in me, so Christ lives through me.” Like, those are all good things. But then, guess what? “Hey, Sean, your business, this institution, the corporation, might cost, let’s go small, 100 grand a month to keep this thing operational.”

Okay, well, where are we going to get that money? Well, you’re going to look through scriptures and go, “Okay, well, right now in culture, we’ve landed on the Levitical tithe.” And so we go, “Man. This tithe is where we’re going to get our money. We want 10% or we need 10%,” and then you’re going to keep preaching and “Okay, Sean, I need to preach one message on tithing every eight weeks.”

SHAWN RYAN: What is. I just learned this tithing today. I had no idea that this was a thing. So what is tithing?

Religious Economic Theory

NATHAN APFFEL: Let’s get in. I want to give this model, if you don’t mind. Okay, so one out of eight weeks, you’re going to do a sermon on giving. We’ll call it generous giving and tithing. Whether that be the pastors either preach on tithing or generous giving. Those are the two ways you can ask people for money. And so one out of eight weeks, your message is on tithing.

Well, shoot, Sean, our church is growing now. Our budget’s 200 grand. We have about 350 people that show up every Sunday. We’ve got a little day school. So we got to start asking for more money. Okay, we’re going to preach two out of eight weeks.

Well, shoot. Nathan’s church down the street just got a better soundstage than us, and he’s going to start pulling congregants. So in the show, we call this religious economic theory. So Nathan’s church is going to pull your congregants away because they are literal consumers. And so you’re going to need the same soundstage I have.

Okay, well, that’s going to cost us an extra 150 grand. So we’re going to request money above and beyond. So now on the third Sunday of that eight week block, we’re going to give a sermon, but then the last five minutes, we’re going to present why we need this new soundstage.

And so your whole presentation of the gospel slowly tilts to protect the institution and the revenues it needs to survive. And no matter what, this is my conclusion. Every pastor that plays in that game dies to the game. And that’s why pastors rightly say pastoring is the hardest job in the world. We all leave demoralized. And you do, but it’s not your fault, necessarily. But you’ve been eaten by a machine that we’ve built on top of Christ.

The Practical Realities

SHAWN RYAN: See what you’re saying. Back to the original question. Are you in? I’m not attacking you. I just want to know how you think.

NATHAN APFFEL: I think Paul, you should have a job outside of your ministry.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, but if. What if somebody wants to devote all of their time to this, every bit of it, and there is overhead. I mean, you know, there. And I’m not. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a bad thing either. You know, I mean, when these churches grow and they want to expand an online presence, well then they got to get people to know, audio, video. They got people, you know, to set that up. They have to have people that operate that equipment.

They have to, you know, I think it’s a good thing. You go into some of these places and they have coffee and donuts, bagels and stuff like that, you know, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I mean, I think it’s certainly, I think it is a good thing that people congregate together, you know, in the name and I think people want to be comfortable when they worship. You know, they want air conditioning, they want bathrooms, they want, you know, that’s. I have toddlers. Very challenging to take toddlers to church and actually pay attention, you know, and so the place that we were going to had had little daycare thing. Put them in there.

Then we see active shooters all. I mean, the Catholic church just got shot up yesterday, you know, all those little kids, horrible killed. Now you need security because we have a big a mass of people that are together and that’s what active shooters look at. If they want to take the most amount of people out as possible in the shortest amount of time to get the biggest headline. Yeah, you know, so now you have security element that you have to hire. Otherwise, you know, and more and more people are demanding that and people want their kids to go to a Christian school or a Catholic school or, you know what I mean?

And so then you got to hire teachers and all that stuff. And so I’m curious, I mean, do you think these things are bad, all of them?

The True Church vs. Institutional Buildings

NATHAN APFFEL: I think they run antithetical to the message of Christ. Christ said to pick up your cross and follow me and make disciples of men. He did not say to build buildings. And I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad, but everything you just described is just men building things.

And so let’s go down a rabbit hole here for a second about ministry. When you look at biblical ministry today, if I want to get in the ministry, I’m going to go get a job at a church. My ministry is my daughter. My ministry is to raise her under Christ centered principles. And I will never abdicate that to anyone else because I don’t know what they’re teaching her. I don’t know if it’s even biblically sound.

And so when you look at the institution, it’s not necessarily bad. But Christ never told us to build any of it. You and I, I firmly believe, I believe Christ is in this room. I believe you and I are connecting as brothers in Christ. That is the church. We are meant to uplift our ministry, which is our children, your wife, your husband, that core community, that tight bond. And if that fractaled out through the US, the US would transform overnight.

But instead we say, “You need to come to this building to hear someone else teach you about the Bible.” Dude, you got a 400-year-old Bible sitting there. We’ve missed the mark. We’ve abdicated responsibility to others to teach us. And so we just keep coming back to the system.

I always say, man, my favorite thing as a kid was to watch the Christmas pageant at my church. You want to know why? Because my dad was the literal freaking flying angel, you know? And I’m like, “Man, there’s my dad.” But what have we built? Like, I don’t want to be sitting in that same type of auditorium watching the same Christmas pageant when I’m 80 and be like, “God is good.” I want to be doing dangerous things for Christ. And that is what he’s called us to do.

Historical Parallels: The Temple System

When you dilute Christ’s message down, he actually didn’t talk about much outside of loving one another, healing one another, preaching the gospel and making disciples. Everything else is just traditions of men in Christ. This has happened in the past. The temple was exactly what we see today. You go to this building to worship. Now, granted, it was a legalistic structure, whereas we say our churches aren’t legalistic anymore, but it was a legal structure.

And they were making money in the temple square, exchanging money. And Christ went in and he said, “You’ve turned my father’s house into a robber’s den.” That building was strictly for worship. And instead we made money on it. We turned it into a capitalistic endeavor. And I can’t read the Gospels and lay that story over modern day church and see any correlation in regards to what needs to change. I’m sorry, we’ve mirrored it. It’s the exact. We’ve repeated history over and over.

And you as a military man and probably a historian, history repeats itself over and over because we don’t learn. So we’re literally mirroring what’s happened in the past. And so when you read the Gospels, and this is what I’ll tell everybody when everybody goes, “Okay, what should I do, Nathan?” Well, you should read the Bible. Over, over, over. I think it’s only 13% of Christians have ever even read the book, you know.

SHAWN RYAN: I haven’t read at all.

The Stanford Study: What Actually Deepens Faith

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, it sounds like you’re trying, you’re going to get through it though, right? And that’s the thing is once you read it. So there’s a great study done. There’s a megachurch in Chicago, one of the first in the U.S. 30,000 seats, bam, massive, huge show. Every pastor goes, “I want to be that.”

And so this is in 98. They’re expanding rapidly. Thousands of people are pouring in every Sunday. Tens of thousands are pouring in every Sunday in leadership. I’m going to tip my hat to them. They go, “Hey, we’re not really deepening our congregants faith. People are coming. They stay for six months, they leave. It’s a conveyor belt. And the reason why we keep our numbers is because a new person just puts their butt in that seat and it’s just this conveyor belt. How do we retain our congregants and deepen their faith?”

So they hired Stanford development economists to come in and do a long term study. And we have dev economists that worked on the show. These guys are brilliant, these guys and gals. So they do this long term study. Their study comes back with two ways that you can deepen your faith of your congregants. One, reading your Bible at home alone. Two, sitting in prayer alone. That’s it.

So what are the buildings? What are the sound stages? What are the childcare, what are the coffee and donuts? What are the escalators? What is that 20 acre parking lot just to get people in? It’s things we’ve built on top of Christ. Stanford came back and said these are the two things we’ve asked everybody. And so when Christ says it’s written on your heart, Sean, it is. I firmly believe his gospel is written on every human’s heart and that book is the guide. And then prayer is how you connect. And other than that, everything is just freaking smoke and mirrors, you know?

The Question of Compensation and Monetization

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, I’m just, I mean, I think about, you know, I mean, everybody has to make a living and you know, somebody that’s new to this and I mean, you know, I don’t understand. There’s probably 10% of the Bible I understand and 90% I don’t understand, you know, and so I need to look for somebody that can educate me.

With that being said, I look for multiple. You know, I want all aspects. I don’t want just for sure, you know, I don’t want just Todd or you or a priest, you know, to teach me about it. I look at it from all the different angles. I want to understand it, you know. And so that is what draws me to, you know, what drew me to…

NATHAN APFFEL: Go to a church, that you’re wrestling with your faith. Right? But the Bible says wrestle with your faith.

SHAWN RYAN: So, you know what I mean? But I personally think that they should be compensated, you know, because they have to make a living. And if they want to dedicate their life to educating people on the way Christ was, how he lived, how we’re supposed to live, all of that, you know, good stuff. And if they want to dive in, then I think that it’s my responsibility, you know, to make sure that person has a living, that can take care of their family and all of these things. It’s my personal feeling.

And I don’t know, maybe I’m guilty of this. I’ve, you know, it’s nuanced with this show, for example. You know, this show right now, this interview between me and you. I’m feeding my curiosity. I want to know. I know there is a lot of corruption. I just learned, you know, a couple days ago that, you know, the norm seems to be 10% of the funds go to charity or back to the people or to the poor or whatever, and 90% of it, you know, goes in their pockets. I think that is a travesty. Yeah, you know, that’s happening.

But, you know, so where I’m going is, I mean, maybe I’m a part of this. I mean, I’ve brought on. I have a lot of mentors that I brought on the show. I still explore Catholicism a little bit. And I’ve had, you know, several priests on. Father Dan, Father Dadbury. They’ve been instrumental in guiding me. And my good friend Lee Strobel wrote the Case for Christ. I mean, him. John Burke wrote Imagine Heaven. I mean, I love these guys, you know, and I think when I talk to him, I think that I know they have a huge heart.

But, you know, they wrote the book. I mean, there’s Lee’s latest book up there. That’s the first copy of him. Sign it. You know, but, I mean, he’s making money off of the books. Yeah, I’m making money feeding my own curiosity. I’m going to make money from this show, you know what I mean, through advertising and, you know, monetization and all of that kind of stuff. And so, you know, I’m curious what your thoughts are, you know, when I bring on Father Dan, Father Gadbury, Dr. Dan Schneider, Lee Strobel, John Burke, Tim Tebow, you know, I mean, I’ve learned a lot of stuff from these guys, you know, in this room, and I monetize those episodes, and that’s how I make a living, and that’s how I provide for my team that produces this entire thing. And so, I mean, am I up?

Money and Ministry: The Corruption Factor

NATHAN APFFEL: No. Money is not a bad thing in and of itself. So let me go back, because you asked me a personal question. I do not think pastors should be paid. When you look at the purest form of the Gospels from Paul, and then you look at the Didache, which is an early apostolic writing from about 50 to 70 AD is where they pin the print. Like, they are very concerned, these early apostolic fathers, with how people are literally, they say, trafficking Christ.

And so I think in the purest form, I love the gospel. This morning on our Uber ride to the gym, my business partner and I, like, we just had a great conversation with the Uber driver. Out of nowhere. He was listening to our conversation, and he ended up giving us a book. He had him in his trunk. And like, that is church where these intimate connections happen, where you raise your level of faith together. That is my personal opinion.

In the religion business, we do not say this should happen. We don’t say pastors shouldn’t make money. We look at the system, we look at the architecture. I sit with theologians from all over the world. Oxford, Harvard, you name it. And all of them make money off their faith. And so I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t make money off of that. That’s not what I’m saying.

But money is such a corrupting factor in a lot of things. And so that’s why in the beginning, you have to separate what is the biblical church and what have we built. What we’ve built is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be regulated. And in the show, in the religion business, we show massive loopholes in the system that are created because of the legal architecture. And now the system is so corrupted that Phil Hackney, who oversaw the nonprofit sector at the IRS for five years, said the whole thing’s about the buckle, you know.

And David E. Taylor got busted by the FBI yesterday. You know, it’s the whole…

SHAWN RYAN: Is this the guy in Dallas?

NATHAN APFFEL: He’s in Houston, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Houston, yeah.

NATHAN APFFEL: What happened there? What’s up?

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll let you finish.

NATHAN APFFEL: Oh, yeah. I’m just saying the whole system is corrupting and it’s because of the religious economic theory. We’re pitting churches against each other, vying for consumers with no external accountability. And it just creates the Wild West. And anything goes in the name of Jesus.

And Dan Bramer, who’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever sat with, philosopher and theologian, he goes, “No one believes something that’s stupid, Nathan.” And so Kenneth Copeland, who his boys waved their guns and their fake badges at me, he believes what he’s doing and he believes he is spreading the gospel. Joel Osteen believes it. Ed Young, who had me arrested and roughed up, believes it. My brother in law who’s dying believes it.

And so I don’t blame any of these guys. And in the system, yes, we live in a capitalist society where things cost money, but we have to be able to separate the church from the building the true church, the ecclesia, and say this needs to be regulated and right now it’s unregulated in the name of separation of church and state.

The David E. Taylor FBI Raid

SHAWN RYAN: What happened in Houston? Because this was yesterday.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yesterday, yeah. So there’s an apostle named David E. Taylor, loud, outgoing guy, you know, he says that if you talk negatively against him, God’s going to kill you. You know, he’s that type of preacher and he prays off the most vulnerable. He’s raised 50 million bucks in about the last decade. And because there’s no accountability, he can do what he wants.

His home in Tampa, Florida, his parsonage. So this is a home paid for by donors. $8.3 million, 28,000 square feet was raided by the FBI. He has about 28 million in real estate. So he’s taking money from the most vulnerable, who Christ is there to protect, technically. And he’s inuring himself and just building his portfolio. He owns a Bentley, Rolls Royce, all in the name of Jesus.

He’s got people working for free at call centers till 4am and if they don’t hit their donation quota that they have to raise, they have to get on their knees and beg him for forgiveness.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you serious?

The Business of Faith vs. True Church

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. All in the name of Jesus. Beg him for forgiveness because he’s anointed Sean. And so the system, like I said, when you take the business and the true church and blend it, it’s a disease. Because Christ’s message is antithetical to legal systems. He was like, he was a counterculturalist. You know, he didn’t like.

And here’s what I love, because we’re seeing this. We call the death rattle in the show. We’re seeing this happening in Washington right now. Church and state are colliding. So if Christ really wanted to transform the world through politics, he would have marched straight to Caesar and be like, “I demand a meeting with Caesar.”

SHAWN RYAN: Mm.

NATHAN APFFEL: He could care less about Caesar. He said, “I don’t care about your politics and your games. You do. You guys deal with that. I have to deal with the heart.” And so we have to. So we have the ecclesia here. Who’s dealing. This is to deal with the heart. And then we have the business.

The business is not inherently bad, but you have to call it a business. And right now, no one calls it a business because it’s been infected. And we call it this, the church. “I’m going to church.” You don’t go to church. You, Sean, are the church.

And then whatever that is as it morphs and changes throughout the decades in history, sure, that’s a place where we can meet and enjoy the donuts and coffee and listen to cool music. And that’s not inherently bad. But that is a business, and oftentimes a multi-million dollar business that’s run with zero accountability. So you got to call a spade a spade.

The Systemic Problem

SHAWN RYAN: Do you have a percentage of. Is this all churches or is this. Is there so stick out to you? Is there. Is there a happy medium?

NATHAN APFFEL: All of them play by the same rule book. And when you have a rule book with no accountability and all the power silos at the top, just like most every pastor will be eaten by the system, every institution, every business will be eaten by that system.

And that’s why reform has to happen within the business itself. And so we’re begging people to actually deepen their faith and deepen their giving while bringing reform to the machine that we’ve built. And this isn’t inherently bad, but it’s corrupted and dark.

It’s the darkest business entity you can start in the US. We’ve talked with ex mafiosos who spent decades in prison, and they say, “Nathan, I wouldn’t join the mafia today. I’d start a church.” Because it’s the most dark place you get the darkest place you can play.

FBI Investigations and Missing Persons

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Yeah. Why did this guy’s 28,000 square foot home in Tampa get raided by the FBI?

NATHAN APFFEL: Enough people. So this is where you can finally, this is the little sliver of hope is if enough people complain to the IRS or the FBI, they will open an investigation. And our good friends RPIs, that worked on the religion business at the Trinity foundation out of Dallas, they’d in 2018 put together a massive packet and sent it to the IRS and said, “Hey, you guys have to look at this scammer. He’s just ripping people off.”

And this is the problem is it took six years, six and a half years for the IRS and then the FBI to finally go. “This is a total pos. He needs to go.” But there’s people who have disappeared going to his church, missing person reports. And we see this across the US too. These apostles will find vulnerable people, will tell them to move across the country and come work for them, and eventually they disappear into trafficking rings.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, do you have proof that that’s, that is the.

NATHAN APFFEL: We’ve got missing persons reports and you just never find them again? Their cars will be in parking lots.

SHAWN RYAN: I get that. I get that, yeah. What I’m asking is, do you have proof that it was the church that did it? I mean, we’re talking about vulnerable people. Vulnerable people. Those are people that are in poverty, many of them addicted to drugs. You know what that leads to? That leads to “do me the sexual favors and I’ll give you drugs.” Then it turns into, “I’m your pimp, I’ll give you drugs.”

I mean that could, that could be totally outside the church. I mean, there’s a lot of things that happened to the most vulnerable because of the situations that they’re in. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the pastor sold them into trafficking. Unless you have proof. Do you have proof?

NATHAN APFFEL: I don’t have proof of that. Well, I’d have to talk to our PIs, but those are first hand accounts. But I’ll tell you right now, there’s a church in Arizona that literally has a tunnel that goes from the church under the border to Mexico.

SHAWN RYAN: What, what church is that?

NATHAN APFFEL: I’m not going to say, but there is. That’s how corrupt some of these institutions are.

SHAWN RYAN: Why don’t you want to say?

NATHAN APFFEL: Because that’s for another story. We’re developing that story right now. But there is. You can use the name of God to do horrific things. And that doesn’t mean the God, that God Christ is corrupt. It means man is leveraging his name to do awful things. And we can look through history on that one.

And then. Let me rephrase that, too. Man could also use the name of Christ to do amazing things. But right now that the architecture of the system is so dark that it just creates a. So there’s a book called “The Wisdom of Psychopaths,” and it talks about psychopathic tendencies. And it’s a character type. It’s a clinical diagnosis and you can either end up in jail for mass murder or you can be the CEO of some billion dollar hedge fund. There’s just a mental type that they classify as psychopaths.

One of the top five jobs for psychopaths today is clergy to become a pastor.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you serious?

NATHAN APFFEL: Because it’s unlimited authority or potentially unlimited authority. It’s power. It’s dominion over people. And that’s the character type of a psychopath is attracted to jobs like that. It’s a great book. It’s written by a doctor who studied psychopaths for his whole career.

Specific Examples

SHAWN RYAN: All right, let’s dive in. Let’s dive in. Yeah. Where do we start? Let’s go into, let’s go with some examples. Okay, how about these. How about this couple in Nashville? That a TV show? I don’t know much about it because I don’t watch this stuff. I really don’t watch anything. But you know what I’m talking about. Trump just pardoned these people that went to. Went to prison for. I believe it was tax evasion.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, I don’t, I can’t talk. I don’t know much about that story. Again, these stories are rampant across.

SHAWN RYAN: The U.S. Everywhere.

NATHAN APFFEL: And so, for example. A gentleman named Ed Young in Dallas. This is the guy that had me arrested.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

The Catalytic Converter Incident

NATHAN APFFEL: Everybody’s always like, “How do you pick your targets, Nathan? Like, who do you go after?” And I’m like, “I don’t.” I have asked God, “You open the door, I’m going to walk through it.”

So I was in Dallas visiting my dad and I wanted to go to church. I’ve gone to church every Sunday all over the US. I just visit churches and I walk into this, what is a satellite campus. So it means this pastor has multiple buildings all over Dallas. His main campus is in Grapevine, but I go to one in, just outside Frisco.

I show up, nice little building, probably seats 500. Pull into the parking lot. There’s cameras all over the parking lot. You know, all his banners are all over there and his branding. I walk in, I do my standard thing, grab a donut, cup of coffee, sit in the pews, sing some songs. This one, they don’t even have a pastor preaching. They just lower the screen, and I watch the pastor preach from his other main campus. And so I’m like, “That’s kind of impersonal, but whatever.”

And I get up, walk out, go to my car, and I start the rental car, and it just doesn’t turn over. And I’m like, “What the heck?” And so it’s kind of chugging, and it almost sounds like blowing bubbles in water. And I’m like, “I think someone cut the catalytic converter out of the rental car.” So I look underneath, and boom, the catalytic converter is gone.

So I snap a picture, and I’m like, “Dang.” So I just go back inside, and I’m like, “Hey, someone cut the catalytic converter out of my car in your parking lot. There’s cameras all over the place. Could I just get the feed so if my insurance wants to see what happened, I can just send it to them?”

And they give me a card with their website, and they go, “Go to our website. There’s an informational sheet that you can fill out, and we’ll contact you through that.” I’m like, “Cool.”

The Runaround

So I sent him a message. “Hey, my catalytic converter got cut out. You know, this date, this location. Is there any way you can just get me the feed for my insurance?” Crickets. And I’m like, “Okay.” A month passes. Two months pass. And I’m like, “This is weird.” Send them another message. Crickets. And I’m like, “This is ridiculous.”

A year passes, and we’re – now we’re in the – I wasn’t even filming the show at this point, and now we’re in the thick of it. And I’m like, “I’m going to send him another message.” Send them another message. Crickets. Eventually, the message board just completely disappears off the website. So there’s no way to contact this church anymore.

And so about a year ago, I’m traveling with my camera operator, and I’m like, “Let’s just see if we can get a phone number and call them to see if we want to give them money, if they’ll answer us.” And so, sure enough, I find an accounting number. So I call the number, and I say, “Hey, my name is Nathan Apffel.” I don’t lie to anybody. And I say, “I’ve been to your church a couple times. I live out of state. How can I give you money?”

Within 24 hours, boom, I get a call back. “Nathan, let me tell you how to give stock, how to give land, how to give jewelry, how to give cash.” They are ready to take your money, but they’re not ready to help.

The Housing Allowance Discovery

And so this is when I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to start doing research on this guy.” And so I call our PIs and I’m like, “Hey, what do you have on Ed Young and Fellowship?” And they said the only way you can find any real legal material is through lawsuits.

And so there’s a big differentiator in the nonprofit sector that everybody has to realize. A secular nonprofit files what’s called a 990 with the IRS. This form is an informational sheet that you are legally held to account to. So if you lie on this form, you’re going to get busted. So if, Shawn, you have a nonprofit and I donate to you, and I feel like something shady is going on, and the IRS comes out and audits you and realizes that you lied on your 990, they can hold you accountable. So it’s strictly an accountability form that says, “Hey, here’s how Shawn’s nonprofit is using the money.”

Churches do not have to file that form, really. So there is no legal document that any church is held to account to. So what that means is financials are whatever leadership wants it to be. And so right there, there’s a massive breakdown in accountability.

So I call my PIs and my PIs are like, “Okay, the only document we have is from 2005, I believe, and it’s because someone sued. The church got sued, and so they did discovery. So they have what’s called a housing allowance list.”

And so this is really unique to churches in the U.S. Pastors can take a tax free housing stipend if they want. And so the language in the IRS code is something along the lines of, “Your tax free housing allowance has to be within means.” So it’s a gray definition, which means if you’ve got good lawyers, well, Shawn, you’re a celebrity. You should live like Oprah. You should be able to live in a $40 million home or a 28,000 foot home in Tampa or whatever. And so you can offset your tax burden in a major way if you take more payment via housing allowance and not via salary, if that makes sense.

So this housing allowance document showed that this pastor was taking $240,000 a year in a housing allowance on top of his salary. And so there was my breadcrumb. I say, “Okay, this is 20 years ago. I wonder what his housing allowance is today.” And you can’t find that out.

Following the Money Trail

And so my PIs do some digging. They say he’s got about $15 million in real estate, personal real estate now buried in LLC structures. But he’s got the – he’s got a beachfront house in Florida. He’s got a $6.5 million home in Dallas. So his mortgage is about $200,000 a month, not $240,000 a year. So, you know, I just estimate, and I say, “Okay, he’s got to be getting a couple million a year in a housing allowance.”

So I call his lawyer, who’s the general counsel of the church. And ironically, he’s the CFO of the church. So not only is their lawyer the CFO, but then he gets ordained. So Ed Young ordains his lawyer. Why would Ed Young need to ordain a lawyer? Because anybody who gets to take a housing allowance has to be an ordained minister of that church. So now I’m thinking, “Well, maybe his lawyer takes the housing allowance, too.”

And so I call the lawyer, and I’m like, “Hey, here’s the data I have,” and it’s all on the show. And I’m like, “I’m in town. I’d love to hear from you, because we just want to know the housing allowances.” Oh, and this is the kicker. I’ve been donating to his church the whole time. And so, as a donor and as someone who attends your church while I’m in Dallas, I want to know where my money’s going and if you’re taking exuberant housing allowances that no one knows.

And so, sure enough, the lawyer never calls me back. So I decided to go to church on Sunday, and I let him know. I’m like, “We’re coming on Sunday.”

The Church Confrontation

And so I show up, and I don’t show up with guns, you know, with cameras all over the place. I just have a pair of glasses that record. And so I walk into the church. They had me pegged before I even made it through the front door. There was two security guards out front. Todd, the head of security, literally passes me as I’m walking through the door. In the show, you see him touch his earpiece.

I walk into their store, and I buy Ed’s book. I buy – I want to buy a sweatshirt that he’s made, this is his design. And I want to get a coffee at his coffee shop. Before I even make it to the register, a gentleman comes up and says, “You can’t buy this stuff. We need to go outside.”

So I walk outside, and again, there’s no cameras with me. I just – I’m wearing a wire and I have my glasses because I assumed something like this would happen. And they go, “You need to leave.” And I said, “Why?” And I said, “I came to church. I wanted to buy your goods, your business. I want to buy your goods. I give to you.” And they go, “That doesn’t matter, Nathan.” And I said, “What doesn’t matter? The fact that I give to you? You should care about my giving and want to make sure you’re stewarding it properly.”

And so I said, “I’ll leave. Who can I talk to in accounting? Because I just have some questions about housing allowances and salaries.” They would give me no information, but they said, “We will have you criminally trespassed if you don’t leave.” And so I said, “Okay, so if I leave, you’re not going to criminally trespass me?” And they said, “No.” So I go on my way.

The Parking Lot Incident

But I had signs in the car because I figured, “Hey, they’re going to kick me out. They’re not going to want to talk.” So we leave, we kind of regroup, we wait for the second service to end. And I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to go stand in the parking lot.” Because they won’t give me any information. And my sign, all it says is, “What is Ed Young’s housing allowance today?” And then, “Ed Young, what is your salary?” That’s it. These two little signs.

So I walk onto the parking lot before I even make it two thirds of the way to the parking lot, and all I’m doing is standing out front. I’m surrounded by probably 15 armed guards. And these guys are – I’m not military, but these guys are rookie. Everybody’s wearing different outfits. You can tell their badges are their security. Some of it’s bought from Amazon. Some are armed, some are not. They all have colored lapels. So I figured the lapel means you’re either armed or you’re not.

And they immediately bring a sheriff up, and they’re like, “We’re going to arrest Nathan for criminal trespassing.” And I’m like, “All I want is who can I talk with in accounting.” And the cop doesn’t – the sheriff doesn’t arrest me. One of his private security grabs me, takes my phone, my property, hands it to another private security. Tore tendons in my arm. So I have to have surgery on my elbow. Rips me around. And they immediately say, “Get him off the property.”

And I’m like, “Why? You just – this looks bad.” And literally there’s 20 armed security guards surrounding this 165 pound dude with two signs.

The Machine That Eats You

And so I get arrested. I’m sitting there on the curb. Well, I’m not arrested, I’m detained at this point. But not by the actual police. And it’s in the show. I give this awesome – I’m just talking to him and I’m like, “Look, you guys believe you’re doing the work of Christ.” And I’m like, “I can’t hate you for that. You think you’re doing good. Just like I think I’m doing good. So we’re on the opposite side of the same coin.”

But I’m like, “Look at this. No one knows his housing allowance. He has a massive property in Florida that no one knows about. The congregation doesn’t know about it. They’ve paid for that. He has bulletproof Range Rovers that he just – he jets away from church.” And we saw this. He jumped curbs to get away because he knew that I was near the property.

And I’m like, “Here’s a dude driving away in bulletproof Range Rovers.” Literally. He created this world in his own head. And all I wanted to know was your housing allowance that donors are paying.

And so that’s what I mean is the machine eats you. I firmly believe when Ed was young, he got into this thinking he wanted to save souls. He wanted to present Christ to people. And now he’s got 20 armed securities around me in his security office. We got word from some of his security officers that there’s a photo of me, a 12 by 12 inch picture of me in their security office. And my code name was Hot Dog.

And so I’m like, “I can’t – I wish I could have gotten their Lockie channel.” Because it’s like, “Hot Dog is officially on the premises.” And I’m like, “All I’m here is because Ed wouldn’t talk to me. The general counsel, who’s also the CFO, won’t talk to me. And so I’m just here for one simple question. What is your housing allowance that all these donors pay for?”

And to this day, unless they sue me for making the show, no one will know his housing allowance. And so that’s the problem with the machine at this point is you get gobbled up.

The Auxiliary Business Model

And he runs something called C3 Global, which is a church planting network. And his lawyer is also working with that. And so you start these, what’s called auxiliaries, conventions or associations. You start these side businesses as churches. And that’s also in the same darkness that a church is in.

So what’s happened is as business leaders and there’s this big entrepreneurial spirit now in the Christian church. It’s, “I’m an entrepreneur and a pastor.” Well, no, you’re just a really smart businessman who’s a Christian. But you’re leveraging your faith and you’re starting a church or an auxiliary to the church to play in the darkest space possible.

And a great example of that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. So in ’98 they had a couple billion sitting. And so they’re like, “Hey, we want to start an investment arm.” So they start an investment arm called Ensign Peak Advisors. It’s a couple billion. They shove it in the market.

And because there’s these additional terms in the IRS code – and again, this is lobbying the government. So this is why they run very parallel lanes, the government and religion. The LDS Church petitioned the IRS to add the term “auxiliary” in front of “church” in the ’60s. And it was men’s clubs back in the day. So men would meet up, smoke cigars, hang out, talk. And they’re like, “This is technically church.”

And so the IRS added this term “auxiliary” to their definition. Well, there’s no definition, black and white definition of what an auxiliary is. So if there’s no definition, anything can be an auxiliary. So the LDS Church registers their investment fund as an auxiliary, which means that auxiliary is technically a church. It gets the same benefits that the church gets.

Flash forward 27 years, they’re worth $300 billion. And it’s all for profit ventures registered as churches.

The Scale of Religious Wealth

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. 300 billion.

NATHAN APFFEL: 300 billion in market assets. The LDS Church will hit a trillion in market assets in the next decade, all under the guise of a religious institution. And the crazy part is not $1 of that now. It’s a hedge fund because they’re hedging. Not a single dollar of that fund has ever gone to humanitarian purposes or even the church.

So if you’re a shrewd businessman, you start a church and you can do whatever you want. And so you wonder why Christianity is getting a bad rap right now. You know, it’s because there are these pastors sexually abusing kids. No, it’s because the whole system is broken, the legal system. So that’s what needs to be reformed.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean we see this all the time. I mean, pastors with runways behind their house, four private jets. I mean, yeah, I know, it’s insane.

Tax Loopholes for Religious Assets

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, the private jet can be registered as a house of worship. In Texas. So you don’t pay tax on the jets.

SHAWN RYAN: It can be registered as what?

NATHAN APFFEL: A house of worship because you pray on it. So a private jet, a 20 million dollar jet can be tax free because it’s a house of worship.

SHAWN RYAN: Is that an auxiliary as well?

NATHAN APFFEL: It’s just an asset of the church, but it’s a house of worship, it’s part of your building. Basically. The IRS sees it as your building.

SHAWN RYAN: So with these loopholes, you could basically purchase just about any vehicle, any plane, any piece of real estate, any building.

NATHAN APFFEL: And a lot of times the LDS Church is now the second largest private landowner in the US – 2.3 million acres.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

NATHAN APFFEL: Tax free. All under the guise of religion and freedom of religion.

SHAWN RYAN: And none of this goes to…

The LDS Church’s Storehouse System

NATHAN APFFEL: They have farms and this is where the LDS Church is very interesting. And we can get – I really want to dissect the LDS Church with you. They have farms and so they say, “Hey, we’re building our storehouse.” So this is Old Testament Torah. So we’re going to have goods and supplies in the storehouse, sufficient in God’s storehouse.

So they’re quoting Malachi and if you’ve tithed to us, if you’ve given your full tithe, you’re going to get to enjoy the benefits of our storehouse if there’s a natural disaster or if Jesus comes. So they’re building their conglomerate, demanding you give 10% of your gross revenue to them and then you’ll be able to benefit from us if something happens. And here’s the kicker. If you don’t give your full tithe, you don’t get to benefit.

SHAWN RYAN: How do they know?

NATHAN APFFEL: Oh, they keep, they look at your…

SHAWN RYAN: Bank statements, they turn in their bank statement.

NATHAN APFFEL: Every year at the LDS Church, you have to go in and I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a meeting with your bishop and you have to discuss your finances and he says, “Have you been a full tithe payer?” And if you haven’t, it’s literally you’re docked. And if you’re not a full tithe payer, you don’t get your temple recommend. And if you don’t have your temple recommend, you don’t get to get to heaven with your family.

Churches as Middlemen of God’s Resources

So we’ve built these institutions and I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt here with good intentions. And they’ve become the middleman of God’s resources. And here’s a question. Christ told to give to two things. Do you know what those two things are in the Bible? “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” So pay your taxes and then give to God the things that are God’s.

Churches don’t pay taxes. And then they’ve – so this is Christ talking to you, Sean. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and give to God the things that are God’s.” Well, the church has moved right in the middle of you giving your resources to God and said, “We’ll disperse these for you.” Christ never told you to give it to an institution. He never – this is the big one, too. He never told you to give it to the house of God. He never told you to give it to the temple because you are the temple.

SHAWN RYAN: He told us to pay taxes.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: A little disappointed in that.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. Well, because he said, “I don’t care about Caesar. Caesar’s going to come and go. Taxes are going to go up and down. Don’t care about worldly things.” He’s literally saying, “Just pay whatever he asks you.”

SHAWN RYAN: Pay.

The History of Tax Exemption

NATHAN APFFEL: Don’t stress it. But so this is an interesting conversation about – so why was tax exemption created in the first place? So in 1913, the government is looking at all these businesses out in the US and they say, “Man, there’s about 12,000 organizations, 12,000 businesses building what we call social capital.”

So they’re in their local communities because there’s no TV, there’s no Internet, you know, and there’s no planes yet. So your world is what’s really around you, within your 40 mile range, really. And so there’s these 12,000 organizations building social capital. And the idea of this is, “Hey, even if Nathan doesn’t have kids, I want the park down the street to be nice and safe for other people’s kids.”

So raising social capital, local social capital, means I’m helping my local community and driving what development economists called human flourishing. So what businesses in our community are raising the level of human flourishing. And that’s what they defined as the nonprofits.

So they said there’s these unique businesses that are strictly there to benefit the community. They’re not after capital profits. They’re really here for the benefit of the community. So we’re going to do this special carve out, and this is 1913, and we’re going to call it a nonprofit sector. 12,000 organizations, and this includes churches, got that exemption in 1913.

Today there’s 1.9 million nonprofits. So it’s an explosion in the sector and it’s tied to technology. So every time a tech boom happens, the nonprofit sector explodes because people see it as a way to offload money because the regulations are archaic.

The IRS 14-Point Church Definition

But so there’s about 12,000 organizations that this includes religious exemptions. Flash forward a couple decades and the IRS has to, in effect, now define a church because churches are now saying, “Hey, we’re a nonprofit. We’re building local social capital,” which they were. And some are right.

So we’re helping the homeless, we’re housing the unhoused, we’re helping foster care, single mothers. We’re really the backbone of our community. Which churches – which these institutions, because remember, the church is just the people, but the building itself was really for the community. They do community meals together. They were there for the community.

So the IRS in effect had to define a church so they could grant tax exemption. So this always blows people away. The IRS used one organization as the model to shove every religion into. And that one organization was the Salvation Army.

So they looked at the Salvation Army, they said, “The Salvation Army is doing good things, let’s go in.” And they created 14 points and said, “This is what the Salvation Army does. So this is what church is.” One of those points – every church, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, you name it, is tucked into that same 14 points.

And it is – you need a house of worship, so you need a physical location. You need basically a board of elders, someone to steer it. You need a creed or a form of worship. You need child care so you can raise the next generation. So when you look at churches today, they’re based solely off these 14 points.

So when you say it’s not bad, it’s not bad, but that’s not church. It’s literally just replicas of the Salvation Army. And then you apply a level of entrepreneurialism on top of that, and man, the sky’s the limit, if that makes sense.

And so now today there’s 400,000 churches in the U.S. So if you lump Starbucks, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, basically every fast food franchise into one pile, there’s still more churches than all those locations combined.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

The CIA Connection

NATHAN APFFEL: And so people have just seen this 14 point checklist as there’s two things. One, it’s a way to abuse the system. And then two, which I really want to talk about – it’s taken the potency out of religion because it’s put you in a box.

And so I had someone from the CIA call me a few months ago, and they were like, “Hey, Nathan, what do you know about the 14 point checklist?” And all I know is what the head of the IRS, the nonprofit sector, told me. And so I’m like, “Here’s the history of it.” And they go, “Okay, good. But it wasn’t IRS that created that.”

SHAWN RYAN: Who was it?

NATHAN APFFEL: The CIA. And I said, “Why would they do that?” And they go, well, this individual was a Christian. They go, “Christianity is dangerous.” And I said, “Yes.” And they go, “Islam is dangerous.” And I said, “Yes.” And so they go, “Why not put everything into a box that you can control?”

So the carrot that the government uses to get religion into that box is tax exemption. So you sell your soul for 30% to play by these 14 rules. And you don’t even have to abide by all the rules, just a handful of them. So here’s what’s funny. You know what else is a church? The Hell’s Angels.

SHAWN RYAN: What?

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, they’re registered as a church. So this box knowingly or unknowingly took the potency of religion away because Christianity is extremely dangerous. Look what it did to Rome. Within 200 years, Rome was done. Constantine became a Christian. Constantine’s like, “Hey, I’d rather hang out with these guys.”

Control Through Standardization

SHAWN RYAN: So they control them through these 14 points.

NATHAN APFFEL: It’s basically, you have to play by these rules if you want tax exemption. And so that’s why every church today in America looks the same, identical, whether that be Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, they all have the same building, the same group, the same creed. Everything’s the same because they play by the same rules.

So you’ve put every faith into this box, and now the box can just be tucked on the shelf, and whatever politician is in power, they can just take the box off and do whatever they want with it. And Christianity, true Christianity, like we talked about earlier, is dangerous because you are not lorded over by Trump or Biden or the U.S. Christ is my Lord, and what he says I should do, I do. And that is dangerous to institutions.

The Organism vs. The Box

And I use the analogy of the early church as an organism. And so organisms are organic and they move through systems. Humans want to build boxes. That’s what we’re good at. You know, we build buildings, we build systems. We build things because it’s safe in things. The 14 point checklist is safe.

I can go to this church for the rest of my life, sing the same song, get the same donut. Maybe I’ll change it up, different flavor every other Sunday or something, you know, same cup of coffee. I’ll watch my kids be raised by these instructors that I don’t know because, hey, it abdicates my role as a father to train my daughter up in Christ centered values. But I’m safe there.

And hey, man, you know what? I’m going to give you a percentage of my money because you’re right, Sean, this does cost money. And you know what? Hey, I’m going to sponsor that distended belly from Uganda, that poor little kid over there, and I’m going to give him 20 bucks a month. I don’t know if the money ever gets to him. And that’s what we explore in the show. That money usually doesn’t get to the kid.

SHAWN RYAN: It doesn’t, no.

NATHAN APFFEL: But I’m going to give my 20 bucks and pin it on that wall and be like, “Ah, you know, Ramsey’s, I got Ramsey’s for the month.” And then that money gets torn down, put into a bucket, set aside. “Oh, here’s another wave of kids.” And all because we live in this very safe box.

The Power of True Christianity

And the Christianity in that book is so dangerous. And that organism can move that ecclesia, that body. If it’s nimble, it moves through systems. And that’s why Christ said, “Give to Caesar. I don’t care.” Because my gospel is going to move through this institution and wash through it.

And that’s why Christianity literally just dominated the world in those early couple hundred years, because the message was so pure, inorganic, nothing could stop it. And you see that in the Ayatollah too, right? Religion can be weaponized and religion is dangerous, whether that be for good or ill.

And so, yeah, Christianity, we have lost our bite and we have lost our – we have lost the thing being the thing, which is Jesus. And instead we say we’ll sing about him.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, man, let’s take a quick break. When we come back, I’d like to get into more specific examples of how the money’s being used. Who specifically? All that kind of stuff.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yep. And then I want to talk about the positives because there’s a lot of potential positives.

SHAWN RYAN: I want to talk about the positives too. So cool.

NATHAN APFFEL: Awesome.

Financial Statistics of Religious Giving

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Nathan, we’re back from the break. So we want to get into some big stats, you know, overall stats on how much money is going out, how much they’re saving, how much they’re giving, whatever statistics you want to share. And then I want to go through specific examples of who you’ve seen with inside the corruption through all your research. So we’ll start with the big stats.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. So the religion business looks at the nonprofit sector as a whole, right? And like I said, we go down to the legal architecture. We talked about some history there. About 1.5 trillion a year is given by individual donors to nonprofits.

SHAWN RYAN: 1.5 trillion. Trillion with a T. That’s just individual donors.

NATHAN APFFEL: Individual donors. This does not include government grants. So this is far bigger than the US Military. And it’s kind of a black box. No one knows where that money goes. So it proves one thing in particular. Americans are really generous people.

SHAWN RYAN: This is 1.5 trillion. These are people inside the congregation. People that are going to the church are just donating every week.

NATHAN APFFEL: The nonprofit sector as a whole. So let’s dial it down. So Christians, global Christians give about a trillion dollars a year to their churches. 600 billion comes from America. So about 600 billion is given every year to Christian churches. About 500 billion is given every year to nonprofits via American Christians. So you’re looking about 1.1 trillion in American giving. And then add another 400 billion on top of that to global Christianity.

Because I’m interested in people like in the religion business, we look at the nonprofit sector, and then a lot of people go, “Nathan, why are you attacking or just looking at Christianity?” And I say, “Well, I’m looking at Christianity because I hold my faith to the highest standard. I don’t care about Islam. I don’t care about Buddhism. I care about my faith.”

So a trillion dollars a year is given by Christians to Christian institutions. Another 500 billion is given by Americans to nonprofits here in the US. So it’s a massive pile of money.

Where Church Donations Actually Go

So where does that money go? About 44 cents of every dollar that you give to a church goes straight to salaries today.

SHAWN RYAN: 44 cents.

NATHAN APFFEL: 44 cents of every dollar just goes straight to salaries. 25 cents goes to just buildings. And then only 6 cents of every dollar ever even leaves the institutional walls to go to the causes that Christ told us to support. The needy, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not even 10%.

NATHAN APFFEL: Not even 10%. Not even.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, 6% of all donations. Let’s just. What were the numbers on Christianity again, that are just going to the church?

NATHAN APFFEL: A trillion.

SHAWN RYAN: At $1 trillion. Globally.

NATHAN APFFEL: Globally. 600 billion nationally.

SHAWN RYAN: And only 6% of that goes to charity.

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, it’s untraceable. So this is voluntary data given. So remember, there’s no 990s that churches file, so you don’t know what they give. So 6% is kind of like the best potential outcome because they’re giving you that information or they’re giving these statisticians this information.

And so that’s not 6% creating impact down the value chain. So that’s not 6 cents of every dollar helping that orphan in Africa or that cripple in Honduras. No, no, that’s just 6 cents making it outside the walls. And usually what’s happening now, because one thing I want to touch on is these terms, auxiliaries, like we talked about with the LDS Church. Then you also have convention and association.

And so a lot of times now it’s just one a church passing off that 6% to another business that they own. So we don’t even know if it’s serious.

Churches as Business Conglomerates

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. What would these businesses could be anything at this auxiliary.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. So basically what we’re seeing now is in the last 25 years, churches have become businesses. You know, smart entrepreneurs, I tip my hat to them, are starting to take over churches and they’re seeing the opportunity to literally build conglomerates.

So like let’s say Chris, my business partner, has a nonprofit, a secular nonprofit that files a 990. It works in the mental health space. And he and I are good buddies. I run Nathan’s church. It’s massive. And I say, “Hey, Chris, why don’t we bring your secular nonprofit under the fold of Nathan’s church and that business now your business is a church and you no longer have to file 990s.”

And the excuse is, “Oh man, that frees us up from paperwork and from the government, from Big Brother looking down on us.” But what it also does is turn that organization completely dark.

And so churches now are starting to acquire businesses and bringing them under their fold. And then just because those businesses are wrapped into my church, they all become churches themselves. And so now I can give 6 cents to Chris’s church and say, “Look at all the good work we’re doing.” Or his business, which is now a church, and say, “Look at all the good work we’re doing.”

And so I can also take a salary from Chris’s business now and no one ever knows about it. And so that’s what we’re seeing in organizations like Arkansas. And these church planting organizations is their whole strategy is to teach you how to grow your business, how to grow your church. You’re not here to save your souls. Yeah, of course we’re here to save souls, Sean. But their tagline is “launch large.” We want you to launch big, which means you need a soundstage, you need the big flashy lights, you need people in your seats. So we’re going to teach you how to do that. And then, hey, you can also start starting these other businesses.

Private Jets and Luxury Assets

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, these are so. I mean, my mind goes to. I don’t know why, but it goes. I mean, a lot of these guys have private jets. A lot of them have more than one private jet, you know, and I don’t even know who we’re talking about it, but, you know, there’s the one guy that’s got the…

NATHAN APFFEL: Kenneth Copeland is a great example.

SHAWN RYAN: Runway behind his house. Four jets.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, so is that, you know, how it works with these guys, you know, and I’m not just business in general is you buy a private jet, a yacht, you charter it out, you use it when you need it. Obviously one person doesn’t need four private jets. You know what I mean? So is that what they’re doing? They’re launching a jet rental business. That was all. So they’re already tax free from buying the jet, right?

NATHAN APFFEL: Correct.

SHAWN RYAN: Then they rent the jets out to other corporations or whatever.

NATHAN APFFEL: I don’t see much…

SHAWN RYAN: Well, again, that’d be an example.

NATHAN APFFEL: Could be, but I know, I’ve heard a couple people do that. That’s their excuse for the private jet is, “Hey, we’re actually going to make money with it.” But I see that as an excuse.

Like there’s this thing that we profile in the show called long term ministry, or I’m sorry, long distance ministry. And a pastor will find an excuse and open a church a thousand miles, 2,000 miles, 3,000 miles away from his main church. And then he goes, “I need a jet because I have to go preach the gospel.”

And it’s. Again, it goes back to that biblical premise of what is a church? Like, you’re here to make disciples of men and run your ministry, which is your family. Everything else is just man building layers on top of Christ’s message. Like, Christ didn’t say you need to fly. Like this guy needs a private jet to fly over there.

Instead, the Bible says to build and exhort Christians, raise up Christians like you, Sean. And this is the kicker. The whole point of a shepherd, of a pastor, because pastor translates to shepherd, is to raise up his flock and then send them out. So if the biblical form of church is, I am here to, if you came to my church, whatever that be a home church, a megachurch, my entire biblical goal is to steward you in the faith and grow, Sean, to where Shawn goes, “I’m ready to leave. I’m going to go start my own.” That’s the point of the church.

But, man, what a bad business practice, because you are my money. So, no, I’m not going to send you out. I need you here, Sean. I need you here building this machine that we built, this business, it needs you. But God didn’t tell you to build a building. He told you to build the body.

Culture vs. Doctrine

And so those private jets are all excuses over here in the business side, and they’ll point to the Bible and find a random, obscure verse to justify it, and boom, that jet is justified. They’ll try to raise 20 million bucks or whatever.

But all of that, again, I’m going to go back to this. Christ said it in multiple Gospels. He goes, “You’ve taken traditions of men.” So he said this in the temple. “You’ve taken traditions of men, and you’ve called it doctrine.” And what he’s saying is your culture as he’s standing there in the temple 2000 years ago. “Your culture is not doctrine. It is not the word of God. This is just culture. But you’re calling it doctrine,” and we’re doing it again.

This business over here is church. No, that’s just culture. This is doctrine. The true body of believers is doctrine. That is culture. And planes are thrown into that. Housing allowances are thrown into that lump. Everything. All the loopholes that we profile are nothing but culture, man.

SHAWN RYAN: What? Keep going. I want to hear more examples. Actually, I have a question.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

Christmas and Easter Traditions

SHAWN RYAN: You know, maybe you’re familiar with this, maybe you’re not, but I’ve always heard that Christmas, that the birth of Christ was actually in October, in early October. Have you heard this?

NATHAN APFFEL: I’ve heard of that, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And that the church made it December 25th and brought up Santa Claus and all this other stuff to bring more people in for the money. Is that. Is there any truth behind that?

NATHAN APFFEL: I don’t. That’s not my wheelhouse. One of our good mentors, very wise men, he goes, “Nathan, there’s this so what pile.” And he goes, “You have to pick your lane. And then everything else is so what?”

And like that to me, like, if I would assume Christ’s birth was not December 25th, you know, and so it’s like, that’s a “so what?” Like, we want to celebrate his birth just like we want to celebrate his resurrection. Like, I get that. So, yeah, so what? Like, the date. To me, I don’t have the time or the energy to research that. I have heard that, but I can’t speak to it.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. I mean, there’s some stuff with Easter, too.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Easter bunnies. You know about this? Yeah, let’s do it. Educate me.

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, you got to. Well, I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard. So. What have you heard?

The Easter Bunny and Church Commercialization

SHAWN RYAN: Man, I don’t even know how to organize it into something that I can articulate. But it has to do with the symbolism of the Easter Bunny and all of this stuff.

NATHAN APFFEL: Oh, I haven’t heard. I just think the Easter bunny is again, it’s all about money, right? It’s like the fact that churches. I went to a church where they had a helicopter fly over and rain Easter eggs down on the kids. And I’m like, where in the Bible can you point to that this is even remotely Christian?

My guess is it goes probably back to some pagan holiday, because most things have to do with pagan holidays. But yeah, I don’t know much about if Easter and what the bunny symbolizes.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but we’ll get into that another time.

NATHAN APFFEL: Another time. Let me do some research. Give me a little time, and I’ll come back with all that heat.

Understanding Inurement: The Legal Loophole

SHAWN RYAN: All right, so more examples.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. So going on another big loophole is it’s called inurement. So this is a legal term that the IRS puts forward, and it’s what gives you 501c3 status. I’m going to, by memory, repeat the definition of inurement, and then I’m going to throw examples out, and I want to know if this is inurement or not.

“No part of the net earnings of a 501C3 may go to benefit any of the founders, founder’s family, shareholders, or stakeholders.” That is inurement. That is illegal. So no part of the net earnings of a 501 may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder, founder, the founder’s family, anybody in leadership, basically.

So you can take a salary, but you cannot use the net earnings to benefit yourself. Is a private plane inurement?

SHAWN RYAN: Is it what?

NATHAN APFFEL: Inurement.

SHAWN RYAN: Inurement. Meaning?

NATHAN APFFEL: So to inure yourself means you’re using the net earnings of that 501c3 to benefit yourself. Not the mission of the charity. So is a private plane inurement?

SHAWN RYAN: I think there are examples where it could be. Okay, I’m sure that the majority of it is not.

NATHAN APFFEL: Okay. Is a yacht?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

NATHAN APFFEL: Okay. It’s not inurement.

SHAWN RYAN: No, it’s that would be for personal purpose.

NATHAN APFFEL: Okay. So it is inurement. So inuring is if you inure yourself with the money I give you, that means you are using it for personal gain. So private yachts would be inurement.

How about you and your buddies start a conference and you all meet up and you just kind of go on a ski trip for a week and then you check the box that hey, we met for three hours to talk about something for the week.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NATHAN APFFEL: That would be inurement. Right. And the reason why I’m going down this waterfall is how about. Hey Sean, you’re a good looking dude who’s on camera a lot.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

NATHAN APFFEL: You’re welcome. You need a clothing allowance. I’m going to pay you. Or you’re going to take a $50,000 year clothing allowance. Is that inuring yourself?

SHAWN RYAN: Yes.

How Pastors Justify Inurement

NATHAN APFFEL: Okay, so these are the slippery slopes that Phil Hackney at the IRS, he says it too. He goes, “It’s really hard for us to be able to find what inurement is because technically I would say you have a more sane approach to inurement than most pastors.”

But hey, I’m a pastor, very successful. I think I need a private jet. And on paper I’m going to prove why I’m going to fly to the church. This is my favorite one. I’m going to fly to the church I just built in the Caymans. It cost me 30 grand. The fuel in my jet’s going to cost me 50 to get there. So I outspent the whole build on this church in this third world country just with fuel alone. But I need that plane to get there.

You know what? A lot of people, Sean, are looking at me on stage. I need to look good so that 50 grand is valid. Hey, you know what? That yacht, that’s where I witness to other pastors. I take them fishing. We go deep sea fishing, man. Sean, you’re going to really meet God out on that water, I promise you. And you’re going to land a marlin at the same time. And that’s how they justify it.

And so our argument is most of the way these big pastors in particular are using money is inurement. They’re building their brand on top of the generosity of donors. And those donors are giving to expand the mission of that church or that nonprofit, but I am building my brand off the back of it, if that makes sense.

The Book Sales Scam

So it’s like book sales. This is my favorite one. And most of these pastors use ghostwriters, and I’ve talked to lots of the ghostwriters. Most of the pastors use ghostwriters. So they don’t even write the book, really. They’ll read it and scan through it and make a couple notes, but they slap their name on it, they put a title on it, and, man, Sean, it’d be awesome if I was on that New York Times bestsellers list.

Well, good news. I have a megachurch. And so we’re going to buy 20,000 copies of the book right when it comes out. So I use donor dollars, I use tithe money to buy my books, and it immediately puts me on the New York Times best sellers list. It’s going to sit in the basement of the church for a while, but don’t worry, we’ll give it away as free gifts to new people that come.

So I have officially inured myself because now the church is buying my books, I’m on the bestsellers list. I get to launch my brand, and no one’s the wiser. And all these little scams are happening in the background.

Kenneth Copeland: A Case Study in Inurement

And so Kenneth Copeland is a prime example of inurement. Kenneth Copeland is the guy. You’ve seen the video before where the female news anchor corners him on the runway, and she walks up to him and she’s asking him about the private jets, and he gets in her face and he goes like this. Have you seen that one?

SHAWN RYAN: This is the guy that he looks like a demon.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. And he says, “I can’t fly. I have to fly private because I can’t have demons in the tube with me.” So he’s calling people demons. That’s Kenneth Copeland. And so we had a great showdown on his property. It’s in the series.

And so what happened? So he has a 19,000 square foot parsonage.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s a parsonage?

Understanding Parsonages

NATHAN APFFEL: A parsonage is a house owned by the church. So it’s bought and paid for by donor dollars and tithe givers. And the pastor can live there. The purpose of this is, hey, back in the day, clergy would live on site, right? That door would be open 24 hours a day for someone to come in, get prayer, in the Catholic world, repent. And so that pastor would need to be on site all the time.

And so they would build what’s called a parsonage, right? Next to the church. So the pastor could live in this very modest house that’s usually attached physically to the church. Well, over decades and just through precedent, that parsonage has been pulled off. And so the church will pay for the parsonage of the pastor.

So the parsonage is owned by the church, but the pastor can live in it. There’s no stipulation on how big that parsonage can be, how extravagant it can be. So Kenneth Copeland has a 19,000 square foot parsonage on the lake, on his church property.

Kenneth Copeland’s Origin Story

His church property. So this is the story about Kenneth. Kenneth, what most people don’t know was a struggling musician back in the day. He became a pilot and started flying Oral Roberts around. Oral Roberts is like OG Evangelist. He’s like one of the first old school big boys in the space, similar to Billy Graham.

And so the story goes that Kenneth Copeland was flying over Texas and saw this runway next to this lake. And God gave him this vision that he was going to buy this whole parcel and turn it into a church and turn it into what he calls the revival capital of the world.

So flash forward, he creates this marketing pitch, starts his church. And back in the day, in the 60s and 70s, mailers were super popular. And so you’d get a mailing list, you’d mail 50,000 envelopes out and say, “Hey, Sean, give me 10 bucks. This is Nathan, this Pastor Nathan. I need 10 bucks to help you spread this message.”

The Broken Promises

We have his mailer from the 70s, and he promised to build six things. He said, and in his pitch, “God gave me the vision to buy this runway. I’m going to build a radio station, a TV network, ministry facilities, Kingdom park,” which was an extravagant park for his churchgoers and his tithe payers, “an elderly community.” So once you retire, you’ll be able to retire on the church property and in your rooms. They would pipe in Kenneth Copeland’s TV network so you could watch Kenneth Copeland preach the gospel 24/7 a day. And then elderly were at home. And then a hotel for guests to come and enjoy the lake.

So he sent that pitch out, raised tens of millions of dollars. He only built three. Three of the things he promised to build: one was the radio station, two is the TV network, three was the ministry facilities. He never built the three things that people would donate money for. I would want to use the park, I would want to use the hotel. Maybe one day I’d want to retire in that facility. He never built any of them.

In the for profit world, that would be called fraud. He would be in jail. In the religious world, we call it faith, Nathan. You got to have faith.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

The Business Empire

NATHAN APFFEL: So in the interim, he buys 1600 acres on this lake in Texas. He builds the ministry facilities. He builds the radio and TV networks. And then a gentleman, a builder, a developer, was like, “Hey, this bottom part of your 1600 acres is prime for development.”

So he peels off 400 of the 1600 acres and sells it to a developer. So there is a housing development there today. It’s not for the elderly, though. And he made money off that deal. It just went back to his church.

In the meantime, an oil guy I can’t remember the gentleman’s name. He drills oil, started going to the church, and he’s like, “Hey, you own the mineral rights of this land. Let’s start pumping oil.” So they’ve been pumping oil for decades, and no one knows how many tens of millions of dollars have been made off the oil because it’s all disguised.

SHAWN RYAN: All of it.

NATHAN APFFEL: All of it. It’s all called a church. And so flash forward, now he’s an older guy, so the oil business falls under the church.

SHAWN RYAN: The oil business falls under the church.

NATHAN APFFEL: The church owns the oil business. Yeah. So he has his two private runways. He’s got his ministry facilities. He peeled off 400 acres to a for profit development. He’s got his oil platforms. And at the very bottom of the lake, or the property near the lake, he started building this 19,000 square foot parsonage, and now he lives in it.

The Surveillance Operation

No one’s ever been there before, so no one knows what it looks like. Pastors have, but nobody like you and I have ever been there. So that 19,000 square foot parsonage word is from an informant that basically Copeland has Epsteined tons of pastors.

So there was an electrician back in the day that wired cameras and audio recording devices into every guest room in that 19,000 square foot parsonage. And so if you have pastors so afraid of their rivals.

SHAWN RYAN: So they’re blackmailing. He’s blackmailing.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. Got to get dirt on people.

SHAWN RYAN: How did you come across this information?

NATHAN APFFEL: Through our PIs.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, every single guest room.

NATHAN APFFEL: The guest rooms in a parsonage owned by the church is wiretapped video and audio to basically archive dirt on people staying with you.

SHAWN RYAN: Has anybody received the footage?

NATHAN APFFEL: No, because no one can ever get to the house, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Wow.

NATHAN APFFEL: Things aren’t as they seem.

SHAWN RYAN: It appears that way.

Investigating Kenneth Copeland’s Property

NATHAN APFFEL: So I had the thought that, hey, I want to see the parsonage. So I start giving money to his church. And I’m like, the church owns that house. No one’s seen it, so I want to see it.

So YouTuber named Tommy G. And I, I started going to his church, and we’re like, okay, I get a schematic, a big printout of his property because it’s huge. I track the roads. We get a visual on it. And there’s one open gate from rain runoff that couldn’t close, and it went from a parking lot to this dirt road. And so I could see it on the map. And I’m like, that’s our inn. We’re just going to steer down this open gate and see where it leads us. And we’re going to try to get to the house.

So this is in the show. We go to service. Ironically, everybody, all these pastors know me. So as soon as I sit down, there’s three security guards around me, like, with their earpieces. And I sit through part of the service, I get up and leave, and Tommy walks out, and we meet at the cars, and we just start driving.

So we get on this dirt road, we go over this open fence, and boom, we’re 50 yards from his runway, but there’s a gate closed. And I’m like, shoot, I got nowhere to go, man. We pull up to the gate, just opens, and I’m like, well, this is God. So we’re doing this.

So we get onto the runway. So now it’s something out of an action movie. We got two cars flying down a runway now. And I’m like, okay, we’re going to make a hard right here. And this is all in the show. And there’s another gate, and boom, that gate opens, too. And so now we’re like 3/4 the way to his house. No one’s been down here before. No one’s ever seen footage of this.

Discovering the Private Hunting Ground

And I’m a big bow hunter. And so as I’m driving through this property, it’s all high fenced. So it’s 10 to 12 foot fences. I start seeing bucks everywhere, deer. And I’m like, this is his own hunting ground. And sure enough, we pull up to his house, and there’s one final gate, and he has this massive deer stand. And I’m like, this pastor has his own high fenced hunting ground on his property, on the church property that no one gets to use, but they pay for.

So we pull up to the fence, and there’s a keypad. So I’m like, we’re not getting through this one. And now I’m 200 yards from the house, so we can see it. So we put drones in the air. We’re having fun. No one’s ever been here. And so there’s no security.

And so I call the front desk of the church, because I’m like, well, we’re kind of stuck here now. So I call the front desk, and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Abraham. This nice guy named Abraham answers, and he’s like, “This is Abraham. How are you doing, Nathan?” And I said, “Whoa. How do you know this is Nathan?” And he goes, “We have your number. You’ve been giving to us.” And so they’re just a refined call center.

And I’m like, “Okay, awesome.” He’s like, “What would you like to do? Would you like to give money, or would you like prayer?” And I’m like, “Well, I got a random request. Like, we’re sitting at the gate of Kenneth’s house. Like, I’d love to meet the pastor.” And he’s like, “You’re what?” And I’m like, “I’m at the gate. Like, we’re down here. We made it through two gates. We were on the one.” And I tell him the whole story, and he goes, “Please hold.” He just puts me on hold. And there’s some hymn music in the background.

We sit there for 30 minutes, and I’m like, no one believes that we actually made it here. So let’s just head back to the runway. So we drive back to the runway, and we just wait. I’m like, if we just sit on the runway, someone’s going to see us.

Confrontation with Security

So we just sit on this open runway, and sure enough, within five minutes, boom, two private security guards come or cars come driving by, park next to us. They’re professionals, like, after Ed Young’s experience. Like, I know private security, and I know professional security. And then just like, straight cowboys. And these guys are professionals.

So they come up and they’re like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Hey, we just have a couple questions about the parsonage. We tried to get there, but we couldn’t get there.” And we’re having a cordial conversation, and out of nowhere, we just hear this F150 come screeching up on us.

And this dude jumps out, and he looks like John Ritter from the movies. So he comes, like, flying up to where he’s almost hits us, couple feet from us. And he gets out, and he tears his glasses off, and he opens his jacket, and he walks up to us. He’s like, “You out of here now.” And he flashes this badge, and he pulls his shirt open, and he’s got his, like, a piss, like, nine or something sitting there in his pants.

And luckily, Tommy G. has been through this enough. And he goes, “Let me see that badge.” And the guy goes, “No, get out of here now.” And he goes, “No, no, I just. I want to see your badge.” And the. This guy grabs both of us, so assault. And starts shoving us to the cars.

And right then, the professional security is like, “Whoa.” So they grab John Ritter and they throw him against his truck. And they’re like, “Get out of here.” And it turns into this funky altercation. Come to find out he is Kenneth’s private security, like, main security guy.

And again, I’m respectful. And so cops show up. There’s kind of a standoff, and we’re like, “Hey, we just have questions about the financials. No one’s willing to talk. That parsonage is paid for by the congregants. No one’s ever been here. No one’s ever seen it. Like, at least someone should be able to look at it.” And the cops are like, “Hey, can you guys please leave?” And the private security is like, “Can you guys just leave?” And we’re respectful. We’re like, “Okay, but we’d love to talk to someone.”

So flash forward a couple days. We find out that cowboy security is Kenneth’s private security, and they fire him. That guy has traveled around the US to churches. He gets hired and fired over and over again. It’s just him, his M.O.

The Parsonage Loophole

But so another major loophole is these parsonages. You could do whatever you want. David Taylor, who was just arrested by the FBI yesterday, 26 or 28,000 square foot home in Tampa, Florida. That’s just one. He has about 28 million in real estate.

And so just with the loopholes, you can do whatever you want. And again, you’re asking for money, whether that be through tithing or generosity from vulnerable people who are there to be prayed on and loved on. And these guys just build empires in the name of Jesus, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think they’re preaching anything that is. I mean, what do you think about their teachings?

Kenneth Copeland’s Teachings

NATHAN APFFEL: And Kenneth’s is garbage. Like. I mean, like, when I was there, it was after Trump got shot in the air, and he had a photo of Trump up behind him on the big screen. And he literally said, “God gave Trump as our savior.” And then he believes that the crowd.

So this is a great story. So in 2007, or it might have been 2008, the Congress was looking at some really bad players. So our boys in Texas, the Trinity foundation, had made a big enough stink. And so Congress was starting to look at prosperity gospel preachers. And the worst players, led by Senator Grassley and Benny Hinn. If you know who Benny Hinn is. Megachurch pastor. He’s the guy that whips you with his coat and you fall backwards.

Benny Hinn spent 5 million fighting this inquiry at the time. So these guys are hemorrhaging money to stop the government from looking at their businesses. The stock market crashes, the real estate market crashes. The whole crash of 08 happens. Kenneth Copeland will say that that was a gift from God, a miracle from God to get the government off their back. God crashed the economy in 2008 so the government would stop looking at them. So that’s the type of crap these guys preach from the pulpit.

And then his son in law, while we were there, was up on stage and it’s in the show and he goes, “In difficult times, we prosper and we are getting very prosperous.” And he goes, “The purpose of prosperity is distribution.” And in the show you see this, he literally says it and just starts laughing when he says distribution. And he catches himself and he’s like, “Distribution.” Because he’s like, you’re not distributing anything. And they’ll say on their website, they say, “Hey, we give 10% away. We ask for 10%, we give 10% away.” But no one knows because there’s no 990 filed. So it’s whatever that leadership of that organization wants to say. You have to take it as faith.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

NATHAN APFFEL: And so Kenneth Copeland committed fraud. He wanted to build those six things. He promised investors he would build those six things. He only ever built three. And it was the three he could benefit from. That is straight up fraud in the for profit world. And yet he’s on TV to this day preaching whatever gospel he’s preaching.

Do They Actually Believe They’re Doing Good?

SHAWN RYAN: Human beings are really good at justifying why they’re doing things. And they, it’s. See so many people, they trick their own mind into justifying why they’re doing what they’re doing. Do you think these people actually believe that they’re doing good or 100%? You do I do.

NATHAN APFFEL: I think the majority of them, but I think they have to.

SHAWN RYAN: Right.

NATHAN APFFEL: Dan Bremer in the show says no one believes something they think is stupid.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, see, I mean, I don’t know. I kind of disagree with you on this because if they really truly believed that they were doing good, then what would be all the. What I mean, just out there on the break, he told me not one of these people have debated you. If given you any evidence of good that they’re doing, they, they haven’t even spoken to you. Correct. Except the one guy who, who, who.

NATHAN APFFEL: Didn’t speak to me.

SHAWN RYAN: But yeah, yeah, he spoke to you for like five minutes and said they’ll do it later.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yep. I’ll point to the books, the Bible, I’ll point to those scriptures, the blind lead the blind. And I always use the analogy we’ll talk about tithing. I’d love to talk about tithing in a little bit, but someone who is tithed their whole life so given 10% to their institution and I think about the LDS Church a lot because they really do take advantage of the system is people don’t want to see their lifelong actions as silly almost, if that makes sense. Like I put my hard earned money into this machine and like flipped the.

SHAWN RYAN: Whole world upside down. We were talking about that at the beginning.

Generational Corruption

NATHAN APFFEL: And so the mod, like everything is backwards. And so like I do believe most of the, I believe Ed Young in particular firmly believes he is in the right. I believe his lawyer, Dennis Brewer Jr. firmly believes in it. He’s right. And the ironic part about the lawyer, Dennis Brewer Jr. who is the CFO and the legal, the general counsel for Fellowship Church, his dad was also a lawyer for Kenneth Copeland.

And so you have pastors passing down their knowledge to their kids that take over their business. And then at the other side of the spectrum, you have lawyers who protect these guys and pastors passing down knowledge on how to beat the system as well to their kids who become lawyers. So it’s, it’s. I don’t even know the analogy to. But it’s just corruption. Passing, corruption, corrupt. Passing down corruption.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s generational.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, if you think that they, I mean, if you think that they actually believe that they’re doing good, then why wouldn’t they talk to you? Because why wouldn’t they give you the information that you need to, to clear their, their congregation, their name?

The Call for Reform

NATHAN APFFEL: Because now is the time I firmly believe God is working and now is the time for reform. And this is where it was 16 years of research and speaking and listening to the most brilliant minds in the world. God is, I believe, using me to bring the most brilliant minds in the world together to present the argument.

It’s not me on the religion business presenting this argument. I’m presenting it to you now because I’m regurgitating what I’ve heard with these genius minds. But these minds have never been brought together. And so to debate tithing would mean they’re going to lose. They’ve been presenting and misunderstanding the scriptures on that for 200 years, about 200 years now, pastors have been preaching tithing. They didn’t preach tithing before.

So that’s what’s so fascinating is their whole theology, which is just the study of the Scriptures is off. And so if you really look at it, I’m going to eat, tear you to shreds. You’re not going to be able to handle a discussion with me on tithing. And then what happens when happens as soon as your congregation sees you questioning or they can question your ask for money. It’s a house of cards. Once you flick that one, the whole thing collapses.

And so that’s why no one will debate me on it. They’ll sit and they’ll fly around with the private jets and make fun of me and make funny memes of me with devil horns and call me “Temu Judas,” which I think is pretty funny. That’s kind of my online name now is Temu Judas. But it’s because they can’t debate me biblically. And so they might have good intentions, but we always say good intentions pave the way to hell. And these guys, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt, have great intentions, and they are rapidly paving the church to hell just out there every Sunday. And I would call it a false gospel.

SHAWN RYAN: Who says good intentions are the gateway to hell?

NATHAN APFFEL: We say it in the show. It’s a very popular term, but we use it. We’ve used it in the show. It’s in our trailer. We’ve. That’s been one of our mantras. “Humans will human,” “slow is fast,” and “good intentions pave the way to hell” are our mantras.

Good Intentions Leading to Hell

SHAWN RYAN: Can you give me an example of good intentions as the gateway to hell?

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, man. I want to say I’m going to use a church, man. I want to save souls. I want to present Christ. Christ has saved me, you know, he is the way, the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father Yahweh except through Him. And I want to tell people about that. I had a radical transformation. So I’m going to go to seminary. That’s a good intention to go to seminary.

Most seminaries today teach you how to build the business. So that’s the first good intention of mine that’s paving my way, that’s laying out this road. And remember that MS-13 member, you got 10 bad decisions until you murder someone. And that’s me being grumpy on the freeway. Someone you know cuts me off, I flash my brights. That’s issue two. I tell him to pull over because I want to yell at him. That’s issue three. He’s armed and I’m armed. We both get out of the car, right? All these poor decisions can lead a decent, upstanding person to kill someone. And then, boom, he pulls a gun. I pull a gun, someone dies.

And so you look at these good intentions. So I go to seminary. Now I know how to start a church. The banks. My seminary is actually aligned with a local bank. So they’re going to give me a loan. I’m going to take that debt on because I think I want to preach the gospel. So there’s another good intention to move. But now I have debt I got to pay down, and I don’t even have a congregation yet.

And so can you see the angle to where hell is? Me being frustrated with my work, me cheating on my wife. You look at the field of church leadership and it’s just wrought with adultery, you know, theft, fraud, abuse. And it’s because all these good intentions in this system have led me to hell. And so unless I use Christ as my beacon and I’m walking towards him and I’m studying those scriptures and in prayer, I’m going to end up in hell. The Bible, I will end up in hell. Whether it be I become a pastor or work in filmmaking without good intentions.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, what do we have?

Christ as the Only Way

NATHAN APFFEL: Oh, there’s a big one. You have Christ. It’s not you, Sean. As a Christian, it’s not you, it’s not me. Pastors always say, “Nathan, I’m doing my best.” And I say, I hate that term. Christ didn’t say, “do your best.” He said, “you will fail, but every day you will get up, die to yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me” to the point where all I. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see Nathan anymore. I see Christ because I see the fruits of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self control, faithfulness. That is what I want to look in the mirror and see.

And I will never get up and be like, “dang, I did my best.” My brother and I, who’s a brilliant scholar, brilliant biblical scholar, he and I wrestle with that all the time because he’s like, “I never want to hear myself say I did my best, I failed. But God’s through grace is going to give me another attempt at this.”

And so good intentions, I don’t care about good intentions. You know, it’s like I care about emulating Christ because my daughter, who’s seven, who’s the show? I’m sitting in this chair because of her and I don’t ever want her to be like “my dad did his best.” I want her to be like “my dad was a broken man who every day tried to emulate Christ.” And so I’m going to do the same thing. And it’s, that’s as simple as Christianity is. It’s nothing else.

So everything over here, the business, the machines, the good intentions, I don’t care. God didn’t say, or Christ didn’t say, “Nathan, go out with good intentions.” He said, “sin no more.” He gave very clear directives and he knew we would fail and that’s what grace and forgiveness is for. But I don’t go out saying, “man, see, this is the slippery slope.”

I was raised in the Christian church. I can confidently say I did not know Christ. And I wrestled with this idea that he is the way, the truth and the life until my early 30s, until my daughter came into the world because I had faith in my faith. So you’re right, I had so many good intentions to be like Jesus. I would go to church, I’d sing, I’d put my hands up, I’d put money in the bin, I’d volunteer, I’d go to camps. I was a train wreck in my 20s. I did drugs. I just couldn’t get my life together. I had no order in my life and it was all good intentioned and I hurt a lot of people along the way because, “man, I love Jesus. I’m a Christ follower and yada, yada, yada.”

But no, I had good intentions. I wanted to be like Jesus, but I had no spine. I had no moral backbone because all my leaders around me didn’t have a spine and a backbone because I was looking at them to say, “this is what I should emulate.” And who are they? They’re sexually abusing their adopted kids, they’re committing adultery, they’re divorcing their wives. And I’m like, “this is junk. These guys have good intentions too.”

So it’s when you finally experience Christ and see Christ as you say, “that is my focal point and nothing else.” And then good intentions don’t matter. And it’s like I’m going to try my damnedest to live up to him and I will fail every day. But when I die to myself, Christ shines through me. And Paul says it best, you know, he goes “die to myself.” So Christ literally comes through me. “It’s not I who live, but Christ in me.” And as a Christian in the Christ follow. That is the only thing we look at. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors in a trillion dollars.

The Goal: Transparency

SHAWN RYAN: Before we move into tithing, which I kind of wanted to say this at the end of, we will revisit it. But I mean, what would you want to see happen out of all this? I mean, is it transparency that you want to see? Or is it. What is it? I mean, yes. So because you’re making money off these.

NATHAN APFFEL: Off the docu series, we’re losing a lot of money. But so I’ll tell you right now, transparency is step one. And that is just shining a light into the business center saying transparency needs to be brought in. That’s all. I could care less than my business partner.

SHAWN RYAN: I.

NATHAN APFFEL: We always say we could care less if your pastor makes 20 million bucks a year or if he makes. Or if she makes 100,000 bucks a year. The only thing we care about is that, you know, because you will make.

SHAWN RYAN: Make an educated decision.

NATHAN APFFEL: And so our. And the Reformation, 1517, Martin Luther. Do you know much about the Reformation?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

The Historical Pattern of Religious Reform

NATHAN APFFEL: Okay. So the Vatican was at its peak. They were fighting wars. They were building the basilica. Have you been to the Vatican?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NATHAN APFFEL: Incredible, right? So they’re hemorrhaging money. The Roman Catholic Church is almost broke. They start selling indulgences, which has no real even tie to the scriptures because they have to raise more money. They’ve got a stranglehold on the Bible. And so they’re the ones that read the Scriptures.

And Martin Luther and a few others are like, “This is ridiculous. This book needs to be out for everybody to be able to read.” They translated into German and a few other languages, and boom, the Reformation happens. Because now that Bible, that massive Bible you can read at your house. You don’t need the Vatican anymore to do that. And so you have the Protestant Reformation.

But what had happened is all power had siloed at the top of the Vatican. So it was a monarchy. There was a few select people at the very top controlling the literature, controlling what people do asking for money. And you had to give the money up the value chain to this top leadership.

Martin Luther writes in one of his books, he goes, “I see them in Rome now sitting around drinking their fine Italian wines, laughing at all the stupid beer drinking Germans that have paid for it all.” And so you have this select few that are controlling all the resources and demanding for salvation that you give to this institution.

So what happens is the Reformation happens and that whole system gets flipped on its head. Now the Bible is in your hands. You can read the Bible. You don’t have to give to an institution because we’ve burned most of them down or broken all this stained glass. No one wants to go anymore.

And now this is the birth of marketing in the church too. So what does the Vatican do? Well, we have good art, so they bring in all these amazing artists and painters and they build the basilica. So boom, marketing. The church has officially begun.

And so the Protestant Reformation happens. Everybody’s faith is their own again because it’s you doing the work. It’s me having to read, it’s me having to be in this body, the small ecclesia, and talk about it. And church went organic again.

So that organism starts moving through, it moves to the U.S. now the organism is moving across the U.S. because America’s being founded and discovered, all the pilgrims are pushing over. They’ve got that Bible, literally that Bible came across with pilgrims and they’re reading around campfires to each other and boom, what happens?

America gets established, cities get built, churches start building buildings again. So it’s no longer just around campfires and people moving. Now we got buildings, we got overhead. Flash forward to today. We’ve just built many Vaticans all over again. There’s not one Vatican though. There’s 400,000. Now does that make sense?

SHAWN RYAN: 400,000.

NATHAN APFFEL: So there’s 400,000 churches in the US and so where I’m going with this is the Protestant Reformation tore down a monarchy. But look at every church in the US today. It’s all monarchies, all the powers at the top. There’s a select few that control the money. And they say everybody give out of faith and we’ll do, because we are anointed, what God says we should do with your money.

So this is just the Protestant Reformation 2.0. And it’s now because enough people are frustrated and sick of it that the religion business is, is the first, I think, of many stories to come out where it’s going to reform the church. And reformations are not fun.

And so now it’s so to your point, in the beginning with you, with your gentleman’s question on Patreon, was are you here just to point out a problem or bring a solution? We are here to point out the problem, but then bring a solution. So hopefully the Reformation can be sped up a little bit, if that makes sense.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, let’s get into tithing. We’ll get into the how we fix this at the end.

The Truth About Tithing

NATHAN APFFEL: Tithing. So churches need money, the businesses need money to run to your point. There’s salaries, insurances, operational cost, overhead, you name it. So there’s two ways to get that money. One is through tithing, which is an Old Testament biblical term. And then two is through just generous, giving, give out of love. You know, it’s more Christ centered.

So tithing. In the early founding of America, churches didn’t tithe. Nowhere in the history or literature does any pastor ever require tithes. When we read through sermons and whatnot, it wasn’t until the Civil War when America was really broke, that we start seeing tithing come back up. And it’s because churches were poor.

And so churches pastors went back through the Bible and they went to the Old Testament and the story of Moses coming off Mount Sinai, he brings what’s called the Mosaic laws off the mountain, which is the Ten Commandments and the sent of the set of laws to rule Israel. And this is a really big point. At this moment in history, politics and religion were combined. They were not separate in America. They’re separate back then. They were not separate.

Within those Mosaic laws, there’s three tithes and a tithe literally transfer or translates to a tenth. So when you hear someone say a tithe, it means 1/10, that is, it just means a tenth. So there was three tithes, there was the festival tithe, the Levitical tithe, and then the charity tithe. The charity tithe was taken every third year.

So technically you’re supposed to be giving 23.3% of what you have to the temple, not 10%. If you point to the Mosaic covenants, if you’re a pastor that says I preach tithing, which is the Kenneth Copelands of the world, the Russell Johnsons of the world. Most prosperity pastors point to tithing. So from the very baseline, their argument is flawed because they just picked one of the three.

And the one they picked is the Levitical type because they’ve positioned themselves as the Levites who took care of the temple and so here’s the kicker. You have the Jewish temple where you brought your tithes, you’d slit your animals throats. The Levites never took a salary, they owned nothing.

And are you a hunter?

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

NATHAN APFFEL: We’re going to get into some nerdy stuff about hunting and slaughtering animals real quick. So the Levites sole purpose was to upkeep the temple and bring your tithes and offerings to God and offer them to God. You could not do it. And so a couple rules. Levites could not own any land and they took no money.

So these current pastors are positioning themselves as the Levitical priest. So right there they’re flawed. If you want to mirror the Old Testament, you can’t take a salary, you can’t own land. And then yeah, you could I guess ask for a tithe. But you ask for, you have to ask for all three.

So the tithe, this tithe in particular is I would offer my goat, my lamb, my sheep, my cow, whatever I’m bringing to the altar. The Levites would slit his throat, process it and then God asked for one thing, the fat of the animal, as the story goes. So God says, “Burn the fat to me as I like it, it’s a sweet smelling aroma.”

And then they’d put the rest of the animal in a pot and basically boil it down. The Levite, this is where the Levite would benefit from the tithe. They would take one back quarter of the animal. I can’t remember if it’s the left or right because they have to feed their family. So they would take a quarter of your tithe and then guess who got the best the rest of the tithe back. You did and you fed your family with it.

But the whole point was to bring this animal, bleed it out, burn the fat to God. You as the Levite would get one of the quarters and I would take the rest back and eat it. So that is the point of the tithe. It’s saying I’m bringing this as an offering to you. But here’s the kicker. You only ever had to tithe if you were Jewish and you owned land in Israel. If you were a sojourner or a gentile, you did not tithe.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

NATHAN APFFEL: So the tithe rules of the Old Testament, Mosaic law, Jewish landowner, and then what came off the land, so the story goes, since Israel, since the biblical story is Israel was a gift, the land was a gift to the Jews by God. God required something off of that and that was agriculture and livestock off the land itself.

So when you Read the old or when Jesus talks about tithing of mint and dill, it’s what’s coming off your property. It has nothing to do with money. So that pastor is positioning himself as the Levite, which the Levites are gone. So you’re not a Levitical priest. And then he’s positioning his church, his modern day institution, as the temple.

Guess what Christ said. God and Jesus, he said, “We don’t dwell in temples. No building holds God. You are the temple now, Sean.” So our very Christ that all these churches preach say we are the temple. The building is not the temple, but to fund it, we say the building is the temple and I am the Levitical priest. So it’s all botched. And so this is why it’s so.

SHAWN RYAN: Important to get all these different perspectives. Because what I’ve noticed through my journey is that people will cherry pick parts of scripture to fulfill their own desires and dreams and stuff like that.

Christ’s True Teaching on Giving

NATHAN APFFEL: Well, don’t get me wrong, this is what I encourage everybody to do. The first time the Bible really came at me and it came alive was when I read it as a history book. I was not here. I’m like, “God, just let me read it as a story.” And as soon as I did that, it came alive because then these wars meant something, these prophets being martyred meant something. Then it wasn’t. I wasn’t trying to cherry pick anything out of it.

So you move to the New Testament, Christ gives very specific details on how to give. And like I said, if you’re a Christ follower, everything follows with you. Your resources, your time, your talent, everything you have. And so Christ told you to be very generous. And he said in Matthew 25:31, “Help the hungry, help the thirsty, help the naked, help the prisoner, help the sojourner.” And then he was obsessed with helping the orphans and the widows.

So if that is Christ’s main focus, help the needy, help the helpless. I look at the institutional church today when I said only 6 cents of every dollar even leaves the walls. We’re not doing that job at all. Not even remotely close to it. Sure, there’s going to be fraud and abuse. You can never get that out of a system. But we should. Our system should at least somewhat mirror our quote unquote savior. And it’s antithetical to it all. With good intentions, by the way. That’s the kicker is all of this was built with good intentions.

SHAWN RYAN: Man. What are we missing before we move into how to what you’d like to see and how do we, what is the good news? Yes, said he had good news at the beginning.

The Call for Christian Accountability

NATHAN APFFEL: I have great news. Christians, and American Christians in particular, are the most generous people in the world. We give, and this is my message to every Christ follower out there: you are trying to emulate your savior and you can see that in your giving. Hats off to you.

But that doesn’t mean we just give and let it go. Some of the worst offenders right now that are being exposed, and many are in prison, always say, “Hey Shawn, your money is not yours, it’s God’s. So give me 10% and we’re going to do what we feel we need to do with it and leave it up to God.”

I would argue Christ would disagree with that entirely because Christ says, “Shawn, pick up your cross and follow me.” And what he is saying there, I think there’s an expectation baked in that you will be the light of the world. You will spread my gospel. And what that means is I will make sure the limited resources I have create impact for his cause.

So I will actually demand accountability with my money that I give and demand stewardship of that money because it’s a limited resource. I’m just not going to give it away and let you do whatever you want with it. Christ told me to make disciples of men, to heal the sick. I am here to do that, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner and the sojourner and help the sojourner. That is what we’re here to do.

So hey, if I give five bucks, I want to make sure that five bucks goes towards the cause. And sure, you’re leading the organization. You deserve a salary, you deserve your kids to be paid without a doubt. But that doesn’t mean you enrich yourself off of it. Steward the money well, and the way we do that is by bringing accountability into that system, into those churches, into those auxiliaries, into those conventions, into those associations. Or we’re just going to have trillion dollar hedge funds everywhere with every church eventually. And then the church becomes the state again, which has happened in the past as well.

Paula White: A Case Study in Church Monarchy

Paula White. I want to get to Paula White before we continue. Paula White is the faith advisor to our current sitting President Trump. We were given by an individual, her bylaws. So remember in the beginning I was talking about we have to separate the business from the true church. Paula White is a corporation. It is a business and businesses have bylaws.

Her bylaws are stamped confidential on every single page. In her bylaws it says she can never be fired. In her bylaws it says she can never be removed until death. When she dies or resigns, the business gets passed off to her son. There is no vote on who takes it over.

They have a board of directors. The board of directors can make decisions. She can fire any board of director at any time. If she doesn’t like the vote of the board of directors, she can veto it. She has full carte blanche reign of that organization. So she can say she’s a corporation with bylaws and a board of directors. But it’s just smoke and mirrors. She is literally a monarchy.

And then the kicker is in those bylaws it says, “You will find Jesus through your pastor, President Paula White.” So it says, Shawn, if you go to Paula White’s church, you can’t get to Jesus. You have to come through me. So again, she’s positioned herself as the middleman and then she’s out there selling thousand dollar blessings on TV and saying, “You’re going to get a blessing.”

This issue goes all the way to the White House. And then this is the woman who’s giving our sitting president advice on Christ. Her entire system is antithetical to the very Christ that she says she worships. You have to practice what you preach.

The Collision Between Message and Practice

And that’s the problem: people today in the lay Christian community are looking at the pulpit and even Paula White might have some decent message. But then you look at the organization and it’s antithetical. It’s running in contradiction to the very message from the pulpit.

It’s, “Hey, don’t ask for accountability, don’t ask for transparency. Hey, you know, he sexually abused some kids. It’s a moral failure.” Robert Morris in Dallas, “Oh, he raped a 12 year old. It’s a moral failure. It’s not criminal. He was doing his best. He had good intentions.” That’s what we chalk it up to.

And so as lay Christians are looking at this right now and looking at the institutional church going, everything’s running antithetical to Jesus. What’s coming from the pulpit is nice with good intentions. But there’s this collision right now and it’s a trillion dollar collision running straight into Jesus. And that’s where we’re at. And so the religion business is right at that epicenter, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it’d be great if we get some transparency.

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s all we’re asking for. With the religion business, we don’t think—

SHAWN RYAN: That’s all you need. Yeah, you know, to correct—maybe not even maybe correct is the wrong word. But people need the transparency to make decisions on who they’re going to follow, where they’re going to go.

Empowering Congregations Through Information

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah. And people are smart. This is the thing. So remember, there’s 400,000 mini Vaticans that are all just monarchies, all the powers at the top. You just need to flip it. It’s democracy. Power needs to go back to the people. People need to say, “Hey, I need to know where my money’s going.” And then they, once they are educated, will make the right decisions.

And so we have a list of questions on our website that once you watch the show, you can download and set up a meeting with your pastors. They’re very juvenile questions, but most people just don’t know how to articulate it because no one knows and has ever looked inside the machine. So it’s a dozen questions or so. And hey, just take it in and be like, “Hey, pastor, I’d like to know this and this.” It’s really simple.

We’ve talked about it. It’s like, what’s the top two to five people salary? Congregants should know that. Does our pastor take a housing allowance? And if so, how much do you take? A car allowance, you take a housing allowance. Who’s the board of directors? Because churches don’t have an obligation to say who their board of directors are. And so most of the time it’s just family and friends and big donors.

And so you’re literally just—it’s so sad. But a lot of these organizations are leveraging the very vulnerable populations that we were told to protect and nurture. And so again, it’s just simple questions like that. It’s what—this is my kicker—it’s what every secular nonprofit has to declare on their 990. Every publicly traded company has all this information out in public. If you’re an investor, you know every salary, you know where the—you see PNLs. We’re not asking for anything else than any other business.

So that’s why you have to separate the ecclesia from the building and the business and say it’s a business, run it like a business. And this is our saying: transparency demands accountability. Accountability demands reform, and reform demands impact. And so we’re just bringing the transparency piece in. And then we know, and we have faith that Christians will bring the accountability because of it. And the rest is up to God, and it’ll happen.

Light Exposing Darkness

So transparency, you nailed it. Just turn that light on, and the rats and cockroaches are going to scurry. And then John 3 talks about this. Christ came into the world to be the light, but men who love the darkness rather than the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. And so you just turn that light on and people—and then it says, and those who come to the life are looking for the light, are looking for Christ.

And there’s great pastors out there who have hit us up on social media, who have called us. We’ve sat on hundreds of calls where they are coming to the light. They’re like, “We get it, dude. This is a broken system. Let’s be a part of a solution.” And then you also have the rats and the cockroaches scurrying. And so reform begins today.

SHAWN RYAN: Have you seen any churches start to implement transparency since you’ve been doing this?

NATHAN APFFEL: You know, the show is only—we soft launched a few weeks ago, so it’s already having a shock in the system. And a lot of them are saying, “Okay, what do we do? What do we do?” I’m like, well, you just be transparent. And so open the books up. Open the books.

SHAWN RYAN: What you do, all you do is—

NATHAN APFFEL: You open the books up and your congregation will know. And so we are seeing pastors—

SHAWN RYAN: They do. Sorry.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, they do know.

SHAWN RYAN: They do know what’s right and wrong. This is—I mean, this is—what do we do about this Epstein stuff? Release the files. Yes, release them.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Just like you said you were going to.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, be transparent.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what everybody wants. We just want to know where the money’s going. Yeah, that’s it.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And then everybody can make their own decision on if they want to stay here or not.

NATHAN APFFEL: We’re not—100%. It’s not rocket science.

SHAWN RYAN: But they won’t do it because they know it’s wrong.

Diverting the River of Capital

NATHAN APFFEL: They will, though, if the money moves. And so that’s our goal. A brilliant man who helped the LDS Church grow to 300 billion—one of their main investors—he blew the whistle in 2019 on it. And that’s how that whole system even got exposed, because churches don’t have to be transparent. But he blew the whistle on 60 Minutes.

He goes, “Nathan, I don’t know if you realize what you guys are doing, but the smartest minds in the world see everything as rivers. So rivers of capital, rivers of humans, rivers of resource, rivers of rare earth minerals.” And he goes, “You’re tackling a trillion dollar river.” And he’s like, “You’re at the river right now.”

And he goes, “Smart people don’t dam the river off”—which means we’re not just going to point out a problem. He goes, “Smart people divert rivers.” And he goes, “So where do you want to divert the river?” And all I said was “to accountable organizations” because there’s good people, good pastors, good nonprofits, great nonprofits out there doing amazing work. I want to divert that trillion to them. And he goes, “Cool, go do it.”

So that’s all we’re doing. And that’s what Broken Shepherds is, an app that just diverts money. It shows the accountable organizations and the shady ones side by side. And you see it and then you get to figure out where you, based on educating the donor, you decide where you give your money. That’s it. It’s not rocket science.

The Blowback

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of blowback are you getting?

NATHAN APFFEL: We’ve had a lot of hate, you know—

SHAWN RYAN: I can imagine.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You just flipped—how many people go to church? Talk about that.

NATHAN APFFEL: Something like 100 million go to church in the US.

SHAWN RYAN: 100 something million people. You just flipped our entire world upside down.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, the majority of—I think there’s 2.3 billion Christians worldwide.

SHAWN RYAN: Their entire life just got flipped upside down because of that.

The Church’s Potential for Global Impact

NATHAN APFFEL: And but we’re not like, that’s the thing. The Bible hasn’t changed. You know, the Bible always has this concept of refiner’s fire. You know, refining is not easy. It’s painful, but it burns off impurities. And so we always say, hey, burn it down. And what’s left standing is of God. And what isn’t left standing isn’t of God. That’s of man. And then out of the death of what dies, beautiful things will resurrect. Like that’s why Christ is such a fascinating figure. His life, his death, his resurrection. Everything is so fascinating when you start mapping it out over life.

A great example is Gateway. Gateway is a church outside Dallas, massive mega church. And the lead pastor was Robert Morris. Come to find out he raped a 12 year old. And so they let him go. And instead of saying, “hey, this whole system is rotted, like this man built this organization. Everything about it is tied to him.” What should happen is you should let this business die and let all those brilliant Christians sitting in those pews with good intentions, with a love for Christ, with families go out into their community and beautiful things will resurrect.

But instead, what is the Board of directors doing? “We’re a $50 million a year organization. We got to hold onto this. There’s still good here.” And it’s like, nah, dude, that’s like let it die. And beautiful things will resurrect out of that. New churches, new home churches, new megachurches, new whatever. But beautiful things will resurrect.

And I am so confident that in a decade the religious landscape in America will look radically different. And it will be ran with accountability and transparency and the church will be the light of the world. Because guess what? We have a trillion dollars a year to literally solve the top 30 global social issues. The top 20. Here’s how crazy. Let’s get into some fun stuff.

The Math Behind Church Reform

The top 20 global social issues can be solved for around $35 billion a year. That’s ending deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, just really low hanging fruits that aren’t sexy. And this is why governments don’t solve them. And so just if we brought accountability into the system and stopped some of the theft that goes on internally, the Christian church could solve the top 20 global social issues and it would affect no one’s bottom line.

And so what I mean by that is $92 billion with a B every year is stolen by church staff from their coffers. $92 billion. Almost 10%. Just bring accountability in. And like let’s say we drop that number to $50 billion. The Christian Church could solve the top 20 global social issues just with that savings. So you could still have your mega churches and planes and all that. We’re not even changing the system now.

Think if we actually reformed the system and 20 cents of every dollar started going to impact the Christian church, could radically transform the world, be the light of the world tomorrow. Still have your buildings, still have your private planes. You just need to bring accountability and transparency into it.

So when I hear a pastor say “it’s because we don’t have enough money,” I’m like, you are full of crap. You have no accountability and transparency. That’s the problem. And so bring that into the system and the church could be the light of the world tomorrow, man.

And that’s what’s so exciting is Christians are the most generous people in the world because we try to emulate our savior. But then leadership and wolves. Bible talks a lot about wolves, you know, devouring widows houses. And so that’s what we’re doing. The institution is literally doing everything the prophets of the Old Testament preached against and spoke of. And everything Christ spoke of that he was against. Turning my father’s house into money and devouring widow’s houses.

Sources of Blowback

SHAWN RYAN: So back to, back to the original question. I mean, is the. We’ve talked about some of the blowback, you know, offline on breaks before we started the interview. I mean, where is the majority of the blowback coming from?

NATHAN APFFEL: Is it from pastors?

SHAWN RYAN: People’s worlds that were flipped upside down and they realize, oh, yeah, I’ve been wrong this entire time.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, sorry, I had a head injury. So it’s hard for me to remember what I’ve said here and outside. But there’s like two splits of the world. You know, you have your congregant and if they watch it, they are so supportive. I was at a religious institution a couple Sundays ago, and this woman came up and she’s like, “are you the religion business?” And I’m like, yeah. And she just hugged me and then she just walked off.

And that’s the response we’re getting from the day from the average Christian who wants to read that Bible and deepen their faith. The only blowback we’re getting is from people who make their living off the institution.

SHAWN RYAN: What is the blowback?

NATHAN APFFEL: We’ve had security teams call us and say that there’s, you know, bad things are going to happen to us. And one institute, one person in particular, paid $100,000, dig up dirt, and then the security detail said, put a hit out.

SHAWN RYAN: Put a hit out.

NATHAN APFFEL: Yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, that’s not very Christian. Like.

NATHAN APFFEL: No, no.

SHAWN RYAN: And how are you handling it?

NATHAN APFFEL: Security. And I firmly believe.

SHAWN RYAN: You worry about your family.

The Call for Male Leadership

NATHAN APFFEL: No, I firmly believe God’s got me. And we take precautions. You know, we’re not out there just doing whatever we want. But I think I’m on the right side with my creator on this one. And the world needs in. One thing we present in episode seven is men. Have we have abdicated our role as Christian leaders. We don’t teach our children the Bible anymore. We let other people do it.

And men, male pastors in particular, have chased fame in the stage and the celebrity and the spotlight. And it’s women that have stepped up. And I’ve seen this around the world and you see this in the show. Quiet, humble women have stepped up to be the hands and feet of God in Jesus. And it’s time for men to step back up.

And I look at the founding of America and those founding fathers, you know, we talk about politics and religion kind of mirroring courses. Those founding fathers died for the cause. They put their life on the line. You Know, Those individuals in D.C. are literally supposed to be public servants. That is what church leadership needs to become. Again, we need to be servants because Christ said, “you are a servant.” He goes, “I came to serve you. I washed your feet. Do this to others.”

And instead, we like to stand on stages and collect money and build buildings and create institutions, which, again, aren’t inherently bad, but it’s to ourselves. We’re building that to ourselves.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

The Pro-Life Hypocrisy

NATHAN APFFEL: And so I firmly believe that with this reformation, this next generation of young leaders is going to come in with a servant’s heart, and the church will radically reform and generosity will not drop. Because everybody’s like, “are you afraid that people are going to stop giving?” And I’m like, no, man. If I was like, help single mothers.

Here’s a great example. Christian churches love to promote pro life. “We’re marching to D.C. we’re going to stand on those steps. We’re going to sing songs, because we are pro life.” And I’ve sat down with pastors and I’ve asked this, “okay, what do you guys do for your single mothers in your town?” “What do you mean, Nathan?” “Well, you’re so pro life. What do you do?” “Well, we go to DC” “Well, I don’t care about DC. What do you do for the local single mothers in your town?”

And one in particular, they had spent $2 million on a new child care facility at their church. And they were so proud to show it to me. And I’m like, “this is awesome.” It’s like Disneyland, basically. And I said, “okay, well, you use this every Sunday, right?” And they’re like, “yeah.” I’m like, “why don’t you open it for single mothers in your neighborhood that are struggling? You know, they can’t pay for a nanny or a babysitter, but they need to get to work. Why don’t you say, hey, one of our programs is going to be single mothers if you’re so pro life.”

And their response was literally, “well, it would ruin the facility.” And I’m like, that is the point of the facility. But you want it squeaky clean.

Samaritan’s Purse and Resource Hoarding

And there’s an organization that’s very close to Trump, a nonprofit called Samaritan’s Purse, which we expose in the show or we explore in the show. Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, runs it now, and man, they do good work with refugees in Europe. But again, you put a dollar in the top of the Samaritan’s Purse machine and a penny falls out the bottom.

And I love it. Whenever I see, I don’t love it. It breaks my heart whenever I see all their natural disaster programs. Every truck that pulls out of their spot is so perfect, doesn’t have a single scratch. When you see them drop in medical aid that’s never been used before. And I’m like, what? Like you’re stockpiling resources and in the last three years they’ve doubled their net assets.

And I’m like, yeah, you do some good work, but you’re just building a kingdom just like the LDS churches and saying, “man, look at the good work we’re doing.” As you have $2 billion sitting, it’s like God never told us to store up on earth. He actually said, get rid of it. You know, let me be. Have faith in me. The daily bread has been lost from the institution.

The Fat of the Land

And I was going to bring up a hunting analogy. God wants the fat, right, of the animal on the altars in the Old Testament. And he said, “it’s a sweet smelling aroma.” And as a hunter, when you break down an animal and you look at the fat stores, this animal took a full six months to put this on and it’s going to burn up over winter. And that animal hopes to survive that winter to put it on again, right?

So is there a correlation between God demanding the fat of the animal and God saying, “hey, Sean, I need you to put your faith in me. I’ve got you for tomorrow. Give me your fat, give it away and I’ve got you. And if you’re doing the right thing, I’ve always got you.”

And then you look at the religious institutions and they are fat as hell. LDS is $300 billion going to hit a trillion? Samaritan’s Purse just hit $2 billion. Kenneth Copeland $750 million. Daystar $750 million cash they’ve made off of buying out struggling individuals with life insurance policies. All in the name of Jesus, man.

The Path to Transparency

SHAWN RYAN: How do you think we’ll get to transparency? By people demanding or lost people demanding.

NATHAN APFFEL: So that’s where the show has to be seen because it at least educates. And our goal is to educate. And I firmly believe Christians, once they know the problem and they can articulate it, they will take it into their own hands.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think you’ll do another docu series once churches start opening up their books becoming transparent? Do you think he’ll do a series on. Here’s some. Here’s some good ones.

NATHAN APFFEL: The shows good ones.

SHAWN RYAN: It does.

Saints and Sinners

NATHAN APFFEL: That’s what cool. We show. Episode 3 is called Saints and Sinners. We show the Good ones and the bad ones. Yeah. We show an awesome homeless program in Rockford, Illinois, called the Rockford Rescue Mission. We show awesome operations overseas. Like, we show the good ones. And that was the goal.

I bring no judgment. I don’t. I do say Kenneth committed fraud, because that is fraud. But I don’t say this guy did it maliciously. I say I give him good. Like, with good. He probably had good intentions. But my goal in the show is to put up Kenneth Copeland alongside his sister Rosemary, who dedicated her life to child fighters in Uganda, you know, who were taken off the streets and from homes by Joseph Kony.

Like, I got to sit with her and ironically, you know, and then that’s the goal, is just to put them side by side and you make the decision who’s more Christ-like, you know, and that’s what I wanted to show.

So at the end of the show, at the end of the series, you almost feel sick to your stomach because you’re like, “I should be like Sister Rosemary and Pastor Wilfred and all these amazing individuals that if I’m a Christ follower, these individuals pick up their cross,” you know, and again, it’s dangerous and you risk it and you can’t have fat.

But the church, the institution, those buildings are fat now. We’ve become fat. And so we need to offer that fat up and say, “okay, God, you asked for faith, and Christ asked for faith, too. Just pick it up and pick up your cross and follow me, Sean.”

SHAWN RYAN: Get it where it needs to go. Yep, man. What are we missing?

The True Nature of the Church

NATHAN APFFEL: Christ. The church is missing. Christ is the head of the church, there’s only one. And there’s a big one. Someone – I can’t believe I’d never realized this until a call last week. This guy named Chris, he’s like, “Nathan, you know, there’s only one church, right?” And I’ve been working on this for 16 years. And I’m like, “Wait, what?”

He’s like, “There’s only one church. Christ Church. It’s the body of Christ. It’s the people. There’s no other church.” So when you say, “I’m going to go to a Ridgeline Church,” that’s not a church. That’s a brand. When I say, “Oh, I’m going to go to Fellowship,” that’s a brand. It’s not a church. There’s only one church.

And we’ve built all these brands and businesses on top of that church. And that’s why we have 44,000 denominations today. 44,000 denominations of Christianity, because we all have to be different. My church has to be different than yours, Shawn. Because if we’re the same, what does that mean? You got nothing to argue about, bro. We’re going to emulate our Savior.

So there’s one church. That’s what I would encourage everybody to do. There’s one church. It’s the Body of Christ. You are an active, breathing part of that organism. Read the Bible cover to cover, live in it, breathe it, and pray. Meditate by yourself.

SHAWN RYAN: I think that’s a great message. I mean, that is – of all the stuff I’ve learned through the Bible study at my house, that is probably the one thing that stuck out the most, was when Todd said, “You know, the church isn’t a brick and mortar building. It is the living body of believers, and that’s all that matters.”

Teaching the Next Generation

NATHAN APFFEL: And who – if you can educate your children on that and I can educate mine, in one generation, the world will look radically different. And so my only ministry is my child. Because if I can teach her what took me 41 years to learn, this place is in good hands, man. You know?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Nathan, I love what you’re doing. It’s dangerous picking up a lot of rocks over here, but I wish you the best of luck. I thank you for coming, and I’d love to see what’s coming next.

NATHAN APFFEL: Thank you, brother. Cheers.

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