From: mueller@owlnet.rice.edu (Ernest Conrad Mueller)
Newsgroups: rec.music.christian
Subject: TANGENT: More Warnke Problems
Date: 21 Aug 1992 21:55:28 GMT
Organization: Rice University

Although I hate to be the bearer of bad news, more folks are after Warnke
now.  The IRS, in fact.

From "IRS casts doubts on comic's ministry," by Jay Grelen and Kit Wagar,
Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

BURGIN, Ky.  This is the ministry that evangelist Mike Warnke built - the
one that pays him and his family nearly $1 million in salary and has bought
them expensive Cadillacs and a $43,000 Mercedes-Benz roadster.
     Warnke, a self-professed satanist turned Christian comedian, sees nothing
wrong with the arrangement.  He says he and his family work hard for the money.

[More background on Mike deleted]

But the Internal Revenue Service says the ministry improperly gives Warnke 
and his family too much money and too many benefits.
Last fall, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of Warnke's organization, 
which does business as Warnke Ministries.  The Warnkes have appealeed the ruling
to U.S. Tac Court, but no court date has been set.
The ministry has paid for many of the posessions in the Warnke's world: the luxury
cars, the antiques and the $15,000 grand piano.
Down the road is the $600,000 parsonage where Mike and Rose Warnke lived until their
separation.  The house was owned by Rose Warnke's mother, who leased it to the
ministry for nearly $28,000 a year.
And the ministry pays $809,000 in salaries to its top three officers - Mike Warnke,
his ex-wife Rose and her brother, Neale Hall.

[I will begin summarizing now, quoting directly where appropriate]

Mike's supporters send in $2 million a year.
"Former employees say that Warnke supporters who think their money helps people
escape drugs and satanism are being misled.  The organization, which claims to help 
thousands of people, gave $900 to charities last year while paying the Warnke
family $920,248."
(No, that $900 is not a typo.)
Rose gets nearly $300,000 in salary - but she claims the ministry cannot afford
to staff its national toll-free crisis line for more than eight hours a day.
Figures : Last year, Mike got paid $303,840.  Rose got $291,840.  Hall got $214,000.
That's 38% of their ministries' income right there.
That's in addition to book, tape, and video royalties as well as speaking fees.
Hall's daughter gets $71,140 and Rose's daughter gets $31,883.
In the most recent Warnke Ministries newsletter, Warnke wrote that collections are down. 
"We continue to need you to help us to help all those desperately hurting... literally
thousands of children abused daily, tortured, or abandoned.  Abused wives and husbands,
families torn apart by drugs, alcohol, satanism, divorce, emotional illness, prison,
murder, rape."
They have been getting $30-40,000 a year raises.  Given to themselves, of course.
Mike and Rose still work together, despite Mike being on his fourth wife, Sue, at the
moment.

The ministry's attorney, Michael Conover, defends his client's practices.
"No one is hurt by the way the money is spent, he said.  Most contributors see a
show for their money."

Do these figures annoy anyone else?

-mueller
-- 
--------------\  /^--^\  /--------------  *     Ernest Conrad Mueller IV
   ------------\| 0  0 |/------------     *     mueller@owlnet.rice.edu
      ----------\_ <> _/----------        *     Rice U., Home of Owlnet
                /V\--/V\                  *     "Give a hoot - Don't compute!"