Destiny Church is planning to create a holy city for its followers in the heart of South Auckland.
The church’s leader, Bishop Brian Tamaki has told supporters the plans are well advanced, and that donations for the project have topped $2.4 million.
He is urging church members to sell up their homes around the country and move to his promised land - a suggestion that is not being welcomed by everyone.Tamaki unveiled his vision in front of thousands of parishioners at Destiny Church’s 10th birthday conference.
He is planning to sell Destiny headquarters at Mt Wellington and create a ‘Destiny City’. He has already secured a plot of land to build it on in the middle of South Auckland.
“We’ve signed literally for 10 acres, with a possibility of another five acres when we want it, then another five when we need it,” says Tamaki. “So that gives us 20 acres right in the heart of the largest city in our nation.”
Not good. What is sad is no one will be able to talk Tamaki out of this, he does what he wants, when he wants and how he wants. Many Destiny followers are already isolated; socially, mentally and spiritually cut off from anything other than the church.
He is a law unto himself, used to getting what he wants as most health/wealth prosperity teachers are.
He got himself ‘ordained’ as a bishop by people he put in place; Destiny is a network of 19 charismatic churchesa failed political party, TV show, authoritarian leadership and a fundamentally aggressive us/them approach to society, there would be great cause to be concerned.
Tamaki and his followers formed their political party in 2005, prophesying they would rule NZ by 2008. That didn’t happen which makes ‘the bishop’ a false prophet.
The head of the Nelson Destiny Church says the Auckland site isn’t going to be a ‘walled city’, and that parishioners weren’t being forced to pay for it.
Pastor Martin Daly, said from Auckland on Wednesday it was “misinformation” that church members were being asked to finance the centre.
“If anybody has got a misconception along those lines, I will be alleviating them and addressing them when I get back.”
However, he said people with expertise in certain areas could move to the Auckland site and help, if that was what they felt “in their hearts”.
Daly said other Destiny locations weren’t closing. Given the aggression and track record of this organization, I can understand why people are concerned. The offer for the land in South Auckland is supposed to be finalized November 10th. 3 News:
“From zero right till when you are a hero in heaven, we’ll track your education, we’ll track you right through”.
Tamaki then asked the thousands who had gathered to consider selling their homes and moving to Auckland to fulfil the great purpose of god.
“All I need is every single person in this room in their heart to say yes, I would strongly urge you to go home and think about it and talk about it with your spouse,” says Tamaki.
Destiny Church recently gained Urban Maori Authority status which makes it eligible for government money.
Religion News Blog has a archived news stories about Destiny Church
Destiny responds to 3 News
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One need only look back to Jim Bakker’s
Heritage Village at Fort Mill, South Carolina
to remember what can happen to an
entity that varies from its main purpose
of ministry.
Why do so many groups decide to complicate
their ministries with property and tours and
all manner of other things.
Stick to your knitting and concede to others
their specialties.
It would be nice if they did knit, Destiny isn’t like that at all.
They don’t call them black shirts for nothing.
From what I’ve read, it’s the NZ version of Hillsong, targets lower socio-economic groups (Takami is Mouri) and people in NZ are polorized about them.
The bigger story is the church getting Urban Mouri Authority funding.
The church already demands tithes no matter how poor their congregants are.
Authoritarian charismatics New Zealand style.
Takami has the status of a rock star among his followers and from what I’ve read lives like one. Televangelist health/wealth behavior.
Bakker is a better comparison than Jim Jones, but no matter how this plays out, people are going to get hurt.
When Bakker ran Heritage, they actually quietly fed the homeless without fanfare, for all Destiny’s boasting they must occassionally do something quietly and decently.
This land isn’t zoned for housing, I think people who are devout and easily maniplulated may find themselves in an economic pickle.
. . . . I think people who are devout and easily maniplulated may find themselves in an economic pickle.
————-
It is that very manipulation that means the leadership can
be predatory. That means one is not looking at the six
works of mercy in the right light.
The leader wants to inject himself into every adherent’s
daily life in every way and doing so destroys self-determination,
and free will.
The six works are meant for persons to grow their own way
with the help of others and not be perpetually a ward of
a leader. This is a culture of fostering dependency.
This is anathema to freethinking adults–Maori or not.
I crafted a reply and your system ate it–again.
Please make it stop.
Torontonian:
I know the moderating cue discourages comments; shoot even my comments go into the mod cue if I hyperlink, but I have to be honest with you.
If you saw the spam - the filter on this platform has caught over 137 thousand pieces and it’s only a couple of years old - and on another blog I administrate we get hundreds a day, this is the only way I know how to stay sane.
BDBO has been hit with a DDoS at least once, I can’t go through that again. This blog was taken down early in the game by an angry server guy and a lot of good people scrapped google cache to restore it and didn’t charge me a cent. I’m not going through that again either.
I hate capchas, it’s a final option for BDBO, and I really don’t want to go there either.
I don’t want to make it hard for people to comment at all, but I don’t want to crack up either. Spam sends me right around the bend.
At least with moderating set up this way I’m able to manage it.
You’ve been approved, there is no reason for a hold I’m able to find.
I’ll talk to the tech company, I’m sorry.
Your request is more than fair; between balancing technical realities and self-interest, I’m probably overlooking something simple.
Reply number 4 was printed because reply number 3 did not
appear immediately after I pressed submit; hence my admonition.
So, it appears your system ate my writing and led me to think
that it wouldn’t appear.
I reloaded the page three times and came back to the page
on two other occasions only to find number 3 still not there.
Now it’s where it should have been all along
That’s what needs to be fixed
Reply #3 did go into mod cue - so thanks, this gives us something to work with. On it.
I do agree Destiny Church perceives feed, clothe give drink, welcome and visit as an end game of power and acquisition for chosen leadership.
This is not a church system that desires interdependence, maturity and independence from it’s membership.
Sorry you had frustrations with commenting Torontonian - if your comment goes into the moderation queue, you should get a message saying as such.