Radiant life church phoenix az full#

“Satan wants to label us with our failures,” says McFarland, who speaks forthrightly about his fall. “ Lee embraced the restoration process in a very exemplary way,” adds AG General Secretary James T. “Lee is a great example of one who fell, went through the process, and is restored to ministry, successfully pastoring again.

Radiant life church phoenix az full#

“So many ministers who go through the rehab process don't return to full time ministry,” says Arizona Ministry Network Superintendent Stephen L. Barnett convinced McFarland that he had many good ministry years ahead. After a two-year rehabilitation process overseen by Barnett, the AG reinstated McFarland’s ministerial credentials in 2013.īarnett, 79, acted as a spiritual father to McFarland, who turned 59 on July 5. Phoenix Dream City Church Senior Pastor Tommy Barnett encouraged McFarland to stay in the ministry. Yet every new vocational door McFarland sought to walk through closed. In the aftermath of the crisis, McFarland thought about switching careers again, even coming to the brink of opening a Chick-fil-A franchise. But Sandy recognized Lee’s genuine sorrow and repentance, and stayed in the marriage, now in its 36 th year. McFarland’s wife, Sandy, a skilled scanning electron microscope technician, easily could have supported herself. Subsequently, a couple who formerly attended Radiant, filed a $6.6 million lawsuit against McFarland, the church, and the Arizona Ministry Network, making graphic claims of how McFarland had breached his pastoral and counseling duties over an 11-month period by manipulating the wife.

McFarland confessed to moral failure, resigned from the church, repented, and submitted to a two-year period of healing and restoration. Yet in 2011, McFarland’s idyllic life came to a crashing halt. The adulation McFarland received in church circles proved equally as dazzling as commendations garnered in the corporate world. By 2010, Radiant held five weekend services, with a total average attendance of 6,359. Nine years after launching, Radiant became the fourth largest in the Assemblies of God.

McFarland intentionally adopted a casual attire when preaching, made Bible stories relevant to modern American situations, and avoided dire pleas for donations. He made $22,000 his first year as pastor.Ĭanvassing neighborhoods with clipboard in hand, McFarland repeatedly heard residents of the fast-growing community explain they didn’t attend church because they didn’t find sermons applicable to everyday life, and they didn’t want to dress up or hear money pitches. Instead, he acceded to God’s call to pioneer an Assemblies of God church in Surprise, Arizona. Yet in 1996 McFarland walked off the fast track to vast wealth, spurning an offer to become a Microsoft general manager. As director of worldwide operations at the Redmond, Washington-based computer technology company, McFarland amassed a $160,000 annual salary, $50,000 in yearly bonuses, and 16,000 shares of Microsoft stock. Lee McFarland experienced a meteoric rise in the corporate world, first at Honeywell Aerospace, then at Microsoft Corp.