Gateway Church Courts Top Level Business Leaders via Exclusive Program

As the church is cutting staffs and salaries, Gateway Church leaders are offering an exclusive program for chief-level executives. Gateway Business Leaders describes itself as

The Gateway Business Leaders Program is a comprehensive program designed to help you accomplish God’s calling and destiny on your life. We have identified numerous topics that we believe will help you achieve Biblical success in your business, personal and spiritual life. We have organized the GBL Program by levels based on background and experience of the members. Our goal is to provide the best resources and relationships to each business leader in our events, training, groups, and mentoring pillars.

However, this interesting program isn’t for everyone. In fact, it is quite exclusive.

Our heart is to serve every businessperson at Gateway. However, at the present time, to best steward our resources, we have designed programs for business owners, presidents, vice presidents, CEO’s, and other C-level executives. Our program is not currently intended for non-profit leaders, first-time start-up entrepreneurs, direct sales agents, network marketers, manufacturing sales representatives, and realtors working for franchise real estate organizations. If you are an eligible candidate, we invite you to apply.

The website provides more details about who can become a member of the GBL program:

Business Owners: A business owner is defined as someone who owns a majority interest in the business they lead.
Corporate Leaders: Corporate Leaders are defined as Presidents, C-Level Executives of private and public corporations that have more than 100 employees, and Vice Presidents that oversee at least 50 employees.
Our program is not intended at this time for non-profit leaders, first-time start-up entrepreneurs, direct sales agents, network marketers, manufacturing sales representatives, and realtors working for franchise real estate organizations.

Show Me Yours but I Won’t Show You Mine

As a part of the process, applicants must disclose their salary. Why would a ministry need to know a member’s salary? This is an especially fair question since the leaders of Gateway are secretive about the salaries of senior pastors.
Gateway Business Leaders Income
Given the recent news out of Gateway, I am not sure I would want to join. “Come learn how we cut staff by one-third and cut pay by as much as 20%” isn’t an attractive slogan.
Note: Gateway executives could not join Gateway’s program. Since Gateway pastors are leaders in a non-profit organization, they would not be eligible to join the group they are leading. In essence, GBL seems like an exclusive club for Christian high rollers, one which is financed by rank and file donors.