Congregation left with only questions

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/November 23, 1997
By Tom Vanden Brook

Pastor leaves town after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars

The minister who drove about town in a Rolls-Royce or a Land Rover or a Porsche preached to a congregation that gave freely.

That is, until he abruptly put the church, at 2415 W. Mequon Road, up for sale and moved to Arizona this fall.

Now, all that former members of the Rhema Worship Center have are memories of his smooth manner and questions about how their donations and tithing were spent.

"To be totally honest," said Shirley Tucker, a former church leader, "he was very charismatic, and he could talk so smooth you wouldn't know him from a saint.

"He could talk you into almost anything."

What he talked his flock out of, said Willie Maddox, a former church financial officer, was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Burris not only isn't around to defend himself, but he also did not respond to repeated attempts by a reporter to reach him for comment.

Maddox estimates that at the peak of Burris' fund-raising efforts for the new church, congregants had given about $600,000 in 1996 alone.

"He let us know that he had total discretion over how the money was spent," Maddox said. "You just assumed he was doing the right thing.

"But when we stopped doing community outreach types of things, you started to put two and two together.

"He was living lifestyle X.' But we only had funding for lifestyle D.' If you try to run things like that, you're going to come up short."

She added: "In the beginning, it may have been a very good ministry. The main purpose of the ministry was not fulfilled."

Stunned church attendees such as Tucker and Maddox found out later they never had any real say in the worship center's governance. They learned that Burris, his wife and one adviser had controlling interest of the church's finances.

They say authorities told them they wouldn't investigate the matter because they had given their money freely.

Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions records show that Maddox had been listed as the treasurer and a board member of Rhema Worship Center Inc.

"That's just false," she said. "I never sat in on any meetings. He always let everybody know that he was the treasurer and chief operating officer."

The story of how Burris came to Mequon in late 1996 is one of a charismatic leader with a penchant for persuading people to give him money.

Burris was born in Milwaukee and told churchgoers that he had graduated from Milwaukee's Washington High School.

Tucker and Brenda Dandy, another Rhema worshiper, say Burris told the congregation that he had had addiction problems in the past but had recovered with the help of the Lord.

Burris, 40, began attracting the faithful in the early 1990s to a series of locations in Milwaukee's central city.

It was at one of those spaces that Brenda Dandy first heard Burris preach in 1992.

A deeply religious woman, Dandy, 41, has a home answering machine message that encourages callers to "have a blessed day."

Initially skeptical of the Rhema Worship Center, she said, she attended her first service at the suggestion of her sister.

"It was not the traditional teaching, like going to the book and studying," she recalled. "We grew up that way. My uncle was a minister.

"I was looking for something a little different. This was fresh."

Tucker, who declined to give her age but described herself as a mature woman, agreed with Dandy.

"He taught rather than preached," Tucker said. "He was really very good."

So good, Dandy said, that she donated freely to various fund-raising efforts to help the center purchase land for a church and later to buy an existing building in Mequon.

Dandy provided tax receipts from the center that show she gave more than $33,000 to Rhema Worship Center from 1992 to 1996. Last year, she cashed in stock and gave the church more than $11,000. Her sister gave more than $20,000 over five years.

"We were under the impression that we were in the process of building a church," said Dandy, who works in management for a major corporation she did not want named. "We thought the money was going for that."

At its peak, the worship center had about 400 members, according to Maddox and Tucker.

In retrospect, former Rhema worshipers say, they should have seen red flags.

Burris began appearing on local television, paying for programming time. He began driving to services in a variety of luxury cars. And the pleas for more money increased.

"Some of us began wondering why he chose to go on television when we didn't even have our own church to worship in," Tucker said. "But we didn't dare question him about it. If you did question him, you were publicly humiliated in front of the congregation."

State transportation records show that in recent years, Burris had registered to the church, himself or his wife a 1992 Rolls-Royce, a 1993 Volvo, a 1994 Mercedes 320, a 1996 Land Rover and a 1996 Porsche 911.

Cost estimates, depending on the specific model's condition, show that a Porsche could cost as much as $93,000, a 1992 Rolls-Royce could be valued from $60,000 to $78,000, a Land Rover about $28,000, a Mercedes $22,000 and the Volvo about $12,000, according to car buying guides.

"We wondered, Where is all his money coming from?' " Dandy said.

"He would say it was part of his fringe benefits," Maddox said. "He said it had to be high quality. He had no qualms about it."

From Tucker: "It was very embarrassing to some of us. But nobody would dare say anything. He said, That's me. I don't care what people think.' "

Dandy recalled that on his 38th birthday, Burris told the congregation that he wanted $1,000 for each year of his life.

By 1996, Burris told his congregation that he had sold land previously purchased for a new church. His new intent was to buy an existing church in Mequon, and he asked the churchgoers to raise about $60,000 toward its purchase.

In March 1996, the church was purchased for $325,000, according to the Mequon assessor's office.

The congregation moved to the new church in June 1996, but by then its membership had fallen to about 145 people, Maddox said.

Maddox, who collected donations and recorded them, said fund raising reached its peak in 1996 at about $600,000.

On more than one occasion, according to Tucker, Burris instructed the congregation to put its offerings in a basket at his feet, telling the members that the practice was common among priests in the Old Testament.

On average, Maddox said, she helped collect $5,000 weekly from the congregation.

Toward the end of the center's operation in 1997, Maddox estimated, no more than $3,000 a week was collected.

This fall, Burris suddenly put the church up for sale without informing most of the congregation, according to Maddox and others.

The church seats 200 and is listed for $410,000. The real estate broker listing the property said last week he had not had contact with Burris for some time.

For the past few months, Burris has appeared at 6 a.m. Sundays on the CBS television affiliate in Phoenix, according to a programmer there.

His show is called "Word of Faith Ministry."

The only phone number Burris listed with the station is his Mequon number, which has been disconnected.