Rick Joyner

Background

Joyner was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia.

Career

He served in the Navy until 1970, when he moved back to Raleigh. He is the author of more than forty books Joyner worked part-time in a Raleigh jazz club after leaving the Navy but quit when, as he put it, he "found out there is a God." He subsequently moved to Jackson, Mississippi and founded a charter air company.

In 1997 Joyner purchased 320 acres of land in Wilkes County, North Carolina near Moravian Falls and moved the headquarters of MorningStar there from Charlotte.

By 1999 his "religious empire" was grossing $8 million a year and was denied a religious property tax exemption by the North Carolina Department of Revenue. Department director John C. Bailey said that "ith MorningStar there are a lot of tracts with costly improvements that affect tax liability significantly..If we did not limit exemptions, it would increase the burden on people, like you and me, who own homes that are not affiliated with any group." MorningStar appealed the Department of Revenue"s denial.

In the fourth episode, celebrity Ian Somerhalder follows Joyner"s activist daughter as she tries to persuade her father, a climate change skeptic, to change his mind about global warming. In the mid 1990s Joyner, already president of MorningStar publications, located at that time in Charlotte, North Carolina, worked with Reggie White, who was planning to purchase Jim Bakker"s defunct resort, In 1999 White, having failed to purchase the property, continued to work with Joyner on plans to build a biblical theme park.

In 2004 MorningStar purchased part of the complex (originally established by Bakker and PTL in Fort Mill, South Carolina) for $1.6 million.

The complex has been renamed Heritage International Ministries.

Achievements

• He is the founder and executive director of MorningStar Ministries and Heritage International Ministries and is the Senior Pastor of MorningStar Fellowship Church.

Membership

In the mid 1990s Joyner was one of the all-male members of the "International Advisors-At-Large" to the evangelical Christian women"s organization Aglow International.