Tearful Joel Osteen announces Lakewood Church paid off $100M Bank of America loan

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Thursday, January 18, 2024

Thanks to their faithful giving, an emotional Joel Osteen announced to members of his megachurch in Houston, Texas, that they have finally paid off a $100 million loan from Bank of America they had been servicing for some 20 years.

“My big announcement today is that [as of] December 31st of last year, we have officially paid off the $100 million loan,” the Lakewood Church leader declared Sunday with his wife, Victoria, by his side.

The announcement followed an emotional walk down memory lane for the pastor as he teared up several times, recalling how the church came to own the former sports arena previously known as the Compaq Center, and transformed it into the massive church that welcomes approximately 45,000 adults to services each week.

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“I look back over these 19 years, and there have been great years. I mean, Lakewood has been a lighthouse to the whole world. And it was interesting when we got the facility. You know, it was a basketball arena, like you saw. But, you know, underneath these bleachers [there were] service areas and locker rooms and where they serve food. It wasn't public areas,” Osteen recalled. “We needed nurseries, and we needed children's facilities. We needed a lot more things.”

Among those other things was a need to build a five-story building adjacent to the arena that connects to all the rooms underneath the facility.

Osteen recalled how the church had initially paid $11.5 million to lease the arena for 60 years but did not have the required $100 million contractors had projected would be needed to renovate the arena to serve as a church.

“I got the bill back for the bids, and it was $100 million to renovate. And I thought, kind of, God, I didn't sign up for this. I was 36 years old. And I thought, but you know what, God gives you grace for every season of your life,” Osteen said.

The televangelist recalled that when he tried borrowing the money from a bank he and his departed father, John Osteen, had banked with for years, he got rejected.

“Let me tell you, y'all, they were so negative. They were just like, ‘Man, it's not gonna happen. We don't think you can raise the money’ and all this stuff. And man, we walked out of there and I was discouraged at first until I let it go in one ear and out the other,” Osteen said.

“I thought, God, our bank is not our source. You are our source. And so we went to another bank, Bank of America. They showed up at the office, the first day we were there without even knowing us, they'd never seen our financials, they had a check for $25 million dollars,” Osteen explained as he teared up.

“I saw that 25 million, I said, 'You’ll let us borrow 25, would you let us borrow $100 million? They said we'll do it. Bank of America loaned us $100 million,” Osteen recalled.

He explained that God was so faithful to the church that during the 20 years of servicing the loan, “we never cut back any of our outreaches.”

“We spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media and humanitarian [aid], and helping people all over the world,” he said, praising congregants for their faith giving.

Other than smaller debt for capital equipment, Osteen said Lakewood church is essentially “out of debt.” He also noted that in 2010, the church previously purchased their building for $7 million, seven years into their 60-year lease of the property.

“What God's done for Lakewood He's gonna do in your life,” he told his members. “I believe in 2024 you'll see God release you from some things that have held you back. Release you from debt, release you from addiction, relationship, from wrong mindsets. I just believe [this will be] a year of release.”