Sharon Ries of Raul Ries marital fame chimed in recently on Bob Grenier’s Facebook wall. A consistent dynamic in the Calvary Chapel System of churches is the different sub-tribes and cliques under the Tent.
One such clique is dubbed (by fellow Calvary Chapel pastors and insiders) as the “Mexican Mafia”. This particular sub-tribe is headed up by their godfather, the very rich and very infamous Raul Ries of Calvary Chapel Golden Springs. Bob Grenier is an underboss (I’ve heard them use those terms jokingly, even they tacitly admit the dynamic in jest).
Raul is quite an interesting mix. Part of me LOVES the guy, part of me cringes. He’s a Marine. A rough-around-the-edges man’s man. On the surface, Raul is a no b.s. guy. He shoots from the hip, he talks tough….but he really doesn’t, not where it counts. He talks tough to the OUTSIDERS of 1 Corinthians 5:12, but not to his fellow CC Pastors and cohorts.
Raul and Sharon (his wife who he has reportedly violated their marriage vows over the years, I can understand that one, we’re all human, but he’s a pastor and remains a pastor and that whole pesky “qualifications of pastors/elders” thing in that bible they profess to teach “simply”….) have gotten ridiculously wealthy from selling the Gospel of Jesus for greedy gain. They are millionaires. They live better than 99.9999% of human beings in the whole of Human History. Their product? Jesus. Raul has been mired in scandal after scandal over the years, reportedly IRS audits that had to be cleaned up, sexual issues, a former Calvary Chapel Pastor and one-time close confidant Jay Wright who says he and Raul Jr. smuggled cash for Raul to South America wearing “money belts” to dodge customs, to all sorts of other nefarious things. All reported by former staff, fellow CC pastors, big name CC insiders, and from tangible records we can find like Form 990’s that document a $500,000 per year salary “for Jesus” (and that’s just the one Form 990 we can find, Raul has all sorts of entities, it’s quite a shell-game).
Link to Form 990 documenting “some” of Raul’s total income from Jesus: http://calvarychapelabuse.com/wordpress/big-christian-leaders-bigger-money-raul-ries-greg-laurie-bob-coy-franklin-graham-and-others-make-millions-serving-jesus-its-technically-legal-in-many-cases-but-is-it-moral/
Another source, a man who’s dad was in the Los Angeles Narco-Drug scene in the 1980’s (and he’s writing a book about that era and experience), claims Raul Ries may have been involved in covert ops with the US Government….making frequent trips with my step-dad to Colombia during the Pablo Escobar years (I remember my step-dad and Raul taking trips together there right during that time period)…and this same source in first-person heard Raul Ries bragging about being behind enemy lines to speak to the Contras during the peak of the Iran-Contra operations. Raul had shared this during a bible study and was very proud of it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix Church and State in that manner, but it happens….more than most realize or want to know. I’m sure Raul has rationalized it as righteous and “for God!” etc, maybe he’s right on that one, dunno. I know he’s wrong about the rest of the garbage reported above with regards to money, women and abuse of his power and his hypocrisy…as well as his enabling of my step-dad CC pastor and his lying and abuse….because Raul knows Bob was at minimum physically abusive to us boys.
For your reading pleasure, the Facebook thread of me confronting Sharon Ries on Bob Grenier’s wall:
