She has a £5.25 million corporate jet, houses worth £2.1 million and pays herself a wage of £319,600 a year. She is Joyce Meyer, one of the most influential evangelists in America, and she says that God has made her rich. And now she's coming to Bradford. DAVID BARNETT reports.

Joyce Meyer fills out concert halls, stadia and churches whenever she appears. She lectures about God, and what it is to be godly.

She talks of sacrifice, and how people should never be scared to give too much money in the name of God. Then she asks for donations.

"Make your cheques payable to Joyce Meyer Ministries/Life in the Word," she told an audience in her home city of St Louis, Missouri. "And million is spelled M-I-L-L-I-O-N."

And she isn't joking. According to the financial accounts of Joyce Meyer Ministries for last year, the organisation had assets of $67,967,227 - almost £36 million. From that, Meyer herself was awarded a wage of almost £320,000. She reportedly lives in a £1 million house with her husband, Dave, who drives a £50,000 Mercedes and also works for the ministry, as do her four children who between them live in houses worth another million pounds.

The Joyce Meyer Ministries also has its own corporate jet, and perhaps its slipstream will be seen over Yorkshire today as Meyer and her troop descend upon the Abundant Life Ministries in Bradford for two days of Meyer's own brand of alchemy - turning the faith of the estimated 12,000 people who will visit to hear her speak into cold, hard cash.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch, Meyer's home-town newspaper, has followed her career with interest. It's a rags to riches tale worthy of any made-for-TV drama; the claimed sexual abuse she suffered as a child, married young and unwisely, had a miscarriage, fell victim to depression and mental illness, then finds God while waiting at a traffic light in 1976.

There then begins the arduous climb up the ladder of various churches and ministries until she became the head of her own multi-million dollar industry, with television and radio shows, books and international tours constantly on the agenda.

According to the Post-Dispatch, whose reporters attended several Joyce Meyer events over the autumn of 2003, the requests for donations characterise every show. "God does not need our money," she is reported as telling her St Louis audience. "The giving thing is not for Him. It's for us. I should not have to work to try to support myself."

On her own website at www.joycemeyer.org, she says: "As you give to Joyce Meyer Ministries, you play an enormous part in reaching out in love to a hurting world. With your help, we are using TV, radio, the internet and the printed page to reach millions with the truth of God's Word. You are also helping to reach prisoners and orphans, as well as the hungry and poor.

"Dave and I want to reach the world with the good news of the Gospel and help as many people as we can. Our desire to continually look for opportunities to help hurting people is increasingly being expressed in a variety of ways among the nations. And your support makes it all possible. We love and appreciate you!"

She will be appearing twice tomorrow evening and running four sessions on Sunday at the Abundant Life Centre. Admission is free, tickets cannot be booked and the 2,000 seats in the auditorium are to be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

When I call the Abundant Life Centre asking for information they are initially pleased about my interest but soon become a little suspicious. Tim Nelson in the marketing section says he will pass on my request for a photograph of Meyer to the media team but asks if they can vet the copy of this article before it goes in the paper "because we wouldn't want any nasty surprises for Joyce".

I tell him that it isn't T&A policy to do that, and although I'm certain I'm not going to get my picture, Tim does indeed have enough faith in the good work of Joyce Meyer to send me one. I ask him if she's ever been to the Abundant Life Centre before.

"No, this is the first time," says Tim. "But we have done a lot of work with her staff. It's very exciting."

Why does he think there might be a "nasty surprise" in what the T&A might write, I ask? Is it because of what other newspapers have written about Joyce Meyer? Perhaps regarding her apparently extravagant lifestyle?

"You can't believe everything you read," says Tim. "And she doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle that I'm aware of. She's just an awesome woman."

Has he met her?

"No, not yet."

There's certainly no doubt that Joyce Meyer, or at least the work of the Joyce Meyer Ministries, is pretty awesome. Their annual report for last year says that for every dollar received in donations - and it was somewhere in the region of £40 million - 83 per cent went on "outreach and programmes directed at reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

In 2005 they opened 22 orphanages in India, and operate more than 40 children's homes throughout Asia. They earmarked money for "outreach" projects for the Asian Tsunami and the Hurricane Katrina disasters.

She was even able, in her 2005 report, to nail down exactly how many "documented salvations" they had been responsible for last year - 34,028.

As well as spreading God's word around the world, Joyce Meyer has had her own troubles on the home front. Randy Holman, the Jefferson County assessor, launched a campaign last year to revoke the tax exemption on Meyer's 52-acre headquarters. Although listed as a non-profit organisation, the decor of the HQ apparently convinced Holman that Joyce Meyer really should be paying tax instead of being exempt, as most places of worship are. He cited pieces of fine art on display and a table that apparently cost $30,000.

Of course, no-one forces people to donate to Joyce Meyer, and no-one will be forcing the estimated 12,000 people who the Abundant Life Centre expect to turn up tomorrow and Sunday to queue to see her.

An editorial in the St Louis Post-Dispatch in 2005 said that thousands of people find solace in Joyce Meyer's message, and that is why they buy her books and watch her TV shows and donate money. But, it added: "It's tempting to ask why a ministry would spend $30,000 dollars on a fancy table rather than digging a few more wells for poor Africans."

  • Joyce Meyer appears at the Abundant Life Centre tomorrow at 6.30pm and 8.15pm, and Sunday at 9.30am, 11.30am, 6pm and 8.15pm. For more details call (01274) 394715.