Ministry-Owned Private Planes Logged 401 Flights and $1.66M in Operating Costs in October, MinistryWatch Reports
Why It MattersThe tally shows how much business-jet activity comes from tax-exempt ministries, a segment that mixes charter and owner-operated aircraft and sits largely outside the fractional programs and cargo flights the list excludes.
MinistryWatch, working with the Trinity Foundation, publishes a monthly list of private planes belonging to pastors and Christian ministries, with basic information on how they are used. The October edition shows that ministry private planes logged 401 flights and $1.66 million in operating costs last month.
Barry Bowen of the Trinity Foundation noted that tracking maps often show flights tied to what he calls "Long Distance Ministry," in which pastors travel between multi-site campuses hundreds, and sometimes more than a thousand, miles apart. Fred Price, founder of Crenshaw Christian Center, who died in 2021, helped popularize the practice. In a 2007 Business Jet Traveler interview about the church's use of a Gulfstream G-II, Price said he and his wife once flew from Los Angeles to New York and back every week for 52 weeks while establishing the church in New York.
The list also points to Shuttlesworth, who leads the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based ministry Revival Today, which has churches in Arizona, California, Texas and Canada. He frequently posts pictures of himself with charter jets used to travel between congregations. An October 1 Instagram post showed him in front of a Gulfstream jet with tail number N71TV, captioned as a new plane for a few weeks while others were being repaired. Revival Today's Form 990 shows $7,411,238 spent on travel expenses in 2024.
The list excludes cargo planes used by disaster relief and missionary organizations, which MinistryWatch says can have legitimate uses for aircraft. It also excludes ministries that use fractional ownership services such as NetJets, and it does not indicate whether a given aircraft is used for ministry or personal purposes. IRS regulations do not strictly prohibit personal use of ministry resources, but such use must be counted as income. Of nearly 2 million tax-exempt organizations in the U.S., fewer than 10,000 are audited each year, roughly one-tenth of 1 percent.
