Rick Joyner is a public speaker and author. He founded with his wife the MorningStar Ministries in 1985. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Morningstar Ministries Rick Joyner and his wife, Julie, founded MorningStar Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi in 1985. By the mid-1990s Joyner was president of MorningStar Publications, located at that time in Charlotte, North Carolina. By 1994, Joyner appeared in news reports regarding his participation in plans to build a biblical theme park, in particular, with Reggie White, who had been unsuccessful in his attempts to purchase the Heritage USA theme park property. The ministry hosts multiple conferences annually, with Christians from across the country and globe attending. 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. In 2004 MorningStar purchased part of the Heritage USA complex (originally established by Jim Bakker and PTL in Fort Mill, South Carolina) for $1.6 million. The complex has been renamed Heritage International Ministries Conference Center. Joyner also promotes the "Kingdom Business Association" which is located in the same complex. Christ's Mandate for Missions (CMM) merged with MorningStar Missions in 2009. Advisory and other leadership roles Joyner has been a part of the Apostolic-Prophetic Movement and an advocate for the Fivefold ministry and has been considered a leader in this movement since he published "The Harvest" in 1989, in which he predicted there would soon be a Prophetic Movement and a separate Apostolic Movement. 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. Joyner is also the founder and president of "the Oak Initiative." This non-profit organization is for Christians who desire "to Unite, Mobilize, Equip, and Activate Christians to be the salt and light they are called to be by engaging in the great issues of our time from a sound biblical worldview." Controversy In 1998 Joyner's "MorningStar Ministries" was grossing $7 million a year, and that year it was denied a religious property tax exemption by the North Carolina Department of Revenue for an airplane, four tracts of vacant land, and two residential houses — one that Joyner lived in and one where Don Potter lived and had a recording studio. Department director John C. Bailey said, "[w]ith MorningStar there are a