Meyer also reports that during an intense prayer while driving to work one morning in 1976, she heard God call her name.

She got home later that day from a beauty appointment "full of liquid love" and was "drunk with the Spirit of God" that night while at the local bowling alley.

[2][4] She began leading an early-morning Bible class at a local cafeteria and became active in Life Christian Center, a charismatic church in Fenton.

In 1985, Meyer resigned as associate pastor and founded her own ministry, initially called "Life in the Word."

[2] Under the name "Life in the Word", it initially aired on superstation WGN-TV in Chicago and Black Entertainment Television (BET).

[8] Meyer, who owns several homes and travels in a private jet (currently a Gulfstream G-IV),[9][10] has been criticized for living an excessive lifestyle.

The articles prompted Wall Watchers[11] (a Christian nonprofit watchdog group) to call on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate Meyer and her family.

[13] "The net effect of all of this," notes Ministry Watch,[11] "was most likely a sizable increase in the personal compensation of Joyce Meyer and reduced revenues for JMM."

In an article in the St. Louis Business Journal, Meyer's public relations director, Mark Sutherland, confirmed that her new income would be "way above" her previous levels.

Meyer writes that it was part of a large lot of items totaling $262,000 that were needed to furnish the ministry's 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) headquarters purchased in 2001.

The organization referred to its annual financial reports, asserting that, in 2006, the ministry spent 82 percent of its total expenses "for outreach and program services toward reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as attested by independent accounting firm Stanfield & O'Dell, LLP."

The message also quoted an October 10, 2007, letter from the Internal Revenue Service which stated, "We determined that you [Joyce Meyer Ministries] continue to qualify as an organization exempt from federal income tax under IRC section 501(c)(3)."

According to the prosecuting attorney Kris Reitz, the murders were committed as part of a premeditated plan to leave his wife for another woman with whom he had been having an affair.

According to Reitz, Coleman was concerned that if his extra-marital affair were made public it would result in him losing his job at Joyce Meyer Ministries, remembering, at this point, King David's same reasons for killing Bathsheba's husband and not dirtying his name as an adulterer, before the theocratic nation of Israel; It also recalls the Brazilian case of Flordelis where murder was alleged as an alternative way to avoid getting divorced, which would risk losing charisma and name among evangelicals.