While pastoring Church on the Rock in Rockwall, Texas, Lea also served as Dean of Theological and Spiritual Affairs at Oral Roberts University.
[1] Following a stint as an itinerant preacher in the late 1970s, Lea was invited to pastor Church on the Rock in 1980 with 12 people in Rockwall, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
On Halloween (the first night of the crusade), there was a massive protest[6] leading to many who came to the Civic Auditorium having to come through a very hostile crowd outside and concerns about potential violence forced Lea to drop plans for 5,000 attendees to conduct a prayer march through the city's streets.
[8] The incident involving Lea came as a result of his fundraising appeals, questions as to how much money was going to mentioned projects (specifically a program involving helping start churches in Poland),[9] and accusations that Lea implied a fire at one of his homes left his family almost destitute even though they still had a five-million-dollar home in the Dallas area.
[9] After ending his Change Your Life broadcasts in December 1991 following the exposé, Lea had returned to the airwaves by May 1992 with a show titled America, Let's Pray.
His credibility and prominence in the charismatic community evaporated (though not as quickly as Tilton's), as he traveled with Morris Cerullo at the latter's crusades in the mid-1990s.