F rom its birth in 1979, Deeper Life has grown from a small tent ministry in Tampa to one that, Jefferson says, has 38 churches and stretches from Virginia through Florida westward to Texas and north up to Michigan.

BOD: Figuring out how many members the church has is harder. Perhaps 500 to 600 live in church housing in Tampa, Jefferson says. The sanctuary of the mother church holds 1,200 to 1,500, Jefferson says, and frequently is full for services. Current and former members say the church keeps no record of its membership because of the transient nature of its congregation.

But Deeper Life held a national convention in Tampa over the Labor Day weekend that drew at least 1,000 followers. To accommodate everyone, the church booked the ballroom of the Tampa Convention Center.

The pastors all start at Deeper Life's Tampa headquarters and are assigned locations to begin new churches. Jefferson acknowledges that Deeper Life helps incorporate the new churches and buy the property to get them started. But once that happens, he says, he has no say over their operation.

Dixon and Rich say that's not true. Jefferson removed each from his respective church, Dixon in San Antonio and Rich in Indianapolis, after they encountered marital problems. But while they were in place, each says they had to send specified amounts of money back to Tampa.

As with the mother church, the pastors of the satellite missions take in the homeless and addicts, then assign them to fundraising crews.

``Once I raised $61,000,'' Rich says. ``Then he told me I needed $100,000; then I raised that up.''

He did it in a matter of months.

Dixon and Rich says they were among the church's most prolific fundraisers. They converted the daily cash take into postal money orders or wire transfers and sent it to Tampa or deposited it directly into a variety of church-controlled accounts.

``I know without a shadow of a doubt I raised $4 million to $5 million in all the time I was there,'' says Rich, who spent seven years with the church. ``I had to send it all back, all to Florida accounts. Lots of accounts, in different family members' names.''

Jefferson professes to be clueless about the fundraising.

``I'm not familiar with donations too much,'' he told the Tribune. ``I have people that handle things like that. I handle the Scripture part of the church-house. As far as donations, each church is self-supporting its ownself. We get tithes; we have people that donate to us. That's about it.''

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