Dr. Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr. (born January 28, 1962) is an American pastor, televangelist, and author based in College Park, Georgia. He is the founder and senior pastor of World Changers Church International (WCCI), a congregation he built from eight people in a school cafeteria into one of the largest independent churches in the United States. Dollar became a national name through his “Changing Your World” broadcast and his teaching on prosperity theology, and more recently through a public reversal of his own teaching on tithing.
You’ve probably landed here chasing one specific question, whether it’s about his health, his marriage, that infamous jet, or whether he’s still in the pulpit. This biography answers all of it, in order, with the parts other write-ups get wrong corrected along the way.[IMAGE: Dr. Creflo Dollar preaching at World Changers Church International]
Dr. Creflo Dollar at a Glance
| Personal | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr. |
| Born | January 28, 1962 College Park, Georgia, USA |
| Age | 64 (as of 2026) |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Taffi L. Dollar (m. 1987) |
| Children | 5 total: Gregory and Jeremy (adopted); Jordan, Alexandria, and Lauren (biological) |
| Parents | Creflo Augustus Dollar Sr. (father) Emma Dollar (mother) |
| Siblings | Not publicly disclosed |
| Education | |
| University | West Georgia College, B.S. in Education (1984) |
| Honorary Degree | Doctor of Divinity, Oral Roberts University (1998) |
| Ministry | |
| Title | Founder & Senior Pastor |
| Church | World Changers Church International, College Park, Georgia |
| Denomination | Non-denominational (Word of Faith / Charismatic) |
| Since | 1986 |
| Website | worldchangers.org |
| Career | |
| Books | 30+ titles, including several bestsellers |
| Net Worth | Estimated $27 million–$30 million (undisclosed, unaudited) |
| Salary | Not publicly disclosed |
Early Life and Background
Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr. was born on January 28, 1962, in College Park, Georgia, a suburb just outside Atlanta. His father, Creflo Augustus Dollar Sr., worked in law enforcement and ran a strict, disciplined household. His mother, Emma Dollar, kept a lower public profile but played a major role in shaping his early faith.
Church attendance was a fixed part of family life, but Dollar’s own passion growing up was sports, not scripture. He dreamed of playing professional football and built his teenage years around that goal. A string of injuries eventually cut that plan short, and it was during his recovery, as a freshman at West Georgia College, that he had what he later described as his conversion experience at a campus Bible study.
He kept playing and studying, but the Bible study he’d stumbled into, which he named “World Changers Bible Study,” started to matter more than football. By the time he graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in education, he was already leading a group of more than 100 students. He went on to work as an educational therapist at a psychiatric facility in Atlanta, a job that gave him a front-row seat to how deeply people struggle, something he’d later say shaped how he preaches.
It was also on that campus that he met Taffi, the woman he would marry. Dollar states he holds a master’s and a doctorate in counseling, though the institutions that granted those advanced degrees aren’t specified in any public record. In 1998, Oral Roberts University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity, which is the “Dr.” now attached to his name.
Ministry and Career Journey
Founding World Changers Church International
In 1986, Dollar held the first service of what he called World Changers Ministries Christian Center in the cafeteria of Kathleen Mitchell Elementary School in College Park. Eight people showed up. He kept teaching weekly, built the crowd through radio and word of mouth, and within a few years had outgrown the cafeteria for a dedicated chapel with four Sunday services.
The turning point came on December 24, 1995, when the renamed World Changers Church International moved into its permanent home: an 8,500-seat sanctuary the church calls the World Dome, reportedly built for close to $18 million without bank financing. By 2007, WCCI reported roughly 30,000 members and tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
A Mentor in Kenneth Copeland
Dollar has repeatedly credited televangelist Kenneth Copeland as his spiritual mentor, tracing the relationship back to Copeland’s ministers’ conferences in the late 1980s. He’s called Copeland “my spiritual dad” on multiple occasions, and the two have shared platforms at Copeland’s Southwest Believers’ Convention for decades. That mentorship placed Dollar squarely inside the Word of Faith movement, a Pentecostal-charismatic stream built around positive confession and financial breakthrough teaching.
National Expansion
WCCI grew well past Georgia. In October 2012, the ministry leased the Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx to open World Changers Church-New York, which drew over 6,000 worshippers weekly at its peak. Satellite congregations followed in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Dallas, and Houston, alongside several Georgia locations. Creflo Dollar Ministries now runs offices across the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa, and hosts events like the Grace Leadership Conference and Grace Life South Africa well into 2026. [IMAGE: World Dome sanctuary, home of World Changers Church International]
Rise to Prominence
Dollar’s daily “Changing Your World” broadcast is what took him from a regional pastor to a household name. The program has aired for decades and is regularly described as reaching close to a billion homes worldwide, a figure the ministry itself has used since at least 2007. That reach, paired with a steady stream of books, made him one of the most recognized faces in American televangelism alongside peers like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes.
His publishing output has been just as constant. He’s authored more than 30 books, several of which became bestsellers, including “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want” and “Winning the Battles of Life.” He also publishes CHANGE magazine and a ministry leaders’ newsletter called The Max.
Personal Life
Dollar married Taffi L. Dollar in 1987. Nearly every source agrees on this date, and no source, credible or otherwise, has ever reported a divorce or a prior marriage for either of them. Taffi co-pastors WCCI alongside him and runs her own ventures, including Arrow Global Entertainment and a women’s ministry called Radical Women’s Ministry.
The couple has five children, and the breakdown matters because it gets muddled online. Soon after marrying, Creflo and Taffi adopted their first son, Gregory, followed by a second son, Jeremy. They later had three biological daughters: Jordan, Alexandria, and Lauren. Gregory has written openly about his own struggles with drug abuse as a teenager before he found stability, and published a memoir on it in 2009. Jordan and Alexandria have both worked as gospel singers within the family’s ministry, and Lauren works in real estate alongside her role at WCCI. [IMAGE: Creflo and Taffi Dollar with their family]
Theology and Ministry Philosophy
For most of his career, Dollar taught classic prosperity theology: the idea that faith, positive confession, and giving unlock financial and physical blessing. He built that framework directly from Kenneth Copeland’s teaching and became one of its most visible spokesmen, alongside tithing as a required practice for every believer.
That changed in a single Sunday. On June 26, 2022, in a sermon titled “The Great Misunderstanding,” Dollar told his congregation that his decades of teaching on tithing had been wrong. He argued that tithing is an Old Testament requirement fulfilled by Christ, not a New Testament obligation, and told members to “throw away every book, every tape, and every video I ever did on the subject of tithing.” He framed the shift as part of a broader move toward what he now calls the “Gospel of Grace,” which emphasizes the finished work of Christ over performance-based giving.
The reversal split reaction down the middle. Some in the evangelical world praised the humility of a public correction. Watchdog groups pointed out that the lifestyle funded by decades of tithing teaching hadn’t changed, and asked why financial transparency wasn’t part of the same reform.
Health Journey: What Illness Did Creflo Dollar Have?
Dollar has faced two separate, well-documented health battles, and they’re often collapsed into one vague “illness” online. Here’s the actual timeline.
In 2013, Dollar was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He kept the diagnosis private at first, telling only his wife, then withdrew for two weeks of fasting and prayer before returning to his doctor cancer-free. He didn’t share the story publicly until a 2014 radio interview.
A second, more visible health stretch followed years later. Dollar has said he contracted a severe case of COVID-19 in 2021, then developed shingles, then received another cancer diagnosis. By May 2023, he was telling his congregation he was “cancer free, shingles free, and blood clot free,” framing the recovery as a testimony to grace rather than a return to his older prosperity-gospel language about faith preventing illness altogether. [IMAGE: Creflo Dollar sharing his health testimony from the pulpit]
The Jet Controversy: Was There a Creflo Dollar Plane Crash?
No, there was no plane crash. That search phrase is a misreading of a real story: a fundraising campaign.
In March 2015, Dollar’s ministry launched a public appeal asking 200,000 people to give $300 or more toward a $65 million Gulfstream G650 private jet. The pitch cited real mechanical problems with the ministry’s aging 1984 aircraft, including an engine failure en route to Australia and a runway skid in London while Taffi and their daughters were aboard. Neither incident was fatal, and neither was technically a crash, but both were serious enough that the ministry grounded the plane and began flying commercial.
The backlash was immediate and came from inside the Christian world as much as outside it. Gospel artist Kirk Franklin publicly criticized the campaign, saying leaders who “camouflage their greeds to look like needs” show “a shortage of character.” Within days, the ministry pulled the promotional video and scaled back the ask. Dollar later addressed critics directly from the pulpit, telling his congregation, “If I want to believe God for a $65 million plane, you cannot stop me.”
Criticism and Controversies
Dollar’s decades in ministry haven’t been free of controversy, and a fair biography names them plainly.
In June 2012, Dollar was arrested after a domestic altercation with his then-15-year-old daughter. Police reports at the time described allegations of choking and hitting; Dollar denied the allegations from the pulpit, describing the incident as a “family conversation” that “got emotional.” The case moved through a pretrial intervention program, and in January 2013 the charges were formally dropped after he completed anger-management classes and paid court fees.
His finances have drawn sustained scrutiny. MinistryWatch, an independent evangelical watchdog, has given Creflo Dollar Ministries an “F” grade for financial transparency because the organization has declined outside audits. In 2007, Dollar was one of six televangelists investigated by the Senate Finance Committee under Senator Chuck Grassley over the personal use of church-owned assets; Dollar argued the IRS, not Congress, was the proper body to review religious organizations, and the committee ultimately closed the inquiry without new regulation.
A persistent internet rumor claims Dollar’s birth name was Michael Smith. Dollar has addressed it directly and sarcastically from the pulpit, calling it an “urban legend” alongside other false claims about his ministry. No credible source supports the Michael Smith claim, and his own biography consistently identifies him as Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr., named after his father.
Net Worth and Financial Information
There’s no audited, publicly confirmed figure for Dollar’s net worth. Estimates from outlets that track celebrity and pastor wealth range widely, from roughly $27 million to as high as $55 million, and none of them cite a disclosed salary or church financial statement as their source. That gap exists because World Changers Church International, like most churches, isn’t required to file a public tax return, and the ministry has consistently declined independent audits.
What’s documented instead is the lifestyle those estimates point to: two Rolls-Royces, a private jet registered to a ministry-linked entity, and multiple properties near the church and in New York. Dollar has defended the spending publicly as evidence his own teaching works, and has never disclosed a personal salary figure.
Influence and Legacy
Whatever position someone takes on prosperity theology, Dollar’s reach is hard to overstate. “Changing Your World” has aired for decades across more than 150 countries. WCCI’s campus in College Park remains one of the largest church buildings in the country, and the ministry’s 2022 tithing reversal became one of the most discussed theological moments in American evangelicalism that year, cited by outlets from Christian Post to Premier Christianity as a rare public course-correction from a major prosperity teacher.
His influence also runs through the next generation of his own ministry. His daughters continue in gospel music and church leadership, and Creflo Dollar Ministries’ expansion into the UK, Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa has extended the Word of Faith message he learned from Kenneth Copeland into new markets well beyond Atlanta.
Interesting Facts About Dr. Creflo Dollar
- He wanted to be a professional football player before an injury redirected him toward ministry.
- His first church service drew exactly eight people, in a school cafeteria.
- He stands about 6’1″ and has spoken about the physical toll of decades of daily preaching.
- Two of his five children, Gregory and Jeremy, are adopted; both work within the family ministry.
- He kept his 2013 cancer diagnosis private for nearly a year before discussing it publicly.
- His honorary “Dr.” title comes from Oral Roberts University, not an earned doctorate in divinity.
Timeline: Key Events in Creflo Dollar’s Life
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1962 | Born January 28 in College Park, Georgia |
| 1984 | Graduates West Georgia College with a B.S. in Education |
| 1986 | Founds World Changers Ministries Christian Center with eight members |
| 1987 | Marries Taffi L. Dollar |
| 1995 | WCCI moves into the 8,500-seat World Dome on December 24 |
| 1998 | Receives honorary Doctor of Divinity from Oral Roberts University |
| 2007 | Investigated by the Senate Finance Committee over ministry finances |
| 2012 | Arrested in June following a domestic incident; WCCI-New York opens in October |
| 2013 | Diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer; charges from 2012 arrest dropped in January |
| 2015 | Launches, then scales back, the $65 million private jet campaign |
| 2022 | Publicly renounces mandatory tithing teaching in “The Great Misunderstanding” sermon |
| 2023 | Announces he is cancer-free after a second health battle involving COVID-19 and shingles |
| 2026 | Continues as senior pastor of WCCI; hosts Grace Leadership Conference and Grace Life South Africa |
Frequently Asked Questions
How many times has Creflo Dollar been married?
Once. He married Taffi L. Dollar in 1987, and no source, credible or otherwise, reports a prior marriage or a divorce. They’ve been married for nearly 40 years and continue to co-pastor World Changers Church International together.
Is Creflo Dollar still a pastor?
Yes. He remains the founder and senior pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, Georgia, and continues preaching regularly, hosting conferences, and expanding the ministry’s international offices into 2026.
Is Pastor Creflo Dollar still alive?
Yes. As of 2026, Dollar is alive and active in ministry, having recovered from a serious health battle in 2021 through 2023 that included COVID-19, shingles, and cancer.
How many children did Creflo Dollar adopt?
Two. He and Taffi adopted two sons, Gregory and Jeremy, early in their marriage before having three biological daughters: Jordan, Alexandria, and Lauren.
What happened to Creflo Dollar’s health?
He fought prostate cancer privately in 2013 and recovered. Years later, in 2021, he contracted COVID-19, then developed shingles, then received a second cancer diagnosis. By 2023 he announced he was cancer-free.
Was there a Creflo Dollar plane crash?
No. The phrase comes from real jet malfunctions, an engine failure and a runway skid, that led his ministry to launch a controversial $65 million fundraising campaign for a new private jet in 2015. No crash occurred.
What is Creflo Dollar’s net worth?
There’s no audited figure. Public estimates range from about $27 million to $55 million, but Creflo Dollar Ministries has declined independent financial audits, so no number can be confirmed.
Why did Creflo Dollar change his name?
He didn’t. The claim that his birth name was Michael Smith is an internet rumor Dollar has publicly dismissed as an “urban legend.” He was named Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr. after his father.
Where is Creflo Dollar now?
He still lives and ministers in the Atlanta, Georgia area, leading World Changers Church International from its College Park campus while overseeing the ministry’s offices in the UK, Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Is Creflo Dollar’s wife Taffi still co-pastoring with him?
Yes. Taffi L. Dollar continues to co-pastor World Changers Church International, runs Arrow Global Entertainment, and leads her own women’s ministry.
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