Hammond Can Still Fly.

It took a few days longer than I originally predicted, but the blessing did arrive.

Prosperity gospel minister Mac Hammond has a new plane.

Hammond's ministry has been retrenching — cutting back its hour Sunday broadcast, eliminating the print editions of its magazine and newsletter, stopping live broadcasts to its satellite churches in Duluth and Eau Claire, and cutting loose its affiliations with its outreach ministries in Orono and Club 3 Degrees in downtown Minneapolis.

And, most humbling for a televangelist hovering just below the top tier of prosperity gospel ministers, Living Word Christian Center was offering its Citation 3 jet for sale.

When Hammond flew to his mentor Kenneth Copeland's now notorious Ministers Conference in late January, I had a hunch that he would be the recipient of a Copeland-orchestrated outpouring of support from the attendees. But a late appeal from Mike Huckabee for help from his friend Copeland and the assembled ministers may have sucked a million dollars out of the room that otherwise could've kept the jet in the family.

Hammond found no buyer for his plane in Texas. But it turns out he did not have to wait long after his sermon on earnest expectation for his believing to be realized.

Near the end of the Ministers Conference, Hammond later informed church members, he was called into Copeland's office and was told that the debt on the airplane was the bottleneck for his church's finances. The Lord, speaking through Brother Copeland, revealed "Your willingness to sell it has broken the bottleneck. The bottleneck is gone!"

Hammond said he first wondered why the debt on the airplane would be more of a bottleneck than the $14 million owed on the church building. And then it came to him. "Because I wanted the Citation 3 and borrowed the money to make it happen. My motive in acquiring that airplane wasn't right"

Now that the blessing was free to flow, Copeland said, "I'm going to give you a Citation 1" — without a dime owed on it.

Next time: Musical jets.