In person, the 45-year-old Osteen is certainly both optimistic and encouraging. As he sits in the family suite after Sunday services, taking a break before heading up to the editing bay, he has the calm, gentle gravity of a man who never raises his voice and never has to. Everyone leans in to hear Osteen. With his too-small eyes, a sharp nose, and thin lips with parenthetical dimples on each side, his long, drawn face is like a happy, joyous, and free version of Munch’s Scream. In his preacher’s slacks, yellow tie, and blue striped shirt, he has a disconcerting habit of seeming to run out of words before finishing his sentences; the effect is that you’re always left hanging, waiting for another word that might or might not come.

“Have you read Good to Great?” Victoria asks me at one point, referring to the phenomenally selling business book. “Joel is a level-5 leader. He knows there is more than one way to get to a point, and he lets his people get to the point their way. He’s a true level-5—great delegator, great empowerer, great big-picture thinker.”

Osteen’s boldest brainstorm was leasing the Compaq Center from the city of Houston in 2002 and investing $98 million to renovate it. For Osteen, who had always put a premium on the look and feel of the church, renovating and refitting a basketball arena as a sanctuary was both a great opportunity and a daunting challenge.

The scale of the renovation—a five-floor office annex, two 30-foot waterfalls, and a children’s facility capable of hosting 5,000 kids while their parents are in the main sanctuary—was a logistical challenge better suited to Halliburton than a house of God. Osteen’s brother-in-law Kevin Comes, the chief operating officer and a former construction executive, was the point man on the project, but like almost all of Lakewood’s top executives, he deferred to Osteen: “Joel made the decision to do it right the first time. We gutted the place and started over.” Osteen was consulted on almost every major decision, responding with his usual quiet nod when he was presented with, for example, the new lighting scheme or platform design.

The resulting church is a modern technological marvel and perhaps the most family-friendly worship venue in the world. Kidslife, the $25 million children’s facility, was designed by a group of former Disney staffers and provides care and religious services for the children of parents attending Lakewood. It has the look and feel of a giant version of a McDonald’s play area, only with neon lettering that refers to a verse in Philippians on the walls.

Such a sterling facility is the logical extension of the Osteen brand. Last year, Lakewood generated $76 million in revenue, which amounts to just over $1,600 for every member of its congregation. Its take includes $44 million donated directly by congregants, who are asked to give 10 percent of their gross income; $10 million in product sales and sermon tapes; and $13 million brought in through direct-mail solicitations, up from about $6 million two years ago. The church’s greatest expense is the TV airtime it buys: $22 million last year to broadcast the show in more than 100 markets, a 10 percent annual increase in spending that is easy to justify. “Cutting back on airtime would be like saying we won’t be sending any trucks to deliver our product,” Comes says. An additional $13 million goes to administrative costs and salaries, and $9 million a year is spent on facilities and maintenance.

Osteen hasn’t drawn a salary from the church since 2005. He bought his own home, for $331,500 in 1994, and pays to have his kids homeschooled. The considerable income from his books and related products (there were 19 spinoff calendars, daybooks, and inspirational pamphlets from his first book) goes to Osteen, who gives much of that—­people inside Lakewood say more than 50 percent of his income—to Lakewood ministries and other charities. That still leaves Osteen with plenty of “God’s favor.” The operation—the TV time, the basketball arena, the worship events staged across the country—should all simply be considered as, Comes points out, the delivery system for getting the product, Joel’s message, out to the marketplace. The goal of Lakewood’s 350 employees is to facilitate and spread that message. The return is measured in souls saved and lives changed. “We’re always looking for ways to get our message out there more efficiently; in that way, we’re no different from any other big brand, a Coke or a Starbucks,” Iloff says.

But it takes revenue to win souls, and within the organization are constant discussions about how to most efficiently package the message. Osteen’s podcasts, which are free, consistently rank in the top 10 on iTunes, and Comes wonders aloud about how to monetize that. The team is not shy about dreaming big—and commercially. “We sit and try to imagine what our program would look like with a Coca-Cola logo on the front. We’re just looking into it,” Comes says.

Still, when it comes down to “message versus revenue,” Comes says, “message always wins.” At Lakewood, message and revenue tend to work in blessed harmony. Duncan Dodds, Lakewood’s executive director, took the podium recently in Greensboro to make a few announcements before Osteen, the choir, the entertainers, and the rest of the Lakewood team began their Night of Hope. “We have great worship at Lakewood,” Dodds told the crowd of 16,000 still settling into their seats, “and that worship is for sale on CDs out on the concourse level.”

One hears certain words repeated constantly by the Lakewood team. Meals, services, meetings, and even smoothly flowing traffic over on I-45 are described as awesome. The goal of every operation, sermon, television production, and even expenditure is excellence. And the ultimate purpose of all staffers is to spread the message. That message, functionally, serves as Lakewood’s core product. Sure, it is repackaged into books, CDs, DVDs, Bible covers, scented candles, cross necklaces, JESUS FREAK T-shirts, and coffee mugs, but those are all just ways to deliver the message.