Living Enrichment Center (LEC) was a New Thought megachurch and retreat center in the U.S. state of Oregon. Originally founded in the Scholls, Oregon farmhouse of senior minister Mary Manin Morrissey in the mid-1970s, the church moved to a 94,500 square foot (8,800 m²) building on a forested area of 95 acres (384,000 m²) in Wilsonville in 1992. Over the course of its existence, the congregation grew from less than a dozen to an estimated 4,000, making it the biggest New Thought church in the state. Living Enrichment Center maintained an in-house bookstore, retreat center, cafe, kindergarten and elementary school, and an outreach television ministry.
Living Enrichment Center closed in 2004 as a result of a $10.7 million financial scandal. Mary Manin Morrissey's husband Edward Morrissey pleaded guilty to money laundering and using church money for the personal expenses of himself and his wife. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison. He was released in early 2007. Living Enrichment Center transitioned into New Thought Center for Spiritual Living.
Read more about Living Enrichment Center: Founding, Facilities, Life Keys Programs, Financial Scandal, Closure, The Morrisseys
Famous quotes containing the words living, enrichment and/or center:
“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself—for it is from the soil, both from its depth and from its surface, that a river has its beginning.”
—Laura Gilpin (1891–1979)
“War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Everything that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world in which men are at the center of the human enterprise and women are at the margin “helping” them. Such a world does not exist—never has.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)