Rob McCoy is pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel church and, as of Tuesday, mayor of Thousand Oaks, California. In September, over some neighborhood opposition, his congregation moved into a former YMCA facility that was bought and renovated by the foundation of Dan Wilks, a Texas fracking billionaire who supports Religious Right and Christian nationalist causes. According to the Citizens Journal, Wilks was on hand to celebrate the move.

In April, the VC Star reported:

The former YMCA was bought for $2.85 million in January by the Texas-based nonprofit Heavenly Father’s Foundation, which plans to lease it as the new home of McCoy’s church. McCoy said he is a “very dear friend” of the founder of the foundation, Texas billionaire Dan Wilks.

This is not the first time McCoy has benefited from the largesse of the Wilks family. When McCoy made his first run for public office, for state legislature in 2014, Dan Wilks, his brother Farris and their wives gave thousands of dollars to McCoy’s campaign. (After losing his bid for the legislature, McCoy ran for and won a seat on the Thousand Oaks City Council.)

Why are these Texans so interested in a local politician in California? The connection is Christian nationalist David Lane. For more than two decades, Lane has been organizing gatherings that bring together conservative pastors and politicians with the hope of getting pastors to preach more aggressively about politics and to get their congregants to vote. Lane says it was McCoy, his pastor, that inspired his more recent effort to recruit a thousand evangelical pastors to run for public office. Part of Lane’s theory is that is pastor-candidates can each mobilize hundreds of congregants as volunteers, and the resulting impact could be felt on campaigns up and down the ticket.

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“I am excited because we are staging ourselves for an enormous effect throughout the country,” McCoy said in September. “We are a hub, assembling spokes, and steps into the public square. The major players in the Calvary movement are now touched by this paradigm shift which is profound.”

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“We will not lose this state,” he said, encouraging attendees to call as many people as they could before the election. As for the more than 7 million Christians in California he said haven’t registered to vote, “we’re gonna get them in the next election.”

“We’re not giving up on this state,” said McCoy. “This is ours. We are going to infuse the culture with the presence of Christ.” Host pastor Jack Hibbs sounded the same theme, saying California is “worth fighting for.” He told attendees that they had “an amazing opportunity” on Election Day to “make a shock happen in California” and create an “earthquake of righteousness.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/texas-fracking-billionaires-foundation-buys-church-for-christian-nationalist-pastor-in-california/