...and the Pastor Nervously Sweating What one church recently did with $160,000 during a Sunday morning service absolutely stunned parishioners: 320 members were each given a $500 check to spend as they wish. ... Traux, who aid that the money came from a decades-old real estate deal, first told her congregation that active members would be receiving the sizable checks. ... The move came after Traux and church elders decided to give back $10 percent of the $1.6 million LaSalle Street Church reportedly made from the real estate deal - a sum that adds up to the $160,000 figure members...