Revd Creflo Dollar asked 200,000 people to each donate '$300 or more' to pay for a new luxury aircraft to replace his current jet.
The pastor said the jet would be used to help him travel the world and spread the Gospel.
Revd Dollar is the founder, senior pastor and CEO World Changers Church International which has offices on every continent.
In the request for money a video was released by the Church explaining how the pastor's previous jet had a failed engine mid-flight.
The current aircraft is said to be 30 years old and skid off a runway in London last year causing the pastor's family to evacuate the plane.
But gospel musician and author Kirk Franklin wrote in a piece for Patheos.com: "We don't have a shortage of greatness, we have a shortage of character.
"When a pastor wants people to buy him a private plane while a missionary in Somalia bathes children with sores, that's a shortage of character.
"When I camouflage my 'greeds' to look like 'needs,' that's a shortage of character."
The Church said the appeal was made to "like-minded people" and that "there was not, nor will there be, a request for donations from the public at large".
"There was no pressure of any kind applied to anyone," a statement said.
It added: "We wholeheartedly reject the notion that the ministry's airplane project is an imposition on our community or that it somehow takes advantage of our people.
"Quite to the contrary, this request is seen by our community as standard operating procedure for people of faith.
"Our pastors share the gospel of Jesus more than 300 times per year - in churches, arenas, venues, convention centres, stadiums and other facilities across the entire planet - and are committed to aggressive travel schedules that cannot be fulfilled via any means other than private aircraft.
"A long-range, high-speed, intercontinental jet aircraft is a tool that is necessary in order to fulfil the mission of the ministry."