[Magdalen] Church as Personality Robert Schuller RIP

[Jim Guthrie]

The American-invented churches that are so popular (and have attracted many 
people from Mainline churches are often one-man bands. Schuller was a great 
example. Detached from any denomination he starts at a movie drive-in and builds 
an empire. And upon his retirement, it falls apart and is sold to the RC Diocese 
in bankruptcy.

I think it's interesting to look at this American phenomena; it would be 
interesting to see where the spiritual life of the Christian cathedral people 
has since led them. I read an article that noted that a small number -- maybe 
about a hundred CC members became Roman Catholics to stick with the Cathedral 
their money helped build. But where did the rest go?  Saddleback? Spiritual but 
not religious?

The article also notes the changes in religious broadcasting -- certainly the 
switch to cable and non-commercial over-the-air stations has reduced costs 
considerably, but that has opened up more opportunities for more broadcasters. 
It also helps in cable that all these networks are offered at no cost to 
providers so that they can add a half dozen or more channels to their lineup 
with no out-of-pocket costs.

And churches like TEC and the other mainline denominations find the whole 
business beneath their dignity. Why would anyone want to attract new members 
through using modern media? It would ruin the private club, after all.

>From the NY Times:

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, a California clergyman who started his ministry by 
preaching in a drive-in movie theater and transformed it into an empire, 
building the landmark megachurch the Crystal Cathedral, writing best sellers 
and, through television, exhorting millions to believe in themselves, died on 
Thursday in Artesia, Calif. He was 88.

His family confirmed his death. Dr. Schuller learned in August 2013 that he had 
esophageal cancer.

Like other empires, Dr. Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral Ministries faltered after 
he stepped down as its leader in 2006. Crushing debt from lavish overspending, a 
changing religious broadcast industry, an aging audience and a mishandled family 
succession all contributed to its filing for bankruptcy in 2010. The Crystal 
Cathedral was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County in 2012.


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Related Coverage



The Crystal Cathedral, a church founded by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, the 
religious broadcaster. Last week, it filed for bankruptcy protection.

Debt and Disputes Cloud the Crystal CathedralOCT. 23, 2010




Robert Schuller Family Cuts Ties to Crystal CathedralMARCH 11, 2012


But for more than 40 years, Dr. Schuller was an apostle of positive thinking and 
a symbol of success. A charismatic shepherd, he was one of television’s first 
preachers to reach audiences around the world with a hopeful message of 
self-healing and self-empowerment. (One of his books is titled “Turning Hurts 
Into Halos.”)

Photo



The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York 
Times

His ministry represented a new wave in mainstream American Protestantism, one 
that held out hope not just for achieving personal salvation, its traditional 
concern, but also for solving personal problems. Dr. Schuller proclaimed a 
“theology of self-esteem” and a belief in the power of “possibility thinking.”

Typically wearing lavender and purple vestments and a broad smile, he became a 
Sunday-morning fixture in countless homes, a kind-faced, white-haired pastor 
delivering sermons on “Hour of Power.” Inaugurated in 1970, it became the nation’s 
most watched weekly religious program in the 1980s.

Probably nothing symbolized the ambition of his enterprise more than the Crystal 
Cathedral, a glass-sheathed edifice he built on 40 acres in Garden Grove, 
Calif., and opened in 1980. It cost $18 million the equivalent of $51 million 
today.



One of the country’s first megachurches, the cathedral gave Dr. Schuller an 
imposing pulpit from which to reach his global flock, not to mention a roomy 
stage for his showmanship; the church’s Christmas pageant came complete with 
live camels and horses and angels overhead on cables.

His own religious upbringing was of the conventional sort. Robert Harold 
Schuller was born on Sept. 16, 1926, on a farm in Alton, Iowa. He was raised in 
the Dutch Reformed Church and educated at two of its institutions, Hope College 
and Western Theological Seminary, both in Holland, Mich. After graduating in 
1950, he became a pastor in Chicago.

Five years later, he had joined the postwar exodus to booming Southern 
California, where he hoped to establish a church that would attract people who 
were not churchgoers. Scouting for a place to hold services, he and his wife, 
Arvella, settled on a drive-in theater off the Santa Ana Freeway in Orange 
County. On Sunday mornings, he could rent it for $10. There, he built an altar 
and a 15-foot cross and took out an ad in a local paper.

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“Worship as you are,” it said, “in the family car.”

The first meeting of the Garden Grove Community Church was held on March 27, 
1955. About 75 motorists and their families showed up to listen to Dr. Schuller 
preach from the roof of the drive-in’s refreshment stand. The offering that day 
was $86.79.

The congregation, formally affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, a 
mainline Protestant denomination, grew steadily on Dr. Schuller’s tireless 
mailing and doorbell-ringing campaigns. But it was a visit from a guest speaker, 
the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the best-selling book “The 
Power of Positive Thinking,” that propelled the church to wider recognition and 
drove Dr. Schuller in a new direction.

Hearing Dr. Peale talk to the congregation about the personal benefits of 
accepting God was a revelation for Dr. Schuller.

“That sermon by Dr. Peale changed my style from ‘preaching’ to ‘witnessing,’ ” 
he said in a 1975 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “Until that moment, I 
looked upon the job of a sermon to be fundamentally directed to generate a sense 
of guilt in guilty hearts.”

Dr. Schuller realized that a somber message, especially in sunny California, was 
hardly the best way to draw people to church. It also dawned on him, he said, 
that “Jesus never called a human being a sinner.”

In 1961, the Garden Grove Community Church moved to a new sanctuary designed by 
the prominent modernist architect Richard Neutra. Seven years later, it was 
joined by another Neutra-designed structure, a 14-story glass Tower of Hope 
filled with offices and a chapel and topped by a 90-foot neon cross that could 
be seen from Disneyland in Anaheim, a mile and a half away.

Photo



Dr. Schuller in 1997, speaking from the pulpit. He and his family cut ties with 
Crystal Cathedral in 2012, the year it was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of 
Orange County. Credit John T. Barr/Crystal Cathedral

But the centerpiece of the Schuller architectural empire was yet to come: the 
Crystal Cathedral, a glass structure shaped like a four-pointed star and longer 
than a football field, designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. Opened in 
1980, it featured more than 10,000 panes of glass and seated almost 3,000 
worshipers and 1,000 singers and musicians.

It also held one of the world’s largest pipe organs and a giant indoor 
television screen. Outside, it had another stadium-size screen for drive-in 
worshipers.

The cathedral was conceived in part as the studio for the “Hour of Power” 
telecasts. Accompanied by the choir, Dr. Schuller began each program in dramatic 
fashion, striding to the pulpit and pressing a button that opened two 90-foot 
doors behind him, offering a broad view of the outside world, and sent water 
jetting from a dozen fountains.

The theatrics and his upbeat sermons, peppered with catchphrases like “Turn your 
scars into stars” and “It takes guts to leave the ruts,” made “Hour of Power” 
one of the most-watched religious shows in history and generated millions in 
donations. It drew more than 7.5 million American viewers weekly in the 
mid-1980s and added twice that number after it began appearing in dozens of 
other countries.

Perhaps the greatest sign of its popularity came in 1989, when the authorities 
in Moscow invited Dr. Schuller to speak in the Soviet Union’s first religious 
telecast. He soon began taping a special monthly show for Soviet national 
television.

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His success on the air also paved the way for frequent best sellers, including 
“Tough Times Don’t Last, but Tough People Do” and “If It’s Going to Be, It’s Up 
to Me.” In all, he wrote more than 30 books.

He even took his message to the White House in 1995, when President Bill Clinton 
invited him for a private prayer meeting during a tough moment in his 
presidency. The next year, he was invited by the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 
to a private meeting to discuss hopes for world peace.

In Garden Grove, he added a $20 million Center for Possibility Thinking, 
designed by Richard Meier. At the groundbreaking ceremony in 2001, Dr. Schuller 
received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects.

He retired as the pastor of the Garden Grove Community Church on the first day 
of 2006, handing over leadership to his only son, Robert A. Schuller, and 
leaving the church deeply in debt, largely because of the lavish building 
project. His son was pushed out within two years, setting off a family feud when 
his sisters and their husbands took control of the church in 2008. One daughter, 
the Rev. Sheila Schuller Coleman, became head pastor.

After filing for bankruptcy protection, the church sold its campus to investors 
in 2011, and after the Diocese of Orange County bought the property in 2012, the 
church was renamed Christ Cathedral.

Dr. Schuller’s wife died in 2014. In addition to his son and Ms. Schuller 
Coleman, his survivors include three other daughters, Jeanne Dunn, Carol Milner 
and Gretchen Penner; 19 grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.

Dr. Schuller ended his relationship with the church in bitterness. In 2012, he 
and his wife resigned from the board of Crystal Cathedral Ministries, citing an 
“adversarial and negative atmosphere” amid a lawsuit over payments to Dr. 
Schuller for the use of his likeness and sermons on “Hour of Power.”

Days earlier, the board had forced Dr. Schuller’s daughter Gretchen Penner and 
two of his sons-in-law to resign their leadership positions. After the cathedral 
was sold, the family cut its ties with “Hour of Power,” and Ms. Schuller Coleman 
led a breakaway group of parishioners in establishing a new church, the Hope 
Center of Christ, in Orange County. Dr. Schuller’s grandson Bobby recently 
became the lead pastor of both “Hour of Power” and the successor to Dr. Schuller’s 
original church, now called Shepherd’s Grove.

The financial setbacks, firings and general ill will between the family and the 
church’s board left many parishioners shocked and saddened by the sudden 
collapse of their cherished church and its beloved founder’s sour last chapter.

But even in resigning, Dr. Schuller left behind a positive message. “No matter 
what, God is still God,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “No matter what, God is 
still a good God. God loves you, and so do I.”

Cheers,
Jim

"The enemy isn’t liberalism;
the enemy isn’t conservatism.
The enemy, is baloney." - Lars Erik Nelson