[Magdalen] One off Ministry: Robert Schuller RIP

[FCBasle at aol.com]

Jim
 
I think the term used was Crystal Cathedral and not Christian  Cathedral
 
Perhaps we should thank God for this man of God's ministry - he certainly  
helped many to faith and pray for his family in their loss.
 
Yes, surely he should have thought of succession planning - but what if his 
 ministry was meant to be a "one off".
 
Personally I don't like "names in lights" as I think there should be only  
one name in lights "Our Lord Jesus Christ"
 
But although I don't like the razzmataz of US Evangelicalism I have to  
admire the fact that they preach - on the whole - a Christ-centred Gospel.
 
I certainly believe Robert Schuller did.
 
May he rest in peace and rsie in glory.
 
Blessings
Martin
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In a message dated 04/04/2015 15:08:57 GMT Daylight Time,  
jguthrie at pipeline.com writes:

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.


Continue reading the main  story

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.

Continue reading the  main story

“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.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the  main story

Continue reading the main story

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