Lessons From The Crystal Cathedral.

Someone recently gifted me a copy of a new book, The Glass Church, which is a painstakingly researched look at the ministry of the late Robert Schuller and his famous church in Orange County California, the Crystal Cathedral. Through all the spiritual wisdom we find in Scripture, we can apply that wisdom to real-life situations, and see what we can learn from them. These are some of the truths I drew from reading The Glass Church.

Truth: There is a line between making the Gospel more understandable, and changing the message. 

I have no doubt that Robert Schuller had a sincere vision for reaching up-and-coming Southern Californians of the 1960s with the Christian faith. He faced a secular community of people who were not from the religious traditions of his own German, Iowan, Reformed churches. He wanted to help Christianity make sense to them, in terms they could easily understand. He was thinking like a communicator. He was outward-focused. This was admirable.

However, by trying to integrate Christianity with the vogue self-esteem psychology of the day, he didn't just build a bridge of better understanding. He ended up altering the Gospel message. He still believed in a literal Adam, but the effect of Adam's sin became  damaged self-esteem rather than spiritual death. There was very little place in his thinking about human nature for sinful pride, though he did acknowledge sinful pride was a real thing.

He preached that man's core was emotional insecurity, rather than original sin. He downplayed the Bible's message about sin, maybe as a reaction to his childhood church. He claimed that everybody already knew they were sinners, so they didn't need a preacher telling them so. This was in contrast to Jesus, who preached the moral laws of God, and once told a rich young ruler that "no one is good but God." It's very hard to imagine Robert Schuller saying that to anyone.

It's a good thing to make sure we make sense to people. But changing the words we use, or certain illustrations, can bleed backward into the message itself if we aren't careful. It takes a lot of discernment to adapt the Gospel message so that a community gets what we're saying, but to not unintentionally change the message to suit local tastes.

Truth: There are principles churches can learn from marketing and business, but the church is not a business.

Robert Schuller would have been a brilliant, successful entrepreneur in the business world. He wasn't inventive, but he was a genius at sensing trends in the air, and taking advantage of new techniques and technologies. He might never have invented Coca-Cola or an Apple computer, but he would have sold them like no one you've ever seen.  

However, is a local church fundamentally a business? It certainly has business-like features. A good church needs a sound budget. It needs a bank account. It needs an effective organizational and decision-making system. It needs an income. It needs to know its mission, and serve the community. In modern times, it needs to do some sort of advertising. It needs governing officers. But at its core, is a church a business?

No. A church is essentially a school, because the Great Commission says to make students of Christ (Matthew 28:19). A church is also a family, because the Lord says its members are all brothers and sisters in the faith. A church is also a temple, because it's members are priests, and it is God-centered.  It's also a charity, since we serve the most needy, and we are not in it for money (at least we aren't supposed to be!).

Dr. Schuller excelled at applying retail principles to planting and growing a church, but his writings on church growth show he went too far. I've read several of his key books about the church, and they are heavily colored by "church-is-business" thinking, and quite flimsy on New Testament doctrine of church. Dr. Schuller led the way in the area of treating church like a retail store, but that was not a good thing.

Truth: The preacher is important, but he isn't the sole cause of a church's attendance or influence. And if he becomes too important, it will destroy the church.

I have no doubt that Garden Grove Community Church (later, the Crystal Cathedral) took root and grew because of the God-given talents, energy, and hard work of Dr. Schuller and his wife Arvella. His preaching was strong and distinctive. He had a clear message, to which the average person responded. He worked very hard.

But the book describes how Schuller's success was also a coming-together of social and ethnic factors over which he had no control.   Orange County in the 1960s was still mostly farms and orchards. There were very few churches, so Garden Grove Community Church automatically attracted attention. It was the new kid on the block. It started as a novelty church, since they began meeting in a drive-in theater and you could attend in your car.

In the 1960s new housing was going up all around, and new young families were pouring into Orange County every year.  Disneyland opened nearby. A major California highway was put in, with a handy exit-ramp right by the church property. Everyone in the county spoke English. Everyone was white, everyone was upwardly-mobile. Dr. Schuller and his family fit right in, and his upwardly-mobile, self-actualizing, positivity messages fit the spirit of the times.

So, there was more than just one factor in play in the growth of the Crystal Cathedral -- more than just the man. A unique confluence of factors all came together at one time, in one place. But as the decades marched on, the county changed quite a lot. It became more Hispanic, more Asian, and more lower-middle-class. The Cathedral did well to start a Hispanic outreach church (which outlasted the closing of the Cathedral itself), but the church became increasingly out-of-sync socially and ethnically with Orange County.  

As Schuller aged and his powers diminished, he wouldn't or couldn't let go. There was no transition plan. His son was appointed head pastor, and then Schuller fired his own son because the son wanted more conservative financial protocols, and a stronger Bible emphasis. The Schuller family ended up at odds with itself, and the power-struggles (because Dr. Schuller wouldn't give up control) dragged the whole church down. 

The book has a sad ending. Because of the power-struggles, and the Cathedral's reckless policies about debt (which were Schuller's own approach), and the principle that you attracted new people by ever-new and exciting building programs, the Cathedral eventually drowned in red ink. The buildings fell into severe disrepair, and finally the entire property was bought by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. When Dr. Schuller passed and his memorial service was held on the grounds, it wasn't even the Crystal Cathedral anymore.

Here's what I took away from the story of the The Glass Church:

If you are a preacher, it is a good thing to understand what your audience is thinking. What do they believe? How do they see the world? It's good to be able to put one's selves into their shoes. We are trying to be understood. But it can be tempting to adjust the Bible message so that all the sharp edges are sanded off. 

We should approach business and marketing principles with our feet firmly planted on a Scriptural understanding of God's plan for the church. We can learn many good practices from some aspects of the business world, and we need people in our church leadership who understand the world of administration. But the Lord Jesus isn't a product.  Salesmen don't like speaking hard truths because they might upset the customer, but preachers have to, and congregations aren't customers.

Church growth can't be put into a spray-bottle, because it is controlled by a multitude of factors, including invisible ones like prayer, angels, and demons. There are quite good preachers whose churches don't grow, or only grow a little, and there are massive churches which are led by poor preachers ("poor" in the sense of unreliable content, or characterized by an immature or worldly spirit). Perfectly good churches sometimes explode with attendance, not because the church is Spirit-filled but simply because a factory is built in the county and people moved into town. Perfectly good, Spirit-filled churches sometimes struggle because an economic depression hits and lots of people have to move away. Some of us preachers should not pat ourselves on the back too much, or on the other hand not blame ourselves too much.