{"id":2998,"date":"2011-11-18T11:56:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T11:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/11\/the-crystal-cathedral-could-now-become-an-actual-cathedral.html"},"modified":"2011-11-18T11:56:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T11:56:00","slug":"the-crystal-cathedral-could-now-become-an-actual-cathedral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/11\/the-crystal-cathedral-could-now-become-an-actual-cathedral.html","title":{"rendered":"The Crystal Cathedral could now become an actual Cathedral"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Turns out the Crystal Cathedral, which has been dying a slow, agonizing financial death, is selling out to the Catholic Diocese of Orange County<\/a>.\u00a0 Yep, it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Hard to believe, almost.\u00a0 Rev. Schuller was the epitome of \u2018Jesus meets super-duper big and successful religion\u2019 that dominated much of the last half of 20th century Protestantism.\u00a0 The movement had roots going back to the evangelism and missions movements in the 19th century.\u00a0 It received its biggest boost from its most famous and beloved adherent, Billy Graham.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

By the 70s and 80s, when \u2018Church Growth\u2019 studies began to be taught in seminaries, it was clear that a growing number of Protestant leaders, and subsequently Protestant believers, were equating Large<\/em> with Successful<\/em> ministries. <\/p>\n

By the time I was in ministry in the 1990s, it was clear that the most important thing a pastor could do was \u2018grow his church\u2019.\u00a0 And that didn\u2019t mean spiritually.\u00a0 It meant more baptisms, more memberships, bigger congregations.\u00a0 This attitude came out of the closet with Rick Warren\u2019s The Purpose Driven Church<\/em> (the precursor to his more famous and successful The Purpose Driven Life<\/em>).\u00a0 In this book, concerns over doctrine, theology, and worship styles take a back seat to marketing strategies, sales techniques, and business practices for building that ideal mega-church.\u00a0 With such a prominent pastor giving the green light, it was now possible for church leaders and ministers to admit what had been percolating under the surface for some time.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

That is, we wanted to get rid of all these pesky doctrinal divisions and differences that splintered Protestantism into hundreds, if not thousands, of competing sects.\u00a0 The idea wasn\u2019t too come up with one single agreed upon ecumenical dogma.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 We simply began letting folks know it wasn\u2019t that big a deal.\u00a0 Just as Mark Lowry, of Bill Gaither fame, would assure his denominationally mixed audiences that \u2018someone is going to be wrong\u2019, now we simply let folks know it didn\u2019t matter, it was more like opinions really.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Baptism saves?\u00a0 Baptism is merely symbolic?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 God preordains those to be saved or damned?\u00a0 God allows free will for everyone to accept or reject His Grace?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Pop music or classical hymnody?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 What matters is getting enough fannies in those pews to make it necessary to build bigger buildings and bigger gymnasiums<\/strike> family life centers.\u00a0 I once quipped, with a not-too-subtle Freudian reference, that too many Protestants today judge a pastor by the size of his gymnasium. <\/p>\n

But I was a\u00a0kazoo in an orchestra of tubas.\u00a0 Most wanted, and would work for, that Crystal Cathedral sized ministry, late 20th century style.\u00a0 And in many ways, it all went back to a church started in a drive in theatre.\u00a0 Now, it\u2019s done.\u00a0 When Dr. Schuller fired his own son because his son wanted to, you know, preach more from the Bible, you figured it had jumped the shark.\u00a0 Schuller\u2019s own fluffy, cotton candy \u2018just be excellent to one another, and believe in yourselves\u2019 gospel (years before Smilin\u2019 Joel Osteen), was never going to survive a population of seekers who, uninformed though they might be, still had the idea that God\u2019s first priority wasn\u2019t helping us live a wealthy, American lifestyle above all things; a population growing increasingly\u00a0cynical of the idea that materialism and narcissism were the answers to the Divine question. And now, the tree has born its final fruits.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turns out the Crystal Cathedral, which has been dying a slow, agonizing financial death, is selling out to the Catholic Diocese of Orange County.\u00a0 Yep, it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Hard to believe, almost.\u00a0 Rev. Schuller was the epitome of \u2018Jesus meets super-duper big and successful religion\u2019 that dominated much of the last half of 20th century Protestantism.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Crystal Cathedral could now become an actual Cathedral<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Turns out the Crystal Cathedral, which has been dying a slow, agonizing financial death, is selling out to the Catholic Diocese of Orange County. \" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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