Schuller was leader of megachurch era
ARTESIA, Calif. — The Rev. Robert Schuller didn’t wait for the faithful to flock to his upstart church in Southern California — he took his message to them.
As the car culture flourished in post-World War II California, the brash Iowa-born pastor began preaching from the roof of a concession stand at a drive-in movie theater, displaying a passion — and a marketing genius — that established him as a father of the megachurch movement that would sweep the nation.
But Schuller didn’t stop there. In 1970, he reached out to the masses beyond his home base in Los Angeles with his “Hour of Power” television program, which was broadcast into millions of homes every Sunday over the next two decades. He also constructed the soaring, glass-paned Crystal Cathedral that became the touchstone of his storied ministry.
The world-famous televangelist and author memorialized in decades of recorded sermons and books died early Thursday at a care facility in Artesia, daughter Carol Schuller Milner said. He was 88.
Schuller was diagnosed in 2013 with terminal esophageal cancer.
A charismatic presence on the televangelist circuit, Schuller faded from view over the past decade after watching his church collapse amid a disastrous leadership transition and sharp declines in viewership that ultimately bankrupted the ministry.
The landmark Crystal Cathedral was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in 2011 and Schuller lost a legal battle the following year to collect more than $5 million from his former ministry for claims of copyright infringement and breach of contract.
Schuller’s evangelical Protestant ministry, part of the Reformed Church in America, was a product of modern technology.
He and his late wife, Arvella, started the ministry in 1955 with $500 at the drive-in theater. The church’s motto — “Come as you are in the family car” — tapped into the burgeoning Southern California auto culture and the suburban boom of postwar America.
