The Associated Press: Crystal Cathedral sees risky future without church.
Well, the end is near for a very sad story, and fodder for a podcast I’m writing this morning. I think this quote by a congregation member at the bankruptcy hearing says it all about what this ministry and a significant stream of boomer Christianity came to be about:
“People think the ministry isn’t about a building. Usually they’re right. But that one represents Jesus Christ, positive thinking, and if you believe in yourself and believe in the Lord there isn’t anything you can’t do,” Sherwood Oklejas, a congregant who opposed the diocese’s bid, told a federal bankruptcy court judge at a hearing on the church’s future. “If the ministry no longer has the Crystal Cathedral to operate from, in my opinion, it will not last at all.”
Now Robert Schuller said this to the in a statement afterward: “We all know that a church is not a building, “The church is you, and it’s me. And that’s why we will always be here for you.”
No. Maybe at one time the church wasn’t a building but it became that. Being “church” became all about the building – the glitz, the glory, the bigger is best mentality and they ended up serving a debt rather than Jesus. And now it is dead.
In fact, Schuller is probably right when he says the church is you and me. In the best sense, the church is the people. In the realistic sense, Crystal Cathedral as church became Schuller, his generation, and his fans.
Rather sad. My mom and my aunt have been Schuller fans for decades and when he started out with his drive in ministry, it was innovative evangelism the likes of which had not been seen before. But (and I confess my generational bias here, if you haven’t picked up on it before), it stayed focused on a single generation and ultimately absorbed its values and made them normative for faith. So what started out as a young congregation in the 50s and 60s became a television sea of gray by 2000 – no different from many mainline denominational congregations. You could see it in their TV broadcasts – self help boomers who believed everything you want is possible if you believe in Jesus, yourself, and positive thinking. A beautiful monument but it had died inside.
For me, it points to what is happening in society and the church in general with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Exclusive of its dark turnings (the crimes and anarchist elements), it does point to a new understanding that buildings and place take a back seat to relationship and shared values. The Crystal Cathedral became a dinosaur that couldn’t/wouldn’t embrace generations that didn’t believe in the power of positive thinking or in building expensive monuments you can’t afford to your own egos – all under the guise to the greatness of God.
As I’ve said and others have as well, God is up to something in the big C Church, and its going to be a painful reformation in North America for the next decade or so. Boomer spirituality and its monuments of denominationalism and megachurches are crumbling and something new is going to take its place. Just not clear if it will look more like Europe today or the First Century. Either way, hang on for a bumpy ride.