People Who Preach In Glass Churches...Are in Big Trouble

UPDATE 10/18/10: Crystal Cathedral files for bankruptcy.

I looks like the internal squabbles at the Crystal Cathedral are threatening to shatter the entire house of glass:

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (AP) — Once one of the nation's most popular televangelists, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller is watching his life's work crumble.
His son and recent successor, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, has abruptly resigned as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral. The shimmering, glass-walled megachurch is home to the "Hour of Power" broadcast, an evangelism staple that's been on the air for more than three decades.

The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt. Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year, according to a recent letter from the elder Schuller to elite donors. In the letter, Schuller Sr. implored the Eagle's Club members — who supply 30% of the church's revenue — for donations and hinted that the show might go off the air without their support.

"The final months of 2008 were devastating for our ministry," the 82-year-old pastor wrote.

The Crystal Cathedral blames the recession for its woes. But it's clear that the elder Schuller's carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade, has stumbled badly.

It's a problem common to personality driven ministries. Most have collapsed or been greatly diminished after their founders left the pulpit or died.

Members often tie their donations to the pastor, not the institution, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University. Schuller, with a style that blends pop psychology and theology, has a particularly devoted following, she said.

"Viewers are probably much less likely to give when it's not their preacher they're giving to," she said. "There's something about these televised programs where people develop a certain loyalty."

The Crystal Cathedral is increasingly becoming an old person's church as the age of the congregation has pretty much tracked with the age of the senior pastor. Other church movements have come along and attracted the young family crowd, thus leaving Schuller with an affluent but dying (literally) congregation. They've become kind of a staid old denomination type of church, and those churches are not doing well these days.

I'm not sure there's much they'll be able to do to turn it around. It may take a young, dynamic new pastor to attract some new blood.