Wondering about the Crystal Cathedral Grounds - They Are Landscaping with Crepe Myrtle Bushes

Crepe myrtle bushes can be left to develop in this fan-like shape
or pruned for the tall vase effect, which I prefer.

People are reading about the Crystal Cathedral from earlier posts, perhaps because the Church of Rome is completing the re-design of the property they bought from the bankruptcy court. To set the church off from the rest of the campus, the building will be  surrounded by hundreds of crepe myrtle bushes.

I only need a few hundred more crepe myrtles to set off the location of Bethany Lutheran Church. The first one is doing well.

All the prosperity Gospel nonsense comes from various occult religions, via Norman Vincent Peale, who plagiarized his best-seller--The Power of Positive Thinking--from another writer, Florence Shinn. Another key player in Church Growth is Karl Barth, the Swiss Commie adulterer, who remains the official theologian of Fuller Seminary, not far from the late Crystal Cathedral. Later I will post about Barth being the most famous theo-plagiarists of all time.

Robert Schuller's Prosperity Gospel Bears Fruit

Milner said she is unsure if the case would go to the next level, which would require asking the full 9th Circuit to hear the case or appealing to the Supreme Court. The cases and financial uncertainty have taken a toll on Schuller, who is 87 and has had a number of health problems recently, Milner said.

“Even though he’s happy, he’s penniless,” Milner said. “He has no assets. His house is fully mortgaged. Medi-Cal takes all of his Social Security. It hurts that he was abandoned by people who he served faithfully and loved.”

The Power of Positive Thinking is occult religion garbed in a Calvinist preaching gown, first through Peale, then through Schuller. If someone passed out the original book, with ties to the Ashcan School of American Art and the Unitarian Church, few would have taken notice. But when cloaked with pop Reformed thinking, and promoted as conservative, the same thoughts took root. Who has not said, "When one door shuts, another one opens"? (I don't think I have.)

Read the full article here about Peale and the occult:

Peale’s New Age Endorsements

In his letter to me, the Indiana pastor wrote how he remembered the Lutheran Quarterly article after reading my book Deceived on Purpose. My observation that Rick Warren emulated so many of Robert Schuller’s ideologies reminded him of Norman Vincent Peale’s alleged unattributed use of Florence Scovel Shinn’s writings. The Indiana pastor was surprised I had not mentioned the New Age link between Peale and Schuller. He said that the New Age implications of Warren’s teachings did not stop with Schuller or even with Schuller’s mentor, Peale. It stretched back through all of them to the occult itself.

Needless to say, the apostasy of the LCMS, WELS, Little Sect, and CLC (sic) rest upon the occult and the imbeciles fronting it for the Christian Church - Peale, Schuller, Warren, and Cho - all vastly honored and rewarded by their disciples.

Study this Luther quotation -
it explains everything about WELS/ELS, LCMS, and their pals in ELCA.
Satiety and curiosity drew Kelm, Valleskey, Olson and many more nitwits
through the fetid gates of Fuller Seminary.

Like the unusually hearty crepe myrtle, the earthworm multiplies and grows easily, so it is scorned and ignored. When I was explaining the spectacular beauty of our crepe myrtle, which easily outshines the rest in the neighborhood, I listed pruning and earthworms as the two causes. Our helper laughed and said, "You and your earthworms." Nevertheless, I gave him a children's book on earthworms...for his children.

What does a worm eat? Bacteria, primarily, which is why it should come as no surprise that soils with large populations of worms are usually bacterially dominated. Other foods are fungi, nematodes, and protozoa, as well as the organic matter on or in which these microorganisms live. How does a worm eat?

Jeff Lowenfels, (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 1386-1388). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.

The Means of Grace - Once Abundant - Still Available
Lutherans supposedly know about the Means of Grace. I am only guessing, since the term hardly ever comes up, even when they write about worship on their blogs and Facebook.

The term short-circuits any discussion about Universal Objective Justification (Forgiveness Without Faith). If the worship service is the Means of Grace, what does that do to forgiveness before birth?

Those who quietly believe in justification by faith do not want to incur the wrath of the UOJ Stormtroopers, who never cease following their Father Below.

Here is the WELS Means of Grace.

Schuller Tied to the Occult - And Schuller Founded the Church Growth Movement - Its Crafts and Assaults. See Mark and Avoid Jeske for More Details

WELS/ELS and LCMS invited paganism into their midst
by promoting yahoos like Olson and Huebner.
Whom did they find while studying at Fuller and Willow Creek - ELCA leaders.

bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "So California - When Will WELS Try This?":

Some history on the Hour of Power's decline:

The Hour of Power was seen across Europe as late as 1994, but the show was dropped when European govts and Russia decided to make TV cuts. He claimed 10 million viewers there:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/03/11/state/n115330D81.DTL

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/03/times-change-for-hour-of-power-crystal-cathedral/1#.T2_xviKtNUw

OC's Crystal Cathedral congregation to relocate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/03/11/state/n115330D81.DTL

1994:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1994-10-15/news/9410150627_1_schuller-super-channel-cotton

Schuller's worldwide audience was more than halved when Europe's Super Channel and Russia's government-financed Channel 1 dropped him this year. NBC acquired a controlling interest in Super Channel and overhauled its programming, costing Schuller about 200,000 viewers. Government money woes forced Channel 1 to cut programming, costing between 10 million and 15 million viewers.

***

GJ - I always learn from Bruce Church's comments. Doubtless the free ride from low-cost TV broadcasting was a great boon to Schuller in the early years. I also understand the neighborhood changed and his local members moved farther away. What seemed so unusual at the time became hidebound after all his disciples kept taking Church Growth a few steps beyond his starting point.

I can no longer find the Internet evidence for Schuller and Mary Kay getting Napoleon Hill Foundation Awards, which tied both of them into Asian polytheistic thinking. Schuller and Cho saw things the same way, and Cho was kicked out of the Assemblies of God for his paganism. A little research will show how that has slopped over into the Lutheran Church, thanks to heedless leaders who call themselves "conservative" and "confessional."

Schuller won an award from the Napoleon Hill Foundation
for promoting Hill's philosophy.
So did Mary Kay.

The final bishops of the LCA and ALC had the same problem with watching everything fall apart. They launched ELCA with gay and feminist quotas, only to bemoan the results of their own policies a few years later. David Preus and James Crumley came to regret the merger they promoted, but the merger followed the policies they established and endorsed.

---

"One day, son, all this will be your sister's,
then the pope's."

Famed Crystal Cathedral to become Catholic church - Yahoo! News: - 2012 post


GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (AP) — Retired schoolteacher Dolores Rommel has followed the Rev. Robert H. Schuller almost her entire adult life: She was baptized in his church as a young woman, sent her children to his Sunday school and laid her husband to rest near the soaring, glass-paned Crystal Cathedral that was to be the televangelist's ultimate legacy.

But when the Roman Catholic church bought the famous sanctuary and its cemetery in bankruptcy court last year, Rommel began looking for another spiritual home. She has resigned herself to being entombed in a Catholic cemetery so she can be near her husband, but not without plenty of soul-searching.

"I have no choice. I am going to be buried there because that was his choice and we paid a lot for that vault," said Rommel, who bought a two-casket tomb with her husband in 1997. "At the time, who would know that this was going to happen?"

The Crystal Cathedral congregation recently announced that it will vacate its modernist steel-and-glass church by June 2013. The Diocese of Orange re-baptized the church Christ Cathedral earlier this month and plans to turn the Protestant landmark where the "Hour of Power" TV ministry is based into its spiritual and administrative headquarters. The fast-growing, 1.2 million-person diocese bought the church campus for nearly $58 million last year.

The upcoming transition has been an emotional one for many longtime congregants like Rommel, who watched Schuller's blockbuster dynasty struggle to survive in recent years amid declining donations, a disastrous leadership transition and an endless family squabble that split the congregation.
Schuller built the church — an architectural marvel with 10,000 windows and room for nearly 3,000 worshippers and 1,000 musicians — in 1980, a decade after he began broadcasting his sermons on the "power of possibility thinking" into the homes of millions of evangelical Christians each Sunday.
Reaction to the church's sale was at first bitter: The children of one prominent philanthropist publicly threatened to disinter their father from its cemetery and another congregant sued for $30 billion, saying the transfer to Catholic hands had "permanently desecrated, defamed, polluted and cursed" the church.
Tempers have since cooled, but the recently announced timeline for the transfer to Catholic hands has revived questions about the fate of Schuller's ministry once it leaves behind the iconic building that gave it its name. The diocese will grant the congregation six months rent-free at a nearby Catholic church and it plans to continue filming the "Hour of Power."

"We could film in a studio," said John Charles, the new CEO of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. "We're still going to have the same great preaching, the same great music and pulpit guests. The ministry is not about the building — it's more about our congregation and who we are."

Some, however, wonder whether the ministry will fizzle out — or shrink dramatically — without the building that gave it its name. Broadcasts of the "Hour of Power" were recently cut back to 30 minutes on Lifetime and Discovery channels and Schuller, now 85, no longer appears on the program and hasn't attended church since last fall.

His son and daughter, who each failed to assume their father's mantle, are no longer involved in the ministry. Sheila Schuller Coleman formed a new church after a falling out last year.

"You are kidding about sis taking over, aren't you, Dad?"

The congregation, which now numbers up to 1,700 people each Sunday, will also change its name once it moves.

"It really needs to go back to square one and say, 'Who are we going to be? We can't be what we were 10 to 15 years ago,'" said Kurt Fredrickson, an associate dean and assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. "There could be resurrection there or it could be that we say goodbye to a congregation and bless them and be grateful and thank God for years and years and years of really wonderful ministry."

Schuller tapped into California's blossoming car culture and the optimism of a post-World War II generation when he began preaching in 1955 from the roof of a snack bar at a drive-in movie theater in suburban Orange County. He exhorted worshippers to "come as you are in the family car" and his upbeat message resonated.
By 1970, Schuller was airing the "Hour of Power" and in 1980, he dedicated the Crystal Cathedral, an architectural marvel that served as the backdrop for the show. At its peak, the broadcast attracted 20 million viewers around the world.

The Rev. Christopher Smith, the Catholic episcopal vicar and rector of the newly baptized Christ Cathedral, recalls as a child watching from his grandparents' backyard as the young, energetic evangelist preached from the roof of the drive-in theater's concession stand. Now, Smith is in charge of a delicate transition as the diocese prepares to move into a religious and architectural touchstone cherished by evangelicals around the world.

The diocese hopes to honor Schuller and the history of his ministry with a museum that begins with the drive-in movie theater and ends with the Catholic acquisition. The diocese may also move its archives, which are currently not publicly available, to the cathedral grounds, said Smith.

"I just hope that we attend well to all the different people who are affected by this and also that this place be seen as a place where everyone is welcome to find hope and consolation and inspiration, whether they're Catholic or not," Smith said.

"That's the bishop's desire — that we are a real credible witness to Christ in the world through our work here."

Napoleon Hill inspired Schuller with this nonsense.
The most visible guru was Norman Vincent Peale,
who plagiarized his best-seller.
Thus Church Growth began with the plagiarism of Peale
and the adultery of Fuller's main theologian - Karl Barth-Kirschbaum.

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