AS CRYSTAL CATHEDERAL CRASHED AND BURNED, WHAT WERE THE OTHERS THINKING?

The Reverend Robert Schuller’s church recently lost its world-famous Crystal Cathedral to bankruptcy. The ministry had accumulated debt of about $60 million that it could no longer service.

The church's signature building was designed by Philip Johnson, arguably one of the top ten architects in the world. It was completed in 1980 at a cost of $18 million. The campus is located in Garden Grove, California.

“On November 17, 2011, a federal judge approved selling the Crystal Cathedral to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange for $57.5 million.

"The diocese plans to lease the facility to Crystal Cathedral Ministries for three years, after which Crystal Cathedral Ministries may relocate to a smaller facility nearby that currently houses a Catholic church.”

The diocese intends to hire an architect to renovate the Crystal Cathedral to make it look like a modern Roman Catholic Church.

So much for a once powerful church and worldwide TV ministry that surely will now morph into an amoeba.

One rule of marketing that the life insurance industry has understood since almost the beginning of time, is that the failure to honor legitimate policyholder claims because of financial woes of the issuer, would seriously discredit the trust of other life companies.

Consequently, in the main, when a life company is failing, other underwriters step in and acquire the failing company’s policies. The idea is to prove to the public that their trust in life insurance is a worthy one.

What has happened to Dr. Schuller’s ministry lurks to some degree over all one-man-band denominations. For an example, who’s to say or know what will happen to Houston-based Lakewood Church when there is no longer a Joel Osteen at its helm?

So it’s odd to me that these mega one-man-band churches didn’t see the need to join together to financially bail out its brother Dr. Robert Schuller's church.

As it is, one could easily extrapolate that every non-denominational church and their TV ministry could easily evaporate into non-existence with the loss of its public leader or the loss of his credibility.

Relatively few have ever survived more than one generation after that of its founder.

The life insurance industry would advise that it would be in all of the non-denominational churches' best interests to keep failing ministries financially viable, rather than to allow them to crash and burn without orderly liquidation.

God bless Robert Schuller, his dream, and the members and supporters of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries. I think he did a great job of bringing millions to believing and having a better understanding of Christianity.

All Christian churches profited as a result.

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

Dallas - Park Cities

Since 1964

214 503-8563