The Petra Zone

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. -- Crystal Cathedral, the megachurch birthplace of the televangelist show "Hour of Power," filed for bankruptcy Monday in Southern California after struggling to emerge from debt that exceeds $43 million.
In addition to a $36 million mortgage, the Orange County-based church owes $7.5 million to several hundred vendors for services ranging from advertising to the use of live animals in Easter and Christmas services.
The church had been negotiating a repayment plan with vendors, but several filed lawsuits seeking quicker payment, which prompted a coalition formed by creditors to fall apart, church officials said.
"Tough times never last, every storm comes to an end. Right now, people need to hear that message more than ever," Sheila Schuller Coleman, the Cathedral's senior pastor and daughter of the founder, told reporters outside the worship hall.
"Everybody is hurting today. We are no exception," she said.
The church, founded in the mid-1950s by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller Sr., has already ordered major layoffs, cut the number of stations airing the "Hour of Power" and sold property to stay afloat. In addition, the 10,000-member church canceled this year's "Glory of Easter" pageant, which attracts thousands of visitors and is a regional holiday staple.
Vendors owed money by the church formed a committee in April and agreed to a moratorium to negotiate a repayment plan with the Crystal Cathedral.
Kristina Oliver, whose Hemet-based company provided live animals for the church's "Glory of Christmas" manger scene, said she doubts she will recover in full the $57,000 she is owed.
"The church never made any kind of advancement that they wanted to pay their debt, that they were willing to try to make it happen and every time we tried they told us, 'You can't tell us how to run our business,"' Oliver said.
"I'm upset because I have a 30-year relationship with them and you need to be up front, put all your cards on the table."
Crystal Cathedral was founded at a drive-in theater and attracted congregants with its sermons on the power of positive thinking. It features a soaring glass spire and is an architectural wonder and tourist destination.
The "Hour of Power" telecast, filmed in the cathedral's main sanctuary, at one point attracted 1.3 million viewers in 156 countries.
Church leaders said the telecast and Sunday services will continue while in bankruptcy.
Crystal Cathedral and other megachurches have suffered from the recession and reduced charitable giving.
The church saw revenue drop roughly 30 percent in 2009 and simply couldn't slash expenses quickly enough to avoid accruing the debt, said Jim Penner, a church pastor and executive producer of the "Hour of Power."
Penner said it became difficult to hold the vendors' committee together after several vendors filed lawsuits and obtained writs of attachment to try to collect their cash.
Now, the church is avoiding credit entirely and spends only the roughly $2 million it receives each month in donations and revenue, Penner said. The church still hopes to pay all of the vendors back in full, he said.
"What we're doing now is we're trying to walk what we preach, we're paying cash for things as we go," he said.

Well, it's sad, but unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised. This sort of thing has happened before and it will probably happen again so long as people blindly accept everything televangelists say and don't hold them accountable for what they do with their money.

"Reverend: Now hurry, let's all look down and admire God's new parquet floor. Eyes on the floor, still on the floor, always on God's floor."

From the Simpsons movie right?

From season 9. Natural Born Kissers. Most yellow flesh I've ever seen in a Simpsons episode.

So is this the same Church that John S. performed at a few years ago?

Daniel wrote:So is this the same Church that John S. performed at a few years ago?

Yes...yes it is.

1. Any church that is owned by a family is no church.
2. Any church that has a tv ministry is ultimately no church, but a studio audience.
3. Any family that would teach the crap they teach will surely wake up in hell.
4. Any person that would look at that stupid building, look at the cars and houses the family has provided for them, and still think that their ministry is about spreading the Gospel of Jesus (especially after never hearing it taught) is an idiot.
5. I can't wait for it to be locked up and auctioned off.
6. I can't wait for the family to come to Jesus (for REAL).

What does the Crystal Cathedral teach?

petraman wrote:What does the Crystal Cathedral teach?

Name it and claim it/Word of Faith

I saw some disturbing TV a few weeks ago, they doing a campaign saying God will give you 3 blessings for $1000, I was sad and sickened by this, it said it was live, but they replayed the same footage for a few days. I spent the night crank calling them asking how many blessings I would get $100K etc. if there was any bulk discounts. I have got to this point in my life where these organized criminal religions has pushing me away from Church completely.

Help

Daniel wrote:I saw some disturbing TV a few weeks ago, they doing a campaign saying God will give you 3 blessings for $1000, I was sad and sickened by this, it said it was live, but they replayed the same footage for a few days. I spent the night crank calling them asking how many blessings I would get $100K etc. if there was any bulk discounts. I have got to this point in my life where these organized criminal religions has pushing me away from Church completely.

Help

Don't let the crazies push you away from church. There are still some good churches out there. More good than bad, in my experience. The bad ones just get more publicity.

Edward wrote:1. Any church that is owned by a family is no church.
2. Any church that has a tv ministry is ultimately no church, but a studio audience.
3. Any family that would teach the crap they teach will surely wake up in hell.
4. Any person that would look at that stupid building, look at the cars and houses the family has provided for them, and still think that their ministry is about spreading the Gospel of Jesus (especially after never hearing it taught) is an idiot.
5. I can't wait for it to be locked up and auctioned off.
6. I can't wait for the family to come to Jesus (for REAL).

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I think you should be careful touting your list of absolutes. Who is the Judge after all?

The bible is, since that is all we have, for now.

The bible states that the Universal Church belongs to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was revealed to Paul in total. Paul gave us a description of the church, mission of the church, structure of the church and discipline of the church. The Crystal Cathedral and the Schuller "ministry" is not a biblical church. It is a business. It is structured as a business. It is obvious that the doctrine of Christ cannot be taught or tolerated, because old man Schuller fired the ONE pastor who attempted to preach, let alone read, from the bible, and that pastor was his own son, Jr. There was no Bishop, no deacon, no elder to make any decision.

If you call Osteen's staff and family and ask them if a church with a TV ministry is a church, they will say no. They told me so. You must determine if a ministry should be a church or a TV ministry. The dynamics and structure are completely different. Legalisties and broadcast requirements require that there be no personal information. Topics become generic. There are no longer time sensitive references. There is no personalization. I have worked for broadcasting and non broadcasting mega churches. This is common knowledge.

If any man/family teaches anything other than the gospel of Christ, they are truly demonic. Robert is a seller of the positive message. There is no direction to Jesus Christ. There is only self help. The bible has no self help message. If you have the power to help yourself, you have no need for Jesus Christ.

When a ministry is over 40 million in debt, it has not been doing things biblically or listening to God. God does not call churches into debt. God does not break his own laws. God does not call churches to be poor testimonies to the world. MAN does that because MAN takes control. The church is structured that the pastors get paid. They never stopped getting paid. Screw everyone else.

When the old man stands before God, do you think, based on scripture and all that we know about the nature of God, that God will credit the salvation of souls to that ministry because of their fancy programs and their ugly, gawdy, inefficient buildings? Come on. God does not need any of it. They built themselves a shrine for their own god.

Jr. knows God. He has preached it. He was their only hope. Now they have the daughters running the show. His daughters and the old man are the ones pimping 3-blessings for $1,000. Demonic. Catholic at the least.

Daniel. It is not organized religion that saves. It is Jesus Christ. It is not organized religion that is the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. It is the indiviidual believer. Yes, we should worship corporately. There are rules for that. All you have to do is find a group that follows the rules.

Daniel wrote:I saw some disturbing TV a few weeks ago, they doing a campaign saying God will give you 3 blessings for $1000, I was sad and sickened by this, it said it was live, but they replayed the same footage for a few days. I spent the night crank calling them asking how many blessings I would get $100K etc. if there was any bulk discounts. I have got to this point in my life where these organized criminal religions has pushing me away from Church completely.

Help

This is nothing new in the history of the church. This is the reason why Martin Luther tried to reform the Catholic Church when nailing the 95 theses to the church at Wittenberg, because of the selling of indulgences. The problem with the church is that it is still run by sinful people(sarcasm intended) and no matter who is involved, sin can and does occur. There is no such thing as a "fool-proof" church. Bad things can happen anywhere. That is the reality of a sinful earth. However, God commands us in the Bible to go to church, have fellowship with other believers, and to use our spiritual gifts at that place to work as a team to build his kingdom. I prefer ARP and PCA presbyterian churches to start with, in my opinion, but that may differ for you. Find a church that uses expository preaching when going through the Bible, which means they preach in context of the section of scriptures they are reading from, instead of what is called topical, where the minister takes a topic and then back fits scripture references to prove it. However, like I said, nothing on this earth is perfect and it may take several visits before finding the right church for you. Don't give up because I said so, do it because God says so.

“Christian” Television all though, as the scriptures say, “My word will not return void” they may be getting the general message of John 3:16 out to the world. However, it would be hard for me to believe that every preacher and every person on TBN and all the others will make it to heaven. God never said anything about receiving the riches of this world, our riches our in heaven and just because we tithe (to our home church) doesn’t mean that God has a Ford Mustang sitting with our name on it.

I don’t believe “Name it and Claim It” as far as what they are teaching for material things. But I do believe in having Faith that if Christ bore the stripes for our healing then it is ours for the asking. “Ye have not, because ye ask not” does not pertain to material possessions. Meeting our needs and Meeting our wants are two different things. The Schuller clan would do good to realize this. Problem is those kind of preachers teach that way in order to escape their own conviction and some how validate their own lifestyle. There won’t be any reasoning or sales pitches when you stand before God.

We used to go out with a preacher for revivals. He owned his own Jewlry Store here in Bakersfiled. He started doing this sales pitch, he had bought a case of New Testament Bibles from a company and he would say “These were custom made for my ministry, you will not find these in stores anywhere, and there is only 25 left, if we sell out here there will be none left.” Of course when we saw that he was saying this at every church, he was selling out of them and there were more Bibles showing up for the next Church, I walked into a Bible Store and saw the very same Bible on the shelf. We started to pull away from his ministry. He was also trying to launch his own TV program. You know I believe Jewelry Store owners can get saved and preach, but you need to leave your sales tactic at home.