Leadership Journal

Whether you admire or dislike his ministry techniques or possibility-thinking theology, probably no one has shaped the way pastors relate to the unchurched more than Robert Schuller.
Forty-two years ago, Schuller and his wife, Arvella, moved from Chicago to Southern California to start a church—and, unintentionally, a new way of doing church. With about 50 people attending the first service, Garden Grove Community Church (affiliated with the Reformed Church of America) was born.
Today the legendary Crystal Cathedral sits on a sprawling oasis of palm trees and fountains and statues in the middle of Orange County's concrete jungle.
Schuller pioneered the use of marketing techniques to reach the nonchurched. It would not be overreaching to say that without Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral, there would likely be no Willow Creek Community Church, no Saddleback Community Church, or the thousands of other seeker-oriented churches around the country. The cliche—the pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs—is certainly true of Schuller. "I didn't know I was going to get criticism," he says. "I thought I'd get pats on the back."
In the modern era, he was the first to:

—call his denominational church a "community church," since most seekers didn't understand or relate to a denominational label
—call a sermon a "message"
—use a nontraditional setting for church worship—in his case, a drive-in theater
—conduct door-to-door research, asking, "Why don't you go to church?"
—use marketing strategies to reach nonchurched people (about the time George Barna was born)
—train pastors in leadership (1969)
—televise a weekly church service.

Leadership wanted to hear Schuller's insights on reaching a changing culture. Like Schuller in 1955, editors Kevin Miller and Dave Goetz traveled from Chicago to Garden Grove, California, to sit with the pastor and possibility thinker.

How has Southern California changed since you arrived in 1955?

Robert Schuller: Forty years ago, this town had a population close to sixty thousand. Orange County was largely white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. It had a few barrios and no ghettos.
Today Garden Grove has a population of a hundred and fifty thousand, of which 38 percent are Asians—Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodians, and Chinese. Thirty-seven percent are Hispanics, and 20 percent are people like me. The balance includes blacks, Ethiopians, Turks, and other groups.
When I started, many nonchurched persons were conditioned by a culture dominated by Judeo-Christian values. Their collective memory systems were still receptive to a message from the Judeo-Christian value system. That's no longer true.

Has your strategy changed?

I came to Southern California to start a mission. I think we still have to be a mission church; I said that at the first Institute for Successful Church Leaders in 1969. But if you're going ...