When faith-healer/evangelist Oral Roberts announced in 1977 that God had told him to build a huge medical complex, his supporters responded enthusiastically. Some $150 million poured in, enabling the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based ministry to construct and partially equip three modern medical buildings, known collectively as the City of Faith.
Today, however, the City of Faith medical center is the cause of a crisis that is rocking the financial foundations of Roberts’s ministry. Since the center opened in 1981, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association has channeled nearly $50 million to the City of Faith. Patient revenue has fallen short of operating expenses by $29 million.
In recent months, the medical center has laid off 244 of its 907 employees. The evangelistic association has cut its own 500-person staff by more than 20 percent. The 850 employees of Oral Roberts University (ORU) this summer have been forced to take off one day a week without pay.
A shortage of patients is the primary cause of the revenue shortfall and the resulting staff cutbacks. Roberts and his associates expected people from across the United States to flock to the City of Faith because of its holistic medical approach. Last month, however, an average of only 80 patients were being treated in the 294-bed hospital.
Concern about keeping the ORU medical school fully accredited compounds the ministry’s problems. Its status is in danger mostly because of the low patient load at the hospital. Representatives of ORU are expected to meet with accreditation officials next month.
Tulsa hospital officials opposed the building of the medical center from the begining. Critics emphasized that the area already had more than 1,000 empty hospital beds. It took an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to clear the way for the licensing of Roberts’s medical complex.
Tim Colwell, the medical center’s public relations director, said shutting down the City of Faith is “not a consideration.… We’re in this as an act of faith. We’re trusting the Lord to provide the patients.” An effort is being made to market the City of Faith to the many supporters who donated money to build it.
Roberts regularly appeals to his national television audience for funds to keep the medical complex open. In 1980 he reported seeing a vision of Jesus standing over the medical center, which he interpreted as a divine endorsement of the building project. Last year he told supporters that God would use the City of Faith to achieve a major breakthrough in cancer treatment if they gave enough to complete a research center at the complex.
According to recent Arbitron ratings, Roberts’s television audience has dropped from 4.35 million in the year the City of Faith was launched to about 2.5 million today. In a June letter, Roberts told his supporters, “Our ministry is in real financial need.… Without a miracle very, very soon, we literally cannot survive.”
That plea notwithstanding, George Stovall, executive vice-president of the evangelistic association, recently told a Dallas Times Herald reporter, “I think you’ll find less concern here than you will other places. We’re just trusting God.” James Winslow, the City of Faith’s chief executive officer, told the Times Herald that conditions are improving. But he added that he does not expect the medical complex to be in the black at least until 1988.
