Preaching Outside the Box

Sermonizing from a tar-papered pulpit on top of a snack bar at the Orange Drive-In in 1955, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller attracted his first congregants in what would become a spiritual dynasty. He now draws more than 250,000 visitors to his Garden Grove “campus” each year.

Besides his high-voltage charisma, Schuller’s rise to staying power owes much to a fierce entrepreneurial bent. His first innovation, a bow to the burgeoning culture of convenience, was a “drive-in” service where believers could park and hear sermons via hi-fi loudspeakers. (Today, in-car worshipers listen to Schuller on the radio while watching him on a Jumbo-Tron.)

Next, he engaged prominent architects, including Richard Neutra and Crystal Cathedral designer Philip Johnson, to create buildings important enough to lure not only parishioners but high-rolling donors and tourists.

Then he lassoed Christian looky-loos with freeway billboards hawking his “Glory of Christmas” and Easter pageants. (Picture live camels and winged actors dangling from steel beams of the 120-foot-high cathedral ceiling.) Tickets: $20 to $30.

Schuller’s latest vision also melds church and commerce. Architect Richard Meier, late of the Getty Center, has designed a graceful stone building to house a food court--with cappuccinos to rouse groggy churchgoers before the collection plate goes around--and an exhibition hall to honor the world’s great Christian capitalists. Groundbreaking: January 2000.