Robert H. Schuller

Robert Harold Schuller was an American Christian televangelist, pastor, motivational speaker, and author whose work grew with the rise of televised religion in the second half of the twentieth century. Born on September 16, 1926, near Alton, Iowa, he was the youngest of five children in a Dutch-American farming family. His grandparents were Dutch immigrants, and he was raised in a small, close-knit community without running water. From that setting, he went on to build a ministry in Garden Grove, California, that reached far beyond a local congregation.

Schuller was best known for pastoring his Garden Grove church for more than five decades, beginning in 1955, and for leading the weekly Hour of Power television program until his retirement in 2006. The broadcast began in 1970, after he had started broadcasting from the smaller Garden Grove chapel in 1969, encouraged by his longtime friend Billy Graham. In the 1990s, his televised sermons were regularly viewed by an estimated audience of 20 million. The program became one of the first examples of a weekly televised church service and was described as the world’s most widely watched hour-long church service.

His early religious life shaped the way he understood his calling. On the day of his baptism in 1927 at his family’s Reformed Church in Newkirk, Iowa, he wore a baptismal gown that he later kept in his office as his most prized possession. Beneath it he placed the words: “This is the reason my life has been a success. As a child I was dedicated to our Lord.” In 1931, shortly before his fifth birthday, his minister uncle Henry Beltman predicted that Schuller would one day spread the word of God to many people. Schuller later called that moment the single most defining moment of his early life.

After graduating from Newkirk High School in 1944, Schuller studied at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, then earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1950 from Western Theological Seminary, which taught in the tradition and practice of John Calvin. He was ordained in the Reformed Church in America and first served at Ivanhoe Reformed Church in Riverdale, Illinois. In 1955, after moving to Garden Grove, he opened Garden Grove Community Church in the old Orange Drive-in Movie Theater, offering services people could attend from their cars. He later rented a former Baptist church as well, serving both settings on Sunday mornings.

As the congregation grew, Schuller oversaw the construction of major church buildings in Garden Grove. A chapel seating 500 was completed in 1961, and later the much larger Crystal Cathedral was built on the expanded church campus and dedicated in 1980. Its glass design became the backdrop for his Sunday Hour of Power broadcasts for the next 25 years. Schuller emphasized what he saw as the positive aspects of the Christian faith and deliberately avoided condemning people for sin, believing that Jesus “met needs before touting creeds.” That helps explain why lines such as “Tough times never last, but tough people do” still feel direct and useful to many readers: they turn hardship into something people can face, not a final verdict on who they are.