Prime Minister
JOEL OSTEEN’S Houston gigachurch has a congregation of more than 30,000. His television show is the highest-rated religious broadcast in the country. His first book has already sold nearly three million copies. How did the former TV producer become the world’s most talked about “pastorpreneur”? He is who he says he is. He has what he says he has. He can do what he says he can do.
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John was one of many Pentecostal pastors proclaiming this controversial worldview, which went under such names as Word of Faith, Name It and Claim It, Positive Confession, or simply Health and Wealth. The essence of the teaching is that when Christians have sufficient faith, they can ask for healing, for prosperity, or for almost any other legitimate good, and God is honor-bound to provide it. That message was a winner at Lakewood. Almost immediately, the church began to expand rapidly, first to a simple but more substantial building hardly larger than the feed store, then to a flat, featureless structure that by 1979 had increased to accommodate more than five thousand worshippers, all sitting on folding chairs. In that time, Lakewood had also become a popular venue for some of the top preachers, teachers, and musicians in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, especially those who shared Pastor John’s Word of Faith convictions.
By the early eighties, the Osteen family was flourishing as well. John and Dodie had six grown children (the oldest, Justin, was John’s by an earlier marriage that had ended in what is referred to by the family as “an unwanted divorce”). They all lived comfortably in what is now Kingwood. Dodie and daughter Lisa were active in the church’s ministry; younger daughters April and Tamara were faithful Christians; son Paul was in medical school; and the youngest son, Joel, was a freshman at Oral Roberts University, in Oklahoma. By all accounts, Joel was already an upbeat, optimistic encourager; still, he surprised his family in 1982 when he returned home and told them that he wanted to drop out of ORU and help his dad launch a television ministry. John soon agreed, with the understanding that they would never use the program to ask for money.
His son quickly demonstrated a notable talent for TV production and overall marketing. Lakewood’s Sunday service, which Joel directed and produced, was soon being aired locally over Houston’s CBS affiliate, KHOU-11, and nationally on the Family Channel. It was hard to drive on a Houston freeway without seeing John Osteen’s smiling visage shining down from strategically placed billboards. Not everyone knew exactly where Lakewood was, but few Houstonians were unaware that it existed. This point was brought home to me one evening around that time when, riding around with two of my granddaughters, then about six and four years old, a radio commercial began with “We believe in new beginnings,” and the girls immediately chimed in with “and we believe in yoooooouuuuu!!!” (The Houston Press would later assert that the jingle ranked as one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the city’s history.) Joel’s efforts helped Lakewood take another giant step: building a 7,800-seat facility in 1987, one that resembled a civic auditorium more than a sanctuary. This was followed by a large family life building in 1991 and a combination education-office building in 1993, making it easy to mistake Lakewood for a well-kept community college with a great deal of parking.
It seemed nothing could stop Lakewood’s growth as long as its pastor stayed healthy, and John had frequently predicted that he would be preaching into his nineties. But while in his mid-seventies, John developed some serious medical problems, including a heart condition that necessitated a pacemaker and high blood pressure that weakened his kidneys to such a degree that he required dialysis. One week, in mid-January 1999, he felt so depleted that he called Joel to ask him to preach for him on Sunday morning.
There was no clear reason to think his son would be an able preacher; personal charisma does not pass automatically from generation to generation. Yet it was no surprise that John had confidence in Joel. When John went on preaching missions to foreign countries, particularly to India, where Lakewood had sent millions of dollars to support missionaries and establish Bible schools, orphanages, and medical clinics, Joel and Victoria, who had married in 1987, went along to handle the filming of the revivals and to provide companionship and care. As they might have put it, Joel and John knew each other’s hearts. But unlike his mother and several of his siblings, Joel had never delivered a single sermon; in fact, he had steadfastly refused to do so on numerous occasions. And even when his father called that night and said, “Joel, you’re my first choice,” the son once again refused. Then Joel hung up the phone and sat down to eat dinner, confident that Lisa or his mother or some other staff member could easily fill the pulpit for a week or two. A few minutes later, however, Joel changed his mind—something came over him, he says—and called back to tell his dad that he would do it.
The days before that Sunday were not easy. He was convinced that he had made a serious error and was setting himself up for colossal public failure. Knowing he’d be preaching for the first time, in front of some six thousand people, he longed to retreat to his familiar and comfortable position behind the camera. To boost his confidence, he even wore a pair of his father’s shoes when he stepped onto the broad stage. He spoke rapidly but winningly, drawing laughs from a sympathetic audience with self-deprecating comments and amusing stories about his family. No one, apparently, enjoyed the sermon more than John, who had been hospitalized but had listened to the service over a telephone. Lisa recalled that when she visited her father after the service, he asked her how she thought Joel had done and she had said, “I thought he was great. You know, Daddy, I think one day he may be standing in front of that camera instead of behind it.” Later that same week, on January 23, John Osteen died of a heart attack at age 77. Before the end of the year, Joel officially became Lakewood’s new leader.
IN FRONT OF PACKED CROWDS, PASTOR JOEL IS A SUPERB COMMUNICATOR. He pokes fun at himself, makes no effort to moderate a strong Texas twang, and appears to be talking almost extemporaneously. He seems completely unaffected and can be funny without straining to be a comic. His presence and charisma go a long way toward explaining the astounding popularity of the Joel Osteen television program, which in most markets is half an hour long and consists almost entirely of his preaching. But crucial to the success of Lakewood is bringing in its Houston constituents, who provide more than 80 percent of the ministry’s $50 million in annual contributions. As with all megachurches—usually defined as Protestant churches with more than 2,000 members; at 30,000, Lakewood is sometimes called a gigachurch—new members are attracted with a vibrant worship experience packed with generous helpings of music and prayer. On a mild Sunday morning in early February, I witnessed a good example of Lakewood’s version of a familiar format.
Nearly half an hour before the official beginning of the eight-thirty service, worship leader Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff led a 64-voice choir through several numbers that provided background music as the thousands of congregants found their way to seats with the aid of an extensive corps of ushers, part of the thousand or so volunteers needed each weekend. When the time came, Joel and Victoria stepped onto the stage, and Joel gave his standard greeting: “We welcome you to Lakewood. You guys are looking good. You look like more than conquerors this morning.…Let’s take a few minutes to celebrate the good things God has done in our lives.” Victoria, her honey-blond hair cascading over a dramatic black-and-white dress, then offered an enthusiastic endorsement of her husband’s words and promised, “If you are coming in here and you have a heart for God, he will never fail you.”
With this call to worship completed, Cruse-Ratcliff, the choir, and a ten-piece band launched into a slick, rollicking, often throbbing country-rock-gospel outpouring that had the congregation on its feet for more than half an hour, most with arms upraised, some dancing in a manner not learned entirely in church. In one of the aisles, an older black gentleman, nattily dressed in a gray suit, expressed his pleasure at being in the house of the Lord with a restrained but charming quick-step soft-shoe shuffle. Cruse-Ratcliff, meanwhile, wearing high-heeled boots, a white blouse, and a long black jacket that made her short black skirt seem more modest, prowled the stage almost fiercely, now bouncing, now stomping, now leaning forward in an attitude and expression of pained ecstasy. All of this was magnified on five giant screens and dozens of smaller monitors spaced throughout the auditorium and underscored by a saxophone whose smoky sensuality sounded better suited for Saturday night than Sunday morning.
Cruse-Ratcliff and her colleague, African American singer-songwriter Israel Houghton, compose most of the music used at Lakewood. Typical of the thousands of churches that have converted to “praise music,” hymnals have given way to projection screens, and harmony and substantive content have surrendered to unison repetition of simple themes with simple words:
Lord, we declare, who can compare, who would even dare,
’Cause there is no one like you.
Or, in a less complex assessment of divine transcendence,
Who is like the Lord? Nobody!
Who is like the Lord? No, no, no, no, no, nobody!
And, in what seems to be Lakewood’s all-purpose signature stanza,
I am a friend of God,
I am a friend of God,
I am a friend of God,
He calls me friend.
It is not deep, and there’s no definitive confirmation that the Almighty actually prefers the praise genre to august anthems, but it is clearly a great deal of fun.
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