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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Jesus indeed told stories, but he also issued some scathing condemnation of sinners, particularly the arrogant, the self-righteous, the corrupt, and those who trust in riches. Joel’s sermons are notably free of condemnation. “The Bible says it is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance,” he said. “When I talk about sin, I may call it ‘making bad choices.’ People get so used to being beat over the head. I don’t come from that side. I come from the encouraging side. It seems like it resonates with people that God is for them. I feel like I’m doing what God calls me to do. I don’t have any agenda to say I’m not going to preach about sin. I write my sermons and pray, and this is what comes out of me.”
What about issues of basic social justice, of structures that impede or block personal growth and prosperity, no matter how strongly one believes or how hard one prays? “I don’t know that I have a good answer on that,” he said. “I feel like the church should be a force. I know that I am all for anything we can do to lift people. On a thirty-minute program, you can’t solve the world’s problems.” As for that knottiest of theological issues, the problem of suffering: “I have a file in my mind called an ‘I don’t understand it’ file. There are some things we are not going to understand, and we must say, like Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’ I think God will give us peace to go through anything. How do you tell somebody why their kid got killed in a car wreck? You just say, ‘I can’t understand it. I can’t explain it to you.’ You can’t dwell on that. You just know that God is in control. It’s a tough issue.”
PERHAPS IN AN EFFORT TO MAINTAIN HIS UPLIFTING MESSAGE, Joel has avoided speaking out on today’s red state, blue state issues, such as abortion and homosexuality. “I feel there are other issues I am called to more than those,” he explained. “I don’t know the answers, even on abortion. Somebody asked me what I think of stem cell research. I had to say I don’t know. I’ve heard people talk about it both ways. I don’t think a homosexual lifestyle is God’s best way, but I’m not going to tell [homosexuals] they can’t come to our church. I’m going to be wide open for them.” In the same spirit, he has resisted recruitment into the ranks of the religious right. Iloff, who worked for a time in the White House during the senior Bush administration, admitted that he was tempted at one time to try to get Joel to be more political. “I guess God dealt with me on that, because I realized, as Joel did from the very beginning, that [politics] could be very polarizing. It could shut the door on his ability to plant the seed of God’s message in people’s hearts.” Politicians are often eager to court his constituency, yet as a general rule, an officeholder who attends Joel’s service will be recognized but not asked to speak. And candidates in a current race will rarely be recognized at all.
What does come out of Joel, no matter what topic he is discussing, is unfailingly upbeat and encouraging. Repeatedly, at book signings, at the Dallas appearance, and at the church itself, his followers told me that this was part of the appeal: “You can actually take what he teaches you into real life. It’s real useful.” “He gives you such a positive outlook on life. When you listen to him, he gives you renewed hope.” “He addresses the needs in my life.” “He doesn’t make you feel dirty, you know? It’s just so uplifting.” Nonetheless, Joel and his family are sensitive to the charge of theological thinness, so they take comfort in the classic defense used by unconventional but successful evangelists for centuries: It gets results. Virtually every key person I interviewed noted that “We had eighteen thousand people walk the aisles [at Lakewood] last year” to mark a new or renewed relationship with Jesus and that thousands of others from across the country and around the world write or call each week to tell of “giving their lives to the Lord.”
After Joel’s invitation to new visitors at the end of the Sunday service I attended in February, I followed dozens of people to a “salvation room” behind the stage. Once there, Joel congratulated them, urged them to get into a good Bible church if they didn’t intend to keep coming to Lakewood—“This is not the only good church”—and gave each of them a small folder entitled “Your Next Step to a New Beginning,” which set forth a bare outline of Christian beliefs, encouraged them to be baptized in water, and invited them to attend an eight-week New Beginnings class taught on Sunday evenings by Paul. They also received 30 Thoughts for Victorious Living, a daily devotional guide written by Joel. It wasn’t possible to probe the thoughts of these folks, but expressions on the faces of most indicated that they felt something significant had just happened.
The Osteens define salvation as both a transformation in one’s earthly life and the promise of eternal life in heaven. They believe in hell, but they don’t talk about it much. As Lisa put it: “My dad always said, ‘Preach the Bible like it’s good news. Don’t tell people they’re going to hell. Tell them they don’t have to go.’” Joel often makes the same point: “God is not mad at you; he is not trying to send you down into darkness. God is on your side. He has already forgiven your sins. All you’ve got to do is accept the free gift of God’s salvation.”
Quite appealing, to be sure, but what about Jesus’ observation that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few”? Doesn’t the gospel according to Joel sound more like the wide gate and the easy way that leads to destruction? Paul knew the scripture. “I think we’ve made it clear,” he said, “that you have to change your life. Joel is giving a lot of people the opportunity to find the narrow way.” Paul contends that, despite the lack of standard theological content, his brother is nonetheless an effective evangelist. “We see the results all the time. I see a guy who is addicted to cocaine, addicted to pornography, on his fourth marriage—it doesn’t happen instantly, but in a couple of years, he’s married, he’s stable, he’s got a job, he’s got a heart for God. Let me tell you, that’s pretty big.”
Joel says little about the narrow way in his televised sermons or his book, which elaborates on the themes from those sermons. In the past he has conceded that most of his ministry is not evangelistic and has admitted that the principles he extols will work in anybody’s life, whether or not that person is a Christian, but he feels confident that by teaching people how to live as God wants them to live, he is training them for Christian discipleship. And in addition to those he brings into the church, Joel feels his television audience gets the necessary message when he offers a fifteen-second “salvation call” at the end of each telecast, asking viewers to repeat a brief prayer—“Lord Jesus, I repent of my sins. I ask you to come into my heart. I make you my Lord and Savior”—and assuring them that if they say those words, they will be born again. “It’s not long and it’s not complicated,” he acknowledged. “It would be great to have three minutes to really explain it, but I do think I put it out there.”
Reluctance to shut the gate or shrink the dimensions of the path does not sit well with everyone in Joel’s audience. When he appeared on Larry King Live in late June, King asked him about the fate of Jews and Muslims, who “don’t accept Christ at all.” Joel replied, “I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.…I just think that only God will judge a person’s heart. I spent a lot of time in India with my father. I don’t know all about their religion. But I know they love God.…I’ve seen their sincerity. So I don’t know.” That humane, large-spirited response—quite similar to comments Billy Graham has made on occasion—apparently brought a flood of critical calls, letters, and e-mails to the Lakewood office, prompting Joel to issue an abject apology on his Web site, asserting that he believes “Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven” and that he regretted that he had not “clearly communicate[d] the convictions that I hold so precious.” In light of his consistent spirit of “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” Joel’s repudiation of his apparent instinct in the face of opposition reminded me of another scripture: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
IN A VIDEO SHOWN AT THE TOUR EVENTS, a man says he believes Joel will replace Billy Graham. Clearly, that does not strike Joel’s siblings as fanciful. “Joel’s impact is huge,” Paul pointed out. “He has a humility about him, a power and presence, an ability to use television, and hundreds of pastors are saying, ‘This is changing our lives.’ It would not surprise me for Joel to be a dominant force in Christianity for quite a few years.” Lisa’s assessment was even more positive: “The reason they [compare Joel to Graham] is because the anointing is on him to bring in thousands, and that’s what we saw with Billy Graham, and still see today. That is only the hand of God on a person. You don’t choose that. God chooses. I sort of agree with them.”
Billy Graham, of course, is not an office in the Christian church that must be filled. Because of the enormous growth and diversification within evangelical Christianity over the past half-century, much of it a result of Graham’s vision and thoughtful leadership, it is unlikely that any single figure will ever dominate it again to the extent that Graham has. Yet Joel Osteen is on a remarkable arc, and it’s more than fair to speculate that he is nowhere near his peak. That ambitious outlook seems to be embedded in the Osteen genes. Dodie once told me that her husband announced years ago, “Someday, we’ll be meeting in the Compaq Center.” Lisa remembered that he had the Astrodome in his sights. For his part, as Joel has said, “I am convinced that in twenty years we’ll look up and realize that the Compaq Center isn’t big enough to hold all the people. Hopefully, someone will want to build another stadium by then and Reliant Stadium will be available.”
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