August 2005
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.
FOR MOST PREACHERS, MONDAY IS A DAY OF REST. FOR JOEL Osteen, the 42-year-old pastor of Houston’s mammoth Lakewood Church and the face of the world’s most popular religious television program, Mondays have become devoted to meeting his public. On this particular Monday in mid-December, his first book, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, had just hit the top spot on the New York Times’ “Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” best-seller list. To show its appreciation, the book’s publisher, Warner Faith, had provided Joel with a private jet and liveried town cars to ease the burden of a book-signing trip that included events in Arkansas and Tennessee on the same day.
At the first stop, a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Little Rock, a few hundred adoring admirers were already lined up as Joel and his wife, Victoria, made their way to the store’s book section. Some fans applauded them ecstatically or squealed with delight; others handed them flowers or reached out to touch them, tears of joy streaming down their faces. One woman said to her husband, a tinge of disappointment in her voice, “I thought he was taller. He’s no bigger than you are.” In fact, Joel is not a particularly imposing figure. A trim five nine, he looks and stays in good shape by running, lifting weights, and playing basketball at the YMCA. On television or before any sizable gathering, he wears a conservative dark suit and an attractive but not flashy tie, with thick black hair moussed and curling down his neck past his collar line his only nod to youthful fashion. He is not classically handsome, but his face is instantly appealing, both because of the lively energy in his intense blue eyes and a smile that never seems forced and is seldom missing; he is often referred to as the Smiling Preacher.
As Joel sat down, Lakewood executive director Duncan Dodds announced that the pastor would not have time to listen to testimonies or to personalize his inscriptions. But these restrictions detracted little from the excitement. A large woman laughed and jumped up and down while taking pictures of friends having their books signed. Another woman clutched her autographed book to her breast and said through rapturous tears, “I’m signed. I’m blessed. It’s all good!” Many were content simply to let Joel know that they were his greatest admirers, but some used their precious seconds to attempt a more personal connection: “I been keeping up with you since you first started.” “You saved my husband’s life.” “Shake my baby’s hand. He needs the anointing.” “This is Bailey Ann. She claps when she watches you.” One man handed his cell phone to Joel and asked him to say “Hi, Jamie” to his wife. (“She started a new job today and couldn’t come.”) Joel happily obliged. A young minister who identified himself as Chopper handed the pastor a DVD of his sermons, noting that he often used Joel’s. (Among preachers, plagiarism has long been considered more homage than offense.)
A few aisles down, past an area where a young woman from Warner Faith stayed busy opening box after box of Joel’s book, Victoria held court with a smaller but no less enthusiastic crowd. A tall blond woman blessed with a beauty queen’s features and smile, she wears clothes well. On this day, the vaguely dominatrix look of her high-heeled black boots, black mock turtleneck sweater, and long black leather coat with silver buttons down the front was erased by the warm friendliness she showered on her adorers: “Hi, sweetheart. How are you, darling?” “It’s so good to meet you. You look so pretty.” “You watch every week? Oh, that’s wonderful!” “Bless your heart.” “We love you too.”
After two hours, during which Joel signed nearly 1,200 books, we hustled back to the airport and headed to Nashville, where a reception was awaiting the Osteens at Warner Faith’s suburban Brentwood headquarters. The staff there were duly solicitous, giving Joel a plaque for having reached number one on the best-seller list. Though the young house, a Time-Warner subsidiary, publishes the work of several popular religious authors, Joel is clearly its prize of the moment. I was told that a woman who had represented Doubleday in the bidding for Joel’s book had told her successful competitor, “You have just guaranteed the success of Warner Faith.”
It’s an audacious claim, especially when you consider that just six years ago Joel Osteen was largely unknown—probably even to most members of Lakewood Church, whose beloved founder and guiding spirit was his father, John Osteen. And even among those who did know Joel, it is difficult to find anyone who imagined that the mantle would fall to him when his father died, in 1999. At the time, Joel was a college dropout who ran the church’s television ministry and hadn’t preached a single sermon. Yet within a few years, he’s positioned himself as one of the country’s premier “pastorpreneurs,” a term often used to describe the leaders behind America’s rapidly expanding megachurches. Preaching a consistently upbeat, can-do message that some detractors refer to as “Christianity Lite”—references to biblical passages are few, and he rarely takes a stand on controversial political issues—he’s attracted one of the largest and most diverse flocks this side of the Vatican. Under his stewardship, Lakewood has grown from an impressive 6,000 congregants to more than 30,000. His personal-appearance events are packing arenas in major cities around the country, including Madison Square Garden, in New York, where an extra night had to be scheduled to keep up with demand, and the American Airlines Center, in Dallas, where scalped tickets fetched as much as $100. His television show, Joel Osteen, is now broadcast in more than 150 countries. And in mid-July, Lakewood Church moved into the former home of the Houston Rockets, the 16,000-seat Compaq Center, where he and his staff expect their congregation to swell before long to 50,000. In less than a decade, Joel Osteen has outgrown nearly everything he inherited.
The outstripping of expectations was evident that evening, when, following the reception at Warner Faith, Joel headed for yet another book signing, this time at a Barnes and Noble. The store manager, looking at a line that was already outside the door when we arrived, said, “We knew it would be big but not this big this fast.” Joel and Victoria slowly wound their way through the store, their procession made more auspicious by the dazzling lights of a camera crew covering the event for a local TV station. Twelve hours into his whirlwind tour, Joel still maintained his infectious grin as he addressed his fans with his familiar greeting: “We just love you guys.” The crowd was a bit more upscale than the mostly working-class folk we had seen at Wal-Mart, but the palpable excitement and the proffered comments were much the same: “Love your show. It kept me going.” “I watch you three times a day.” “You are so uplifting. I love to see you smiling.” “The Lord’s with you, boy.”
Joel signed another 750 books, bringing the total for the day to nearly 2,000, all without the slightest sign of fatigue or boredom. The day before, he had preached to 30,000 people packed into 4 ninety-minute high-octane services and had now gone full tilt on one stage or another since daybreak. Minutes after we got into the air, bound for Houston, Joel pulled his tray out before him, laid his head directly on it, without a pillow, and slept soundly until we made the approach for our landing.
THE STORY OF HOW JOEL OSTEEN BECAME THE leader of the fastest-growing ministry in America begins with his father. The son of a cotton farmer in the East Texas town of Paris, John Osteen wasn’t converted until he was eighteen, not long after he had had the feeling that God was tapping him on the shoulder as he left a Fort Worth nightclub (perhaps for being underage). Shortly afterward, he accepted Christ and began preaching in his hometown. After earning degrees from John Brown University and Northern Baptist Seminary, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister. He made a brief move to San Diego but soon came back to Texas, where, in 1954, he met and married Dolores “Dodie” Pilgrim, a fitting name for a woman about to set sail into uncharted waters. John served as pastor of Central Baptist Church, in Baytown, and Hibbard Memorial Baptist, in Houston.
Not long after arriving at Hibbard Memorial, in 1958, John experienced and began to recommend to others what Pentecostal and charismatic Christians call the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” which typically involves speaking in tongues and openness to other “gifts of the Spirit,” such as the ability to heal, perform exorcisms, and experience visions. Rather than face a showdown with his Baptist brethren, who preferred to keep a tighter rein on the Holy Spirit, John withdrew from their fellowship and, in 1959, founded Lakewood Church in an abandoned feed store in a predominantly black neighborhood on Houston’s northeast side. It was an unimpressive little place, not obviously different from the many churches one sees in such neighborhoods or along highways of Texas and throughout the South, where a small group of believers and a zealous preacher have erected an outpost of faith in the hope of winning their slice of the world for Christ. From the start, however, Lakewood had a great spirit. Nondenominational and inclusive, it welcomed all colors and conditions to what Pastor John referred to as an “oasis of love in a troubled world.”
Though hardly a captivating orator, John was a competent preacher with a lively revivalist style. He spoke on conventional topics—the atonement, the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit—but the theme with which he became most closely identified may be found in this passage from one of his sermons: “It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It’s God’s will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt. It’s God’s will for you to live in health and not in sickness all the days of your life.”
