Robert H. Schuller*

Born in 1926 in Alton, Iowa, Robert Schuller was the youngest of five children of a hardworking and deeply religious Iowa farmer. Through droughts and the Great Depression, the entire family worked to keep the farm.

Educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Schuller was committed early to his goal of the ministry. After graduating from high school in 1944, he studied at Hope College, where he majored in history and won competitive awards in debate and oratory. He also worked as a janitor during that time.

When Schuller was a college freshman, a tornado struck and destroyed all that the family had fought so hard to keep. During that summer, he helped his father rebuild the house with used lumber and bent nails retrieved from the debris.

After receiving his degree in 1947, he entered Western Theological Seminary. In 1950, he received a master of divinity degree and was ordained as a minister in the Reformed Church in America. Following his ordination, he accepted a call to the Ivanhoe Reformed Church in Chicago, a struggling 38-member congregation. When he left five years later, Ivanhoe had 400 members.

In 1955, the Reformed Church asked Schuller to go to Garden Grove, California, to begin a new church. He accepted the challenge eagerly. With a budget of $500, he rented a drive-in movie theater for the first service. Addressing 28 cars from the rooftop of the snack bar, Schuller based his sermon on a Biblical passage that has become his primary text: "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to your mountain, '˜Move,' and nothing will be impossible to you."

Word spread about the "drive-in" church. Soon, Schuller built a new church that would seat 1,000 inside. Outside, there was space for hundreds to attend services in their cars and hundreds more to sit on the grass surrounding the sanctuary. When that facility was outgrown, Schuller retained architect Philip Johnson to design a new sanctuary that would blend the spiritual with the wonders of nature. The resulting Crystal Cathedral was enclosed entirely of glass, designed to hold 2,736 people, and believed to be one of the world's most beautiful and inspiring churches.

In 1970, Schuller made his first televised broadcast of his Sunday sermon, calling it Hour of Power, which was directed by his wife, Arvella. It was the first televised church service and one of the longest running programs in television history.

An advocate of positive thinking, Schuller said success is "achieving the maximum development of your inner potential." For those who want to pursue success, he advised, "Develop the kind of faith that will help you to believe in yourself, and dare to try the impossible dreams that emerge in your imagination. Ask yourself, '˜What would I do if I knew I could not fall?' You won't fall if you have faith."

Schuller said his Horatio Alger Award was unsurpassed among all the honors he had received. "The quality and character of the other Members touches me deeply," he said.