Schuller’s ‘Hour of Power’ Films Drawing Worshipers to Theaters

BOISE, Ida. — After losing his church and marriage, Jim needed a spiritual home. He found it at the movies.

The Boise man has been a regular at Cineplex Odeon Towne Square Cinemas since Dec. 4, the start of weekly screenings of the Rev. Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power” television ministry.

He likes the privacy of a darkened theater and the structure of public worship.

“If it stayed here forever, I’d be here forever,” Jim--who would not give his last name--said after a recent service attended by about two dozen people.

Boise is among seven cities in the United States and Australia with theaters showing “Hour of Power” films, and Hour of Power in Cinema International says four more U.S. cities should join in a month. The filmed sermons debuted in November in a Newport Beach theater.

Weekly screenings are also planned for the Netherlands and Germany; Switzerland is in the works; two sites in India should be included by Easter, and Hungary and the Grand Cayman Islands are targeted this year. Talks are under way for locations in Scotland and Ireland.

The worldwide goal is 2,000 theaters by 2000.

Hour of Power in Cinema, the only program of its kind, was launched in November to help spread Schuller’s message of positive Christianity beyond his TV audience and Crystal Cathedral congregation in Garden Grove.

It also is a way for Schuller to help local ministers reach out to the “unchurched” on the neutral ground of neighborhood and mall theaters.

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And for people like Jim, it is an opportunity to commune with God without strings.

“I don’t need someone inviting me to lunch and getting me on a committee,” he said. “I tried listening to TV and everything else, but I needed the discipline to get up and completely focus on the message. This is just what I need.”

Forty years ago, people without the time or inclination to attend a regular Sunday service could go to a drive-in in Orange County to hear the then 28-year-old Schuller speak from the roof of the snack bar. Now he reaches an estimated 20 million people in 184 countries every week.

But Schuller lost about 200,000 viewers last year when NBC cut religious programming on its newly acquired European Super Channel.

More than 700 supporters turned out when Schuller appeared at a Swiss hotel in May, and many of them urged him to find a new way to bring them his Crystal Cathedral services. So he had an “Hour of Power” program transferred to 35-millimeter film, and the big-screen ministry took off.

Initial plans were ambitious--Schuller officials talked about expanding to 2,000 theaters within two years--but the reality has been more modest.

“We started at a very peculiar time of year because of the Christmas holidays and New Year’s,” said Jim Hampton, administrative assistant for the Hour of Power group. “We’ve had kind of a strange period during which to gauge our success, but I think we’re doing well.”

Schuller’s organization recruits local ministers to coordinate the theater services as volunteers. Most are graduates of his Institute for Successful Church Leadership and participants in Churches United in Global Mission, an interdenominational network of pastors.

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Gene Crewse, pastor of the Mountain View Baptist Church in Boise, conducts the Towne Square Cinemas meetings. A Schuller fan and institute graduate, Crewse sees the movie ministry as a natural, needed and non-threatening expansion of the concept of worship.

“Some people like to go and just worship and remain anonymous,” he said. “They don’t really want some of the other things that go on with that--the stress of relationships or the stress of leadership or the stress of serving--and that’s available here.”

At the Boise services, Crewse and retired Pastor Ken Britt of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ in Nampa greet people at the door and offer personal prayer. A few people somewhat hesitantly sing along with the Crystal Cathedral congregation in the movie, and most heads bow when Schuller leads in prayers.

“It’s like it takes you right inside the cathedral, and vicariously you’re there. You’re a part of the congregation,” Crewse said.

Donations are accepted in the lobby (there is no admission charge) and literature is available, but the atmosphere is decidedly low-key. Few people wear their Sunday best and there is no pressure for anyone to move on to a regular congregation.

The Rev. Ray Cotton, executive director of Hour of Power in Cinema International, said the goal is building belief, not membership rolls.

“We would really like to reach out to people who have no faith. That’s been one of the things the television ministry has done,” he said. “There have been a lot of people who’ve tuned in who had no claim to faith. We’re hoping that happens in the cinemas, too.”