Joel Osteen
By Robert M. Bowman, Jr.Founding Date: Joel Osteen became pastor of Lakewood Church in 1999.Organizations:Lakewood Church, founded in 1959 by Joel’s father John Osteen; Joel Osteen Ministries.Official Publications:Osteen and the Lakewood Church affirm that the Bible is the Word of God. Osteen’s bestselling books are Your Best Life Nowand Become a Better You.Other Names:Osteen is a Word of Faith evangelist; commonly identified as a preacher of the “prosperity” gospel (an identification he disputes).
HISTORY
Joel Osteen was born in 1963.His father, John Osteen, had been an ordained Southern Baptistpastor, but in 1958 became a charismatic and dissociated himself from the Baptists. In 1959 he started Lakewood Church as an independent, nondenominational church out of an abandoned feed store in northeast Houston, Texas. From 1982 until 1999, his son Joel was the producer of John’s television ministry. Joel, who had attended Oral Roberts University for one semester and who had preached his first sermonthe week before John died, succeeded his father as pastor.When John passed away in 1999, Lakewood had about 6,000 members. In 2007, the church claimedover 38,000 were attendingits services weekly, making it the largest church in America. Osteen packs other amphitheaters as well, regularly drawing crowds in the tens of thousands as he speaks about once a month in cities all over North America (and occasionally overseas).In 2005, Lakewood Church began leasing the Compaq Center, a 16,000-seat sports arena that had been the home of theHouston Rockets. The church performed renovations to the facility carrying an estimated $100 million price tag. The move actually made sense: attendance had more than doubled in the first five years of Joel Osteen’s tenure as pastor, even before the move to the Compaq Center and before his book Your Best Life Nowcatapulted him to stardom. Joel’s youth, understanding of television, and “positive” message are likely all factors in the explosive growth of Lakewood Church since he became its pastor.Osteen is, not surprisingly, one of the broadcasters on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which is infamous for its lineup of Word-Faith evangelists alongside more mainstream evangelical pastors such as Charles Stanley. Osteen also broadcasts on other networks, including ABC Family, CNBC, USA, Discovery, and the Black Entertainment Network (BET), as well as networks in Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. Osteen began podcasting his sermons in early 2006, and by early 2007 they were in the top ten audio podcasts on iTunes, with typically a million or more downloads each month.1Osteen’s book Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential,2published in November 2004, has sold between four and five million copies. This does not even count the study guide, devotional, journal, and calendar associated with the book, or the many foreign-language editions. According to Publishers Weekly, his book Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life, released in October 2007, was to have a first printing of three million.3The January 2007 issue of The Church Reportidentified Joel Osteen as the “most influential Christian in America,” ahead of (for example) Billy Graham, Focus on the Family’s founder James Dobson, and U.S. president George W. Bush.4Although the list derives from a poll of the periodical’s readers, it confirms just how popular Osteen is. Indeed, in 2006 Barbara Walters profiled Osteen as one of her “10 Most Fascinating People in America,” describing him as “rich, famous, handsome, and adored by millions of fans on television each week”—which explains how he made it into a line-up that included Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Patrick Dempsey, and the rapper Jay-Z. Osteen’s popularity provoked Timemagazine to run an article asking, “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” that highlighted Osteen’s controversial message.5
No comments:
Post a Comment