TJ Walker examines Robert Schuller, the TV evangelist whose ministry blended positive thinking, Protestant Christianity, Catholic showmanship, and celebrity culture. Schuller preached from age five, had plastic surgery for his nose, and built one of the most-watched TV ministries ever. Walker argues public speakers should study TV preachers regardless of their beliefs.
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TV evangelist Robert Shuler is dead at age 88. If you are a fan or a student of public speaking, you have to be fascinated by TV preachers, regardless of your views on religion and theology. Robert Schuller was one of the kingpins of TV evangelism. He was on the air for decades and often had the number one watched show in and the US and around the world. He raised generated hundreds if not billions of dollars of revenue over his time. To me, he's fascinating because he really blended four different strands with his presentation. Part of what he did was take sort of the best of 1950s positive thinking, pop psychology and blend it into his the Norman, Vincent Peales, the world. He brought them into his church and he essentially borrowed their power of positive thinking philosophy. That's one strand. Another strand was just sort of mainstream, not necessarily liberal, but not conservative, Christian, Protestant religion. The next thing he brought in was the robes, the showmanship, the wardrobe and the grandiosity of architecture of the Catholic Church. Now, his cathedral palace doesn't exactly look like a 14th century monastery, but it is grand in a way that typical churches in the US are not. The fourth thing he brought in was heavy, heavy doses of pop culture celebrity. He was always referencing conversation with Bob Hope or having celebrated celebrity stop by and present and give little talks on his Hour of Power. So that's why I think he was extraordinarily successful. Now, some interesting things about him. According to his biographer in the Los Angeles Times, he started preaching at age five to cows. He started speaking to cows and that's how he honed his craft. By his own admission, he, he was an unpopular kid, overweight, did poorly in school, but he did know that he wanted to be a preacher and he practiced his craft from age 5. Now other interesting thing about him, he had a particular type of disease where his nose couldn't stop growing and he had to have plastic surgeries to keep his nose from continuing to grow. I'll leave it up to others as to how that relates to a TV evangelist. Here's the thing that I think many people forget because they focus on listening to the content so much. The second they hear someone say something they disagree with, whether it's about politics or theology, they want to discount the person. And I understand that we all do that from time to time. But if you are a serious student of public speaking and presentation and communication skills, I'll give you the same advice I give my clients. And here it is. Spend five minutes a week, Sunday mornings, flipping around, watching the TV preachers because as a class of people, you can say a lot of things about them. But as a class of people, they are world class communicators. Because you cannot raise enough money to get on TV unless you're a really good communicator and great at salesmanship. And you cannot stay on television unless you are a great communicator. You're either so good at asking people for money, or as someone like Joel Osteen, who is kind of a modern day next version of a Robert Shuller, you're simply so good at being interesting and captivating people and being memorable that people just give you money. So that's my public speaking tip of the day. Take a look, regardless of your beliefs on religion, whether you're a fan or not a fan at all, and think it's all hokum, take a look, because you will learn something from all the TV evangelists.
