Some years ago, Robert H. Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral and the Hour of Power television program that once was considered the most widely watched religious program in the world, was the speaker at a college in the town where I lived and worked.

I attended Schuller’s lecture and had the opportunity to interact with him. He left many folks in the audience feeling like we could make something of ourselves and that religion was a positive, not a negative, part of the equation. He also left questions about where the line was drawn between Schuller, the bigger-than-life icon, and Schuller, the servant of Christianity and humankind.

There were news reports recently that Schuller, now 84, was voted off the board of the church he founded. The reports stated that two of Schuller’s daughters, one of them now the senior pastor of the church, backed the move. Days later a church spokesperson said Schuller was not voted off, but rather his position was changed to a non-voting member of the board.

Who’s kidding whom?

The church was in financial trouble, having filed for bankruptcy with fundraising falling off during the recession. Also, there were reports of disagreement over changing to a different format with a gospel choir, and requiring members of the new choir and other church positions to sign an oath about their faith and belief that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.

Schuller, who graduated from the Western Reserve Seminary and was a minister of the Reformed Christian Church, showed up in Garden Grove, Calif., back in 1955. Born on a midwestern farm of humble means, he could intellectualize about religion and theology with the best minds. But, he was there to build a church and there just were not a lot of Reformed Christian Church folks hanging out on the street corners.

He rented a drive-in theatre and began to preach to people in their cars. He eventually built a church with a sanctuary for people who worshipped in a traditional indoors setting, but the pulpit was elevated so he could also preach to parishioners in 500 cars. He later built the Crystal Cathedral with world-famous architect Phillip Johnson.

Schuller was an easy target for fundamentalists. Too much money spent on buildings and professional musicians. Too much of a watered-down message, the God of Hope and Love vs. the God of Repentance and Forgiveness.

Schuller seemed to be one who believed that finding God opened your eyes to a journey where an increase in faith resulted in a decrease in sin. He said that Jesus “met needs before touting creeds.”

If you were sitting at home on a Sunday morning, turned off by traditional centers of faith or religion in general, and found Schuller on TV, you would plug into great music, great stories of faith, humor, and the Christian message, salt and peppered with what he called “possibility thinking.”

Schuller was influenced by ministers like Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” who accepted an invitation by Schuller to speak at his fledgling church in those ‘50s.

Schuller loves to tell the story on Peale (and perhaps on himself) that on that big day at Schuller’s church when he stood up at the pulpit and said something like, “There is a man who has been a great influence in my life. His work has changed the lives of many, many people. Once you hear the words of this man, your life too will be changed.”

Schuller could see Norman Vincent Peale easing to the edge of his seat, straightening his suit coat, preparing to ascend to the pulpit after this fabulous introduction.

He continued, “That person is Jesus Christ. And here to tell you about him is Norman Vince Peale.”

One of Schuller’s art forms was translating truth into a sentence that would appear on the television screen as he tried to move people from doubt to faith, from depression to hope, from being stuck to being alive.

“Tough times never last, tough people do,” he would say.

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” he would ask.

“Build a dream and the dream will build you,” he would challenge.

Schuller built a dream and he lived a moment of enduring controversy, criticism and his own humanity. But, he also lived in a moment where for many there was healing, hope and faith.

Today, that dream may become the victim of family, economy, power struggles, religiosity, the times we live in. I hope Schuller will recall one of his single sentence truths, “Always look at what you have left, not what you lost.”

Chuck Lyons is CEO of Post-Newsweek Media, the parent company of The Gazette.