I tend to side with Ole Anthony on this one

GOD'S CHEERLEADER
BY SHERRI DAY
St. Petersburg Times

HOUSTON -- Flashing his trademark smile, Joel Osteen raises his Bible toward the sky and urges his congregation to join him in recitation. “I am what it says I am,” they say together, Bibles aloft. “I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today, I will be taught the Word of God.” Thousands of people, as many as 16,000 in any given service, chime in. Osteen, pastor of the largest church in America, moves effortlessly into his sermon: “Being Seed-Oriented Rather than Need-Oriented.”

The topic was classic Osteen, full of exhortations to look beyond one's own problems and focus on the positive.

“The best thing you could do is get your mind off yourself and go do something good for somebody else,” Osteen said from the pulpit of Lakewood Church on a recent Sunday morning. “When you reach out to others, that's the seed God will use to bring a harvest into your own life.”

Osteen's easy-going, all-inclusive gospel has made him a spiritual rock star.

He's unrelentingly positive, more Norman Vincent Peale than Pat Robertson. His deliberately nonjudgmental sermons, which he will deliver in Tampa at the St. Pete Times Forum on Thursday and Friday, have made him into a bestselling author who is even popular among agnostics and atheists.

Osteen's critics say he's soft, a cotton-candy preacher who specializes in Christianity lite.

“He's a nice guy,” said Ole Anthony, president of Trinity Foundation in Dallas, a nonprofit watchdog group that investigates televangelists. “But his popularity is a testimony of the spiritual infantilism of American culture. He isn't challenging people with the cross. He's qualified to be an excellent spiritual kindergarten teacher.”

In keeping with his teachings, Osteen, 43, brushes off criticism like it's a gnat.

“We talk about being faithful in your marriage and having integrity and making good choices,” Osteen said in an interview. “But I don't necessarily beat people up...it's just not my style.”

A preacher's kid, Osteen says he would have preferred to remain in Lakewood's shadows.

Osteen's parents, the Rev. John and Dodie Osteen, founded Lakewood Church in a deserted Houston feed store in 1959. The elder Osteen started preaching at 17, first as a Southern Baptist and later as a Pentecostal. Utilizing television, he grew the ministry to megachurch status, with a 7,800-seat sanctuary.

Joel, an Oral Roberts University dropout, ran the church's television ministry for 17 years. He thrived in the background, but the spotlight beckoned. In 1999, John Osteen asked Joel to fill in for him one Sunday morning. Reluctantly, Joel agreed. His father died five days later, leaving Joel at the church's helm.

He never went to seminary and lacked preaching experience. But that didn't seem to matter to his followers. With Osteen at the helm, Lakewood experienced meteoric growth.

In 2005, the church completed a $95-million renovation of the Compaq Center, the former home of the NBA's Houston Rockets. Now, when Osteen preaches, he looks out at a 16,000-seat auditorium, with jumbo viewing screens flanking the stage. Two waterfalls gurgle to life during high points in the worship service. A gigantic golden globe rotates behind him.

About 38,000 people attend services at the church each weekend, said Donald Iloff Jr., the church's spokesman and Osteen's brother-in-law. More than 200 U.S. television markets broadcast his sermons. He's also on major networks in Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada and the Middle East.

Osteen's positive messages recent sermon topics include “Having Confidence in Yourself” and “Stop Listening to the Accusing Voices” have helped make him a religious everyman. He touts a loving God. There is no condemnation. No talk of judgment or damnation. No declarations of Christianity as the only way to heaven.

His congregation regularly includes Christians, Jews and Muslims. On a typical Sunday, the sanctuary resembles a Benetton ad, an equal mix of whites, blacks and Hispanics, church leaders say.

Osteen didn't ask for any of it. He says he only wanted to hold the church together after his father's death. Osteen says he was once so unsure of his preaching ability that he canceled all of the church's television air time. His wife encouraged him to re-book it.

He's “kind of a reluctant prophet, somebody who's called of God and says 'I'm not a public speaker,” said Scott Thumma, a professor of religion and sociology at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. “God says, 'No, you're the person I choose.' And lo and behold, he becomes a Moses or Abraham and a tremendous prophet for God. Whether consciously or unconsciously, that story gets played out in Joel.”

Despite his celebrity status, Osteen says he's a regular guy who enjoys spending time with his wife, Victoria, and their children Jonathan, 11, and Alexandra, 8.

But popularity comes with a price. Osteen has been chastised for his inclusiveness. In a 2005 interview with Larry King, Osteen did not say that accepting Jesus is the only way to heaven, infuriating some Christians. He later posted a letter on his Web site apologizing for the oversight.

Others call Osteen a prosperity preacher out to bilk a naive public. He disputes that characterization. He doesn't ask for money on his television broadcasts. But viewers send in about $20-million a year, boosting the church's $75-million budget, church officials said. Anthony, the megachurch investigator, said he has found no evidence of fraud or financial wrongdoing at Lakewood.

After all, Osteen doesn't need the church's money. He stopped taking his $200,000 salary last year . Osteen's 2004 book, Your Best Life Now, sold 4-million copies, making him a millionaire. He has signed a deal for another tome, set for an October release, which could reportedly make him $13-million, according to a report in the New York Times.

'He changed my life'

Near the end of a recent sermon, Osteen weeps. His parents and the original Lakewood Church planted the seeds that have blossomed into his success, he says. The longer he cries, the more the crowd roars.

Moments later, Osteen leaves the sanctuary to greet an eager public. They have queued up in about nine lines, each some 30 people deep.

The visitors have come from near and far. Koreans speak through a translator. An Idaho woman asks the church staff to videotape her exchange with Osteen. An Atlanta evangelist wants him to sign her book. A Houston woman asks Osteen to pray that God would grant her favor before immigration officials. Osteen obliges them all. It takes nearly an hour and a half.

“It's a dream come true,” Dickson Idusuyi, an economics professor from Jackson, Miss., said after meeting Osteen. “I'm a devout Catholic, but I spend much of the time watching him on TV.” (this smacks of interfaithism)

Sonia Stevenson, who traveled with her husband, David, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, wept after Osteen shook her hand.

“He changed my life,” she said dabbing her eyes.

At 5-foot-9, Osteen looks smaller in person than on television, they say. But he doesn't disappoint. His smile, which has earned him the nickname the “smiling preacher,” is as bright and warm as they expect.

Absent the bodyguards and tight security favored by many megachurch pastors, Osteen seems just a man. That is as he likes it. He says he's a normal guy: a channel surfer, eager to play pickup basketball games and quick to eschew dishwashing.

He struggles to explain his popularity, pauses a moment and finally settles on his refusal to play judge and jury with people's lives.

“People respond to the message that is sincere and helps them in their everyday lives,” Osteen said. “Most people know what they're doing wrong. They're looking for somebody to say: 'You know what, here's how you can get out of this.' "

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.