My Journey: From an Iowa Farm to a Cathedral of Dreams Book

"In 1955, I accepted a call from the Classis of California of the Reformed Church in America to establish a church in central Orange County. Certainly the scope off the ministry that resulted is something no one could have predicted from its all-too-humble beginnings." This kind of grand yet understated tone pervades the autobiography of Robert Schuller, My Journey: From an Iowa Farm to a Cathedral of Dreams. Schuller's life began in 1926, "at the dead-end of a dirt road that had no name and no number." He was the fifth child in a poor, conservative family, and he grew into an earnest young man whose hard work and discipline fueled a rapid rise to success and power. Schuller's account of his personal life is both idealistic and candid (of his wedding night, Schuller writes, "The explosion of true joy and unalloyed affection was our reward for having waited to offer our virginity, each to the other!"). And his descriptions of his seminary years, his early ministries in the Midwest, and his move to California illustrate the development of his popular "Possibility Thinking" message, which built on the foundation of Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. Schuller's influence on American Christianity has been immense. He has muffled the doctrine of sinfulness in favor of an optimistic message about joy, success, and possibility. And although the reader may wish at times the author had used fewer exclamation marks and given himself more to circumspection, My Journey is an engrossing spin on the classic Horatio Alger tale. --Paul PowerRead More