‘Doing something for the Lord': Wichita man who built hundreds of churches dies

Yahoo

06-04-2025

The first church Ronald Roe Messner built was the Douglas Avenue Assembly of God in Wichita.
He was around 22 when he finished it with a company he started when he was 17. His mother had to sign the paperwork to form the company since he was under 18, his son said.
Messner, known by many as Roe, went on to design and/or build over 1,700 more churches, including the megachurch the Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida.
The Wichita East High School graduate died at his Wichita home on March 24 surrounded by family. He was 89. He is survived by his first wife, three of his four children, 18 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
He was known for golf prowess, his ability to make a sale, hard work and devout faith. A private funeral service and memorial was planned for April 4 and 5.
Dale Hill, a retired senior pastor who Messner built a New Mexico church for in the late 1980s, planned to attend.
'I've often said what Billy Graham was to the evangelical world, or … what Jackie Robinson was to the baseball world, or even Steve Jobs to the computer world, Roe was to the church building world, powerful,' Hill said. 'He was a trailblazer.'
Messner looked at his work as a ministry.
'I have a goal to build a church in every state,' he told The Wichita Eagle-Beacon in a 1980 interview when his company had designed 491 churches in 45 states and built 293 in 34 states. 'But I have the satisfaction of knowing that I've helped more churches build for less. I feel I am doing something for the Lord with my ability.'
Messner saw great success in his real estate ventures, but also faced adversity as the chief builder for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's televangelist empire, PTL, which included a Christian amusement park, Heritage USA.
The Bakkers' TV program from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s took in more than $100 million in donations a year at its height. But a sex and financial misconduct scandal brought down PTL and landed Jim Bakker in prison.
Messner was in the national tabloids as rumors sparked about a romance between him and Tammy Faye, who married him after divorcing Jim while he was in prison.
His entanglement with the Bakkers led to his business going bankrupt. He later went to prison for just over two years in the late 1990s after being convicted of hiding assets during the bankruptcy filing.
But he was able to rebuild his business.
He also maintained his innocence and showed unwavering faith through the process.
'He was uniquely honest about everything that had happened in his life. I mean, he was completely forthcoming. And even during his prison days, Roe stood by principle,' Hill said, adding Messner told him if he had to do everything all over again, he would do it the exact same way. 'Roe was uniquely a man of principle … and sometimes it hurt him. In fact, a lot of times it hurt him.'
After Messner was found guilty by a federal jury in 1995, his attorney, Steve Joseph, told The Eagle: 'Roe Messner is the most optimistic and upbeat man I have ever met in my life … He is not emotionally distraught over this verdict.'
His children and Hill say that was because of his devout faith in Jesus. He took his Bible with him everywhere.
He carried it with him to school as a child. In his later years, his children said, he was always standing in the kitchen, since it was easier on his back to stand than to sit, reading his Bible.
The idea of being a builder started at a young age for Messner.
When he was born, his family lived on a rural farm. They moved to Wichita when his father took a job with Beechcraft. They lived in the Beechwood apartments, which were built to house people who worked in aircraft factories during World War II.
Messner knew he wanted more than to work in a factory for his life.
He worked on and built his first house in 1949 when he was 14.
It was off to the races from there.
He met his first wife, Ruth Ann Messner, while she was studying at a Bible college in Springfield, Missouri. They married after about a year, in the mid 1950s, and started their family in Wichita.
He completed his first church, Douglas Avenue Assembly of God, in 1957.
Work kept him busy.
He drove and flew to projects all over the country. He even got his own plane and hired a pilot since that was more efficient at the time than commercial flights.
He was often gone during the week, but always made it back to be with his family on the weekend. They went to church every Sunday, without fail.
'We were always very active and involved in the church,' said his oldest child, Roann Messner. 'A lot of fond memories. (We were) a very happy family.'
His children worked for him: Ronnie 'Ron' and Richard at the site and Roann and Robin, who died in 2016, in the office.
Messner taught his children the importance of hard work.
In 1980, Messner was getting ready to take on his grandest project to date: a $13 million, 165,000-square-foot church in Lakeland, Florida.
The First Assembly of God, later called Carpenter's Home Church, was built to hold up to 10,000 people. It also had a hydraulic pulpit.
Other large churches he built included the First Assembly of God in Phoenix, later called the Dream City Church, and the Capital Christian Center in Sacramento, California.
Both of those large First Assembly of God churches were octagon or pie-shaped sanctuaries, a trademark of many Messner churches.
For years, he had attended the Assembly of God church.
During the undertaking of the Lakeland megachurch, he told The Wichita Eagle-Beacon that 40% of his business was Assembly of God, 40% Baptist and the rest Nazarene.
Derald Musgrove, then the superintendent of the Kansas Assembly of God Churches, told the paper that: 'Roe understands what our congregation needs. His churches fit our style of worship. That's why he gets many of the contracts. He doesn't get them all by any means.'
Messner told the paper that: 'Churches are a close-knit people. They like to keep business at home if they can. I see nothing wrong with that.'
In the same article, Messner said: 'I can sell anything with a pretty picture and a floor plan. I'm a salesman.'
He built churches of all sizes all over the country. Another he built in Wichita was the Central Community Church on Maple.
He also built the Central Baptist Church in Clovis, New Mexico, for a congregation of less than 1,000 people when Hill was the senior pastor. It was the 1980s.
A congregation member drew the design and recommended Messner for the build. But the quote they got for the design was $8.5 million, and they only had $4 million to spend.
'Roe, we are in trouble,' Hill remembers telling him. Messner redid the plans and built the church. 'He saved the project.''
Messner's knowledge of how churches function gave him an edge, allowing him to help churches build what they needed to operate without wasting space, which saved them money, Hill said.
Hill said Messner would often fly in and check on the project. He always brought his golf clubs and the two would golf together.
They hit it off and became best of friends.
'For a while there he was just so busy he could hardly take a breath,' Hill said. 'But you know, you would never know that talking to Roe. When Roe talked to you, it was as if you were the only person in the room, and your project was the most important project he had ever considered.'
He also started many other ventures outside of building churches. He owned a doctor's clinic in Springfield, Missouri, a mobile home park in Nixa, Missouri, apartments and rental properties and two farms in Butler County, the 1980 article says.
'I am a firm believer that real estate is where to invest money,' he said in the article. 'Whenever I have extra money, I buy land. Some people like stocks, but fortunes have been made in real estate.'
He and his wife, Ruth Ann, would also go on to start KS Magazine, which she worked on as the editor.
The 1980 article said 'life is pretty sanguine these days for Messner' who had built a dream home on 20-acres outside of Andover that had a pond stocked with bass and where he trapped mink and muskrat along the creeks and gulches.
It said he had already 'achieved financial and professional goals at age 44' but was still looking for the day when other ventures would preoccupy him.
Just a few years later, his pet project and business venture would be owning and building the Terradyne golf course and country club.
But then bankruptcy came.
Messner, well-known for building churches, connected with the Bakkers, who were also members of the Assembly of God.
He was hired to do work on Heritage USA, the Bakkers' Christian water and theme park, shopping complex and hotel.
But then scandal broke involving Jim Bakker.
His misuse of funds, including to fund an extravagant lifestyle, left PTL ministry approximately $72 million in debt, with Messner being the largest creditor at $14 million owed, The Associated Press reported in 1987 based on court filings about PTL.
Messner also had to file for bankruptcy with his company, Commercial Builders of Kansas, but he started a new company, Roe Messner & Associates.
'He lost a lot of friends,' son Ron Messner said about when he lost his business and much of what he owned. 'But he came through it, and, you know, and you just really knew who was with you, who was against you.'
After divorce, he married Tammy Faye, who he was with for roughly 14 years until her death in 2007.
'They got together, of course, very quickly, and that's just how my dad goes … that's just the religious guy in him,' Roann Messner said. 'He's not gonna, he wants to get married.'
They spent most of their time in California and near Charlotte, North Carolina.
Ronald Messner and his children, Ron and Roann, all said Tammy Faye Messner was much different in person than the media portrayed her.
'She was the most common, down-to-earth person you ever saw,' Ronald Messner told The Eagle after she died in 2007. 'The press always made her out to be some nitwit type of person. She was totally different. Her IQ was 165. She was so sharp and different than everybody thought she was.'
He said he got thousands of sympathy cards after her death. Her ashes were buried in a plot in a small cemetery in Waldron, Kansas, where Messner lived as a child and where he will be buried alongside his parents.
'Dad was the happiest when he was with Tammy,' Roann said. 'Tammy is hilarious … They laughed all the time. And just, you know, they were very, very happy.'
Ronald Messner went to prison in the mid 1990s, a few years after they married. Around the same time, he had been dealing with prostate cancer.
He would often write his family while serving his 27 months.
'It was always … 'how are you doing?'' Ron Messner said, and not about what he was going through. 'Always.'
Messner said he never heard his dad cuss, or saw him drink or smoke.
'He was a special, special guy,' he said. 'No doubt about it. He was a one-of-kind guy.'
Family said he stayed positive, kept his faith and never stopped working. He continued to rebuild his business.
Both of his sons also started their own businesses. The three would at times work together.
The last project Ron and Ronald Messner finished together was the New Heights Church in College Station, Texas, in 2024.
Ron Messner said they are still in talks with other churches and he will see those projects through. His father, he said, had been working just weeks before his death.
Ron and Roann Messner said they will always remember their father for his hard work and devout faith. He read the Bible all the way through every six months, Ron Messner said.
He did not want to go to the hospital and died peacefully at his home. His children and their families had been coming daily the last few days as they expected his passing.
Roann said her last words to him were that she loved him and he was the 'best dad ever.'
'He was very peaceful,' she said. 'When you are a Christian, you can be peaceful about it.'
Hill said Ronald Messner was the epitome of the greatest generation.
'Because he did build his own story,' Hill said. 'But more than that, he created spaces for other people to build their stories, in the churches that he built.'
There are thousand of churches around the country tied to Ronald 'Roe' Messner, including dozens in the Wichita area.
'I consider building churches a ministry,' Messner said in the 1980 interview. 'I consider every bid as meaningful as preaching every Sunday.'