Church Builder Roe Messner, Who Later Married Tammy Faye Bakker, Dies at 89
Ronald “Roe” Messner, a pioneering church builder who constructed over 1,700 houses of worship across America before becoming entangled in the dramatic fall of the PTL television ministry, died March 24 at his Wichita home. He was 89.
Messner’s remarkable journey began at age 17 when he started his first construction company in Wichita — so young that his mother had to sign the incorporation papers. His first major project, completed when he was just 22, was the Douglas Avenue Assembly of God in Wichita, launching a career that would reshape American church architecture.
“What Billy Graham was to the evangelical world, Roe was to the church building world,” Dale Hill, a retired senior pastor whose New Mexico church Messner built in the late 1980s, told the Wichita Eagle. “He was a trailblazer.”
But Messner’s empire crumbled after his involvement with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL ministry. As the chief builder of their Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina, Messner claimed PTL owed him $14 million when the ministry collapsed amid scandal in 1987. The financial fallout forced his company, Commercial Builders of Kansas, into bankruptcy in 1992.
In an ironic twist, Messner later married Tammy Faye in 1993 after her divorce from Jim Bakker. But more challenges lay ahead — in 1996, he was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for bankruptcy fraud. He claimed he was innnocent.
Through it all, Messner maintained his optimistic spirit and unwavering faith say those around him. His attorney at the time called him “the most optimistic and upbeat man I have ever met in my life.”
A Wichita East High School graduate, Messner built churches of all sizes, from small rural parishes to megachurches like the 10,000-seat Carpenter’s Home Church in Lakeland, Florida. He viewed his work as ministry, telling The Wichita Eagle-Beacon in 1980, “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.”
The Kansas connection would come full circle years later when Tammy Faye, who died in 2007, was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Harper County, Kansas, far from the spotlight that had followed her for decades.
Messner is survived by his first wife, three of his four children, 18 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. A private funeral service and memorial was planned for April 4 and 5.
–Dwight Widaman
