October 23, 2010 Dispute Over Succession Clouds Megachurch [From NYT, By Jihwan Kim]

October 23, 2010

Dispute Over Succession Clouds Megachurch

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The 10,664 windows did not get washed this year at the Crystal Cathedral, the iconic glass church founded by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, one of the original religious broadcasters. Volunteers are tending the church's 40 landscaped acres, now that the gardeners have been laid off. And its renowned Christmas pageant — with live camels and horses, and angels flying overhead on cables — has been canceled for now.

 

The empire that Mr. Schuller built may be in jeopardy, tarnished by an unseemly family feud and a $43 million debt that even by megachurch standards is serious.

 

When the Crystal Cathedral, which many church historians call the nation's first modern megachurch, filed for bankruptcy protection last week, Sheila Schuller Coleman, the senior pastor and Mr. Schuller's eldest daughter, blamed the bad economy.

 

But the church was in trouble long before the economic downturn, according to church insiders and family members interviewed last week. It was already suffering from the botched succession of Mr. Schuller, one too many vanity building projects and changes in the religious broadcasting industry.

 

When Mr. Schuller announced in 2006 that he was turning over the pulpit to his only son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, the church was already carrying a huge debt from its last lavish building project. But in a little more than two years, the son was pushed out before he ever really took the reins, and some of his sisters and their husbands stepped in.

 

The family feud left the church without clear leadership, just when its programs badly needed a makeover to attract a new generation of followers.

 

At stake is the legacy of the senior Mr. Schuller, who at 84 is still occasionally preaching his brand of upbeat, inspirational Christianity. His Sunday program, "Hour of Power," has been broadcast for 40 years and was the nation's most-watched weekly religious program for more than a decade. Unlike other religious broadcasters, Mr. Schuller largely steered clear of politics, and avoided the sexual and financial scandals that brought down competitors like Jimmy Swaggart.

 

Until now, the younger Mr. Schuller, pained by the rift with his family, has avoided speaking publicly about what happened. But in a lengthy interview this week in Los Angeles, he explained the sequence of events, later confirmed by others, that preceded the current turmoil.

 

"It boiled down to, they weren't ready to accept my leadership," he said of his relatives and some of the other board members of the cathedral. "And had they been, they wouldn't be where they are today."

 

Both the elder Mr. Schuller and Ms. Schuller Coleman declined all interview requests last week, said the church's spokesman John Charles.

 

Handing down leadership from founding father to son is common in the world of celebrity ministry. The offspring of Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have all inherited pieces of their father's empires. But few can remember a succession as messy as the one at the Crystal Cathedral.

 

"Making transitions in any congregation, from one pastor to another, and especially from a founding pastor, is always terribly difficult," said the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, a former board member and leader of the Reformed Church in America, the mainline Protestant denomination to which the Crystal Cathedral belongs.

 

"It's so important that transitions be done well — and when they're not done well, it can harm ministry," he said. "This ministry has touched the lives of millions. There are few like it. That just makes the situation they presently face such a deep tragedy."

 

The younger Mr. Schuller, 56, said he was groomed to succeed his father from early on. He has four sisters; Ms. Schuller Coleman is the oldest, he was the second-born. Before he was 20, he began preaching in his father's church. For many years he was the senior pastor of a church in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., affiliated with the Crystal Cathedral (a property the cathedral sold in May for $22.5 million to help reduce debt). And from 2004 to 2006, his father introduced him to donors at lunches and dinners around the country as his chosen successor.

 

But by the time the younger Mr. Schuller took over in 2006, the church's broadcast audience was shrinking, eclipsed by preachers with a more contemporary format, like Joel Osteen at Lakewood Church in Houston, who leans more heavily on self-help than Scripture.

 

Mr. Schuller said that when he came on board, a meticulous effort to straighten out the membership rolls found only 900 to 1,100 regular congregants at Crystal Cathedral — which would mean that it was about 1,500 people short of even qualifying as a megachurch. (The church spokesman, Mr. Charles, said Mr. Schuller's figures were misleadingly low because he counted only those who attended every week. He said the church currently has about 10,000 congregation members.)

 

Mr. Schuller said he also inherited a sizable debt. His father, he said, had believed that striking new buildings attracted donors who would continue giving. It worked with the church's original building, designed by the midcentury modern architect Richard Neutra, which enabled Mr. Schuller to preach from a balcony to people sitting in their cars in the parking lot below. It worked with the Crystal Cathedral sanctuary dedicated in 1980, designed by the famed architect Philip Johnson and quickly paid off by thousands of donors who had their names inscribed on windows, seats and even the struts that support the glass.

 

But the strategy failed with the church's "welcoming center," designed by Richard Meier. It was finished in 2003, and when some major donations fell through, the church still owed $40 million for it, according to the younger Mr. Schuller.

 

Meanwhile, the audience for "Hour of Power" — who provided the bulk of the ministry's income — was shrinking. At its peak in the early 1980s, before cable TV became dominant, it had about two million viewers on 190 stations. Now the audience is down to about one million in the United States. With millions more globally, the show is carried primarily on cable and satellite.

 

But there was an unspoken problem facing the ministry. Where the elder Mr. Schuller exuded charisma and optimism, his son — looking like a Southern California golf pro, tall, fit and tanned, with a full head of brown hair — was more subdued and businesslike. Several insiders said in interviews that the older Mr. Schuller and his wife, Arvella, badly wanted their son to inherit the ministry, but were never completely convinced that he was up to it.

 

"You cannot replace Dr. Schuller," said the spokesman, Mr. Charles. "It's like you cannot replace Billy Graham. I think he was put in a hard position."

 

The younger Mr. Schuller envisioned using new technologies to expand the ministry's capacities and reach a younger audience. The average viewer of "Hour of Power" is a 53-year-old woman. But some board members saw his high-tech strategies as vague and distracting.

 

Things fell apart when the younger Mr. Schuller tried to institute basic good governance rules used by many nonprofit organizations. He wanted to remove anyone with a conflict of interest from the board. That meant unseating some of his sisters and their husbands as well as his parents, who were also employees.

 

The coup came in July 2008. Mr. Schuller said he was told his preaching was "not anointed." A three-person Office of the President — two of whose members were his brothers-in-law — was created to run the cathedral. He was given the limited role of pastor of the local congregation, and removed from preaching on "Hour of Power." He quit.

 

"When you mix faith and fame and family, there's room for a really toxic dynamic," said Robert A. Schuller's daughter, Angie Schuller Wyatt, who is 32. She has degrees in ministry and counseling, but has intentionally worked in churches other than the Crystal Cathedral and is starting spiritualwellness.com.

 

The lead preaching role on the "Hour of Power" broadcast is now filled by a revolving cast of guest preachers — the elder Mr. Schuller, Ms. Schuller Coleman and a son-in-law. In 2009, Ms. Schuller Coleman was made the senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral.

 

The younger Mr. Schuller is writing a book, "When You're Down to Nothing, God's Up to Something," and creating a new Christian media network with his son-in-law, Chris Wyatt. They acquired AmericanLife TV from the Unification Church, and plan "family friendly programming," including R-rated movies edited for a G-rated audience.

 

They soon plan to broadcast a new preaching program featuring a member of the third generation of Schullers in ministry: Robert V. Schuller, the 29-year-old grandson of the founder of Crystal Cathedral and the son of Robert A. Schuller. The grandson leads a growing congregation geared toward a younger crowd, which meets in rented space in an American Legion hall.

 

Many people involved with the Crystal Cathedral, asked about Robert V. Schuller, immediately brighten and say he has his grandfather's gifts.