“Hour of Power” telecasts featuring Schuller once reached 20 million viewers, but the ministry began to decline about 2000 and later collapsed. In 2010, it filed to restructure about $50 million in debts through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The court hearing opened a trial expected to last about two weeks. It will examine creditors’ claims against the former evangelical empire.
At the hearing in Los Angeles, Schuller, 86, maintained the Crystal Cathedral Ministry owes him, his wife, and a daughter and her husband more than $5 million for unpaid contracts and infringement of copyright and other intellectual property rights.
Schuller insisted he, not the ministry, owns the creative work in his books and sermons. He testified he had never surrendered ownership, even though the ministry distributed them widely, including on the Internet.
According to Schuller, the ministry owes he and his wife Arvella $5.1 million for reneging on an agreement to pay them $300,000 annually for their lifetimes. Daughter Carol Schuller Milner and her husband Timothy say they have not been paid about $272, 000 for work they claim to have done for the church.
The Crystal Cathedral Ministry has thus far reduced its debts to $12.5 million. Its headquarters campus and namesake high-rise glass-sheathed church in Garden Grove, California were sold last year in a bankruptcy deal to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.
The ministry’s chief executive said if it paid the Schuller family’s claims, “there will be no money for the cathedral.” Lawyers representing the ministry claim the Schuller family unduly enriched themselves from the church, telling the court the four claimants together collected over $12.7 million from the ministry between 1993 and 2010. At the time of the bankruptcy filing, 20 Schuller relatives were receiving a total of over $1.9 million a year.
Schuller began preaching in Orange County in 1955, using the roof of a drive-in movie theater’s concession stand as his pulpit. He built the Crystal Cathedral in 1990, with a congregation of 10,000 members. The church was known for its lavish Christmas pageants featuring live animals and flying angels. Contributions to the church began to decline about 2000, and an attempt to revive the ministry with Schuller’s son as its head was unsuccessful.
In his heyday, Schuller was sought out by political leaders and courted by celebrities. In 1997 he breakfasted with President Bill Clinton on the morning of the State of the Union address, and heard Clinton quote him in the speech that evening.
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