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.

Korean ministers and their families stopped by the Crystal Cathedral on Friday.

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.

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