Because Crystal Cathedral Ministries controls nearly all of the assets, Ms. Schuller Coleman will be starting almost from scratch. She said Hope Center OC had already received more than $15,000 in donations, which she added was much more than her parents had started with when they founded Crystal Cathedral.

After decades at the pulpit here, the family of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller has cut its ties with the Crystal Cathedral, the Orange County megachurch he founded.

Amid bankruptcy proceedings for the church, the Rev. Sheila Schuller Coleman, Dr. Schuller’s daughter and the head pastor at Crystal Cathedral, announced during a service on Sunday that it was the last time she would preach at the famous glass-paned church.

The family will also cease to take part in “Hour of Power,” the program that began in 1970 and at its peak beamed Dr. Schuller’s upbeat message to two million viewers every week. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

“This is the last Sunday that we will worship in this building,” Ms. Schuller Coleman said. “With the vulnerable economic situation combined with the hostile relationship with the ‘Hour of Power’ board, the local church has decided that we need to find a new place to worship.”

The Schuller family’s departure from Crystal Cathedral Ministries ends a stunning decline in fortune for the church’s founder, who was one of the most successful preachers in the world, but who has watched in recent years as the church slid toward financial ruin.

Dr. Schuller founded the church in 1955, and by the 1980s it was drawing more than 10,000 worshipers each week. But over-aggressive expansion of its campus and dwindling membership left the church tens of millions of dollars in debt, and Crystal Cathedral Ministries filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

……

On Saturday, Dr. Schuller and his wife, Arvella, resigned from the board of Crystal Cathedral Ministries, citing an “adversarial and negative atmosphere” amid a dispute over payments from the board to Dr. Schuller for the use of his likeness and sermons on “Hour of Power…”

Ms. Schuller Coleman pledged to continue her work at another location yet to be determined, under the name Hope Center OC.

“I will not quit,” she repeated several times as the audience in the sparsely filled pews stood to applaud.

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