GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California’s Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the “Hour of Power” televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.
The 83-year-old Schuller told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor, after sharing that role with her father for the past year.
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Coleman previously served as principal of a private Christian school run by the cathedral and head of the Orange County church’s family ministries division.
She was ordained just a month before she was appointed to head up Crystal Cathedral Ministries.
“I’m very proud that Sheila has earned her doctorate at the University of California, Irvine, and that this university has declared her to (have earned) a distinguished alumnus award,” Schuller told his congregation during the 9:30 a.m. service. “Congratulations, I’m very proud of her.”
The elder Schuller will assume the newly created position of chairman of Crystal Cathedral’s consistory, which is the church’s board of directors, The Orange County Register reported.
Coleman’s appointment comes two years after Schuller’s son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, split from the church during a family rift that made headlines. The younger Schuller had been groomed to take over for his father.
Robert A. Schuller is now part of Dallas-based American Life Network, a cable channel aiming to produce family-oriented programming.
Coleman, 59, lives in Orange with her husband, Jim, and has four grown children.
“That was emotional for me, and I’m humbled and honored to be asked to take this responsibility,” Coleman said Sunday after being commissioned, wiping away tears as she addressed her congregation. “I truly know that God is here, he loves this ministry and my call is to help take the ministry into the future and to continue dad’s ministry.”
The 10,000-member all-glass church faces significant challenges under Coleman’s leadership. This year, the church saw revenue drop 27 percent from roughly $30 million in 2008 to $22 million in 2009. Church leaders blamed the decline on the struggling U.S. economy.
Underwood, Fisher marry
ATLANTA — Grammy-winning country singer Carrie Underwood has married NHL player Mike Fisher at a resort in Georgia.
“Yes, Mike and Carrie are married,” Underwood’s publicist Jessie Schmidt said Sunday.
The wedding took place Saturday in Greensboro, Ga.
Underwood, 27, rose to fame after winning the fourth season of “American Idol.” Fisher, 30, is a forward for the Ottawa Senators.
No details on where Underwood and Fisher will spend their honeymoon have been released.
Irish mobster Spillane’s son dies in fall from apartment
NEW YORK — The son of murdered Irish mobster Mickey Spillane tumbled out the window of his sixth-floor apartment in a fatal fall Saturday, police and his uncle said.
Robert “Bobby” Spillane, an actor who had roles on television’s “Rescue Me” and “Law & Order,” fell from his Midtown Manhattan apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood near Times Square where his father, not to be confused with the pulp fiction writer of the same name, had run rackets back in the 1960s and 1970s.
No criminality was suspected in Bobby Spillane’s death.
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