Schuller handing daughter lead role at Crystal Cathedral

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 as lead pastor after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.

Schuller, 83, told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor after sharing that role with her father for the past year.

The elder Schuller will not be leaving the church. He’ll assume the newly created position of chairman of the church’s consistory, which is its board of directors, the Orange County Register reported. And Coleman told the Los Angeles Times that her father will continue to preach “until the day he dies.”

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.

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.

The senior Schuller first formulated his outreach to the unchurched in the mid-1950s when he opened a ministry at a drive-in theater in the suburbs of Orange County that catered to Southern California’s emerging car culture. He pulled people in with his sermons on the power of positive thinking.