Meet the Interim Pastor at the Crystal Cathedral

For the past ten years his father, Dr. Robert H. Schuller, has been strategically inserting his son, Robert A. Schuller into the ministry of the Crystal Cathedral toward the goal of naming him Senior Pastor. After serving in that role since 2006, the younger Schuller resigned in November, 2008. Left leaderless, Rev. Juan Carlos Ortiz has been appointed Interim Senior Pastor.

WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) - Due to the resignation of his son as senior pastor and the current financial turmoil at the Crystal Cathedral, Dr. Robert H. Schuller called upon Juan Carlos Ortiz, a former pastor from South America, to serve as Interim Pastor. The appointment was made in December amidst additional announcements of fresh initiatives by Schuller's daughters and sons-in-law to the board of elders.

Serving as an evangelist for many years, Ortiz connection with the Crystal Cathedral began when he founded a Hispanic Ministry on the campus. When Robert A. Schuller, deemed the heir apparent for the church and television ministry, resigned, Ortiz was asked by the elder Schuller to take the reins of the ministry.

In the 60's and 70's Ortiz was a successful Pentecostal pastor in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is best known to North American Evangelicals as the author of a very popular book in the mid-70's called "Disciple," which was revised in 1995 and still has a strong following.

He was also a contributor at the International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lusanne, Switzerland in 1974 along with such prominent Evangelical leaders as Billy Graham, Samuel Escobar, Francis Schaeffer, Malcolm Muggeridge, John Stott and Ralph Winter.

Both of these events took place about the same time when he was linked as a major influence on a group of pastors in what has been termed "the shepherding movement." According to this philosophy of ministry, members of a church or small group should give their "shepherds" authority over their lives and decisions.

He was also a pioneer in the use of small groups or "cells" as active subdivisions of a local church. These "house churches" took on many of the actions and ministries of the church on behalf of the small group for whom they were responsible.

The implementation of this style of leadership led Derek Prince, Charles Simpson, Ern Baxter, Don Basham and Bob Mumford to be called "the Florida Five" for their unified commitment to such an authoritarian approach. Later each of these leaders would recant this radical methodology.

With Robert H. Schuller's daughters and sons-in-law all playing an active part in the day-to-day ministry, little is known about the grip the family will continue to exercise over the operations of the church or television program. In his address to the church's elders, Ortiz underlined the fact that the successor to position of senior pastor would not be found within the family.

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Randy Sly was baptized into the Episcopal Church. After having wandered from the faith, he experienced a genuine conversion as an adult and became a Wesleyman Minister. His journey through the early fathers led him to his time as an Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. He and his wife Sandy were received into the full communion of the Catholic Church three years ago.

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