Founder Chuck Smith’s family sues Calvary Chapel

A daughter and the widow of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa founder Chuck Smith have sued his former church, alleging a conspiracy to commandeer Smith’s ministry and deny him emergency medical attention on his deathbed.

Smith died last year at age 86 after a battle with lung cancer. His church started in 1965 with 25 members, but Smith quickly grew Calvary Chapel to more than 1,000 locations nationwide.

The lawsuit alleges that the church board and Smith’s son-in-law hastened the pastor’s death, took control of the massive ministry and cheated Smith’s wife and family out of money they were owed.

Calvary Chapel board member and pastor Roger Wing, who is named in the lawsuit, declined to answer questions about it. He said the church hopes to answer questions after it has been served with the documents.

Shortly after the civil action was filed Friday in Orange County Superior Court, Chuck Smith Jr., a son who is no longer affiliated with his father’s church, called the suit “groundless” and “deplorable.”

The suit seeks unspecified damages on behalf of the elder Smith’s daughter Janette Manderson and his wife, Kay, who has dementia.

The suit names Calvary Chapel and its board of directors, but most of the accusations are leveled at Brian Brodersen, who is married to Smith’s youngest daughter and took the church’s reins after Smith’s death.

Manderson says Brodersen and the board oversaw Smith’s in-home care while his health deteriorated in 2013. The board selected a nurse who was loyal to Brodersen and would eavesdrop on Smith for him, according to the lawsuit.

On the night of Smith’s death, the suit alleges, the nurse refused to call paramedics and kept others from dialing 911.

When paramedics arrived after an hour of delays, they said they might have saved Smith or at least eased his pain had the family called earlier, according to the lawsuit.

The suit also claims an autopsy found “unexplained results, including multiple needle marks in [Smith’s] arms.”

Immediately after the pastor’s death, the lawsuit alleges, Brodersen and the board began taking control of the pieces of Smith’s multimillion-dollar ministry that had been kept separate from Calvary Chapel under the pastor’s nonprofit.

Board members posted a security guard at Smith’s office so they could seize files, recordings of his sermons, donor lists, computers and other items, the suit alleges.

According to the complaint, the group also usurped control of a phone number and address that for decades have been used to collect donations from listeners of Smith’s radio broadcast called “The Word for Today.”

The suit also alleges that board members pressured Smith into changing a life insurance policy so the $1-million payout would go to the church instead of Smith’s wife and his nonprofit.

The lawsuit says Smith agreed to be taken off the church’s payroll in exchange for an annuity set up for him, and for his wife after his death. But the suit alleges the church withheld a monthly annuity payment of up to $10,000 that she was owed after he died.

Congregants who asked questions about the suit were referred to a statement that Chuck Smith Jr. posted on Facebook over the weekend, Wing said. In it, he blasted the lawsuit and gave his own account of what happened the night his father died.

Smith Jr. wrote that Smith was in hospice care at home after doctors informed the family there was nothing more they could do to stop his cancer.

Smith’s caregiver did not call 911 because the pastor was not in pain and was expected to die, according to his son.

Authorities were called to record the death by someone who apparently didn’t realize 911 was not the proper method to do that, Smith Jr. said.

“After the paramedics hurried in with all their gear, they were not asking us why they weren’t called sooner but why they were called at all,” Smith Jr. said. “It is not their job to tend to the ‘deceased.’”

Smith Jr. said he expects the lawsuit to fall apart.

“The only motivation I can see for the suit is malice and greed,” he wrote. “Any pretense to honor my father’s name or provide adequate care and support for my mother is nonsense.”