Swaggart Faces Suits by Creditors, Seeks Members for His New Group : Cash problems: The minister who left the Assemblies of God after a sex scandal has sold off some of his holdings while trying to build his World Evangelism Fellowship.

Three years after the sex scandal that led to his departure from the Assemblies of God, Jimmy Swaggart finds himself fending off lawsuits by creditors while seeking to persuade other pastors and congregations to join his World Evangelism Fellowship.

During the last 15 months, nine television stations and a local contractor have filed suits to collect on more than $200,000 in overdue bills they claim that the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries owes them.

To increase its cash flow, the Swaggart organization has leased out a building in the heart of its complex to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for $1.49 million a year and is working on another deal to sell developers 68 acres of prime real estate for $11.2 million.

These moves follow the sale of three of the ministries’ radio stations in 1989-90 for $10.7 million and the sale of the organization’s corporate jet for an undisclosed sum in November, 1988.

Financial information is hard to come by from the Swaggart Ministries. It has refused to make its books public or to answer any questions about finances. The ministries’ personnel manual warns employees that “any unauthorized disclosure of information, regardless of its nature, will be cause for immediate dismissal . . . as well as appropriate legal action.”

Among other things, the manual directs employees: “Do not talk about salary or money matters to anyone, even your closest friends.”

The last time Swaggart released any details about the ministries’ financing was in May, 1987, when he indicated that he was collecting $142 million a year from supporters.

The sex scandal led to Swaggart’s withdrawing his membership from the Assemblies of God hours before he was to have officially been defrocked by the denomination in April, 1988. His magazine, The Evangelist, says that 45 churches and 557 ministers have joined the World Evangelism Fellowship that he has formed.

Some pastors say they have left the Assemblies to join the Fellowship. Swaggart, who was pressing the Assemblies to discipline Jim Bakker before the PTL scandal broke in 1987, recently described the denomination as “a cult” and charged that some of its officials were “in league with pornographers.”

The Rev. Joseph Flower, general secretary of the Assemblies, said the denomination is not worried about the Swaggart group.

“I don’t think we consider it a threat,” Flower said from his headquarters in Springfield, Mo. “We have to do what we feel we are called to do, and others have to do what they feel they are called to do.”

In November, 1987, Arbitron ratings indicated that Swaggart’s weekly television program was viewed by 2.1 million U.S. households. That figure dipped to 359,000 for the May, 1990, period but went up to 404,000 for November, 1990, the latest period surveyed.

The Rev. Robert Schuller held the top rating among syndicated religious television ministers for November, 1990, with 1,301,000 viewers during the rating period. His program reached 151 markets, compared with 77 for Swaggart.

Pepper Dill, a former faculty member at the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College, says the school has lost about half of its faculty since 1988. The ministries reported last summer that enrollment for the spring 1990 semester was 419 students--down from a peak of 1,451 in the fall of 1987.

Dill, a Baptist, has filed a $15,313 breach-of-contract suit against the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries as a result of his abrupt dismissal in January, 1990. He said he had a contract to teach at the school through June, 1990.