Rev. Schuller Alert After Brain Surgery : Religion: Well-wishers celebrate the injured televangelist’s successful operation in Amsterdam to remove a blood clot.

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, internationally known preacher and founder of the Crystal Cathedral, was alert and stable Monday after emergency brain surgery in the Netherlands.

Schuller, who had suffered a head injury, underwent successful three-hour brain surgery in Amsterdam. He had stopped there en route to the Vatican and the Soviet Union, where he was to seek reinstatement of his Christian television program.

The news that Schuller was expected to recover brought relief to church members who, shocked by early reports, had flocked to the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

“It looks a lot nicer than a few hours ago,” co-pastor Bruce Larson said at a hastily assembled press conference. “So we are celebrating.”

Telephone lines to the church were jammed by well-wishers, among them an aide to President Bush. Larson said Bush had asked that the U.S. Embassy in Amsterdam extend “all help and assistance” to the host of the “Hour of Power” syndicated television program.

Doctors said the operation was needed to repair an injury caused when Schuller struck his head Sunday while entering a car. Surgeons removed a blood clot with no complications and anticipate no brain damage, according to the pastor’s aide, Michael Nason.

Church spokesmen said Schuller, 64, was en route to Moscow with Nason and his son-in-law Paul David Dunn at the invitation of Soviet broadcasting officials. A program called “Heart to Heart,” featuring Schuller sermons, was taken off the air in the Soviet Union last spring after several broadcasts. He was bringing a 20-minute taped message, which Soviet officials said they would broadcast, according to aides.

After he struck his head, Schuller complained of headaches and dizziness. He dined and spent Sunday evening alone in his hotel.

He failed to appear for an appointment Monday. Nason and Dunn, with the help of hotel security, entered his room about 9 a.m. and found Schuller semi-conscious on the floor between the bed and the balcony. Schuller attempted to speak but his aides calmed him. He later slipped into a coma, Nason said.

“I have to admit, we were frantic,” Nason said. “We were trying to control ourselves and trying to be as much help to him as possible.”

The surgery was performed at Free University Hospital in Amsterdam. The surgeons who removed the blood clot consulted with Schuller’s local doctors, Nason said. Nason said the blood had put pressure on the left side of Schuller’s brain, causing him to experience motor problems on his right side.

“After the surgery you could already see the improvement,” Nason said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam.

From his bed in the hospital intensive care unit, Schuller waved at him after the surgery, Nason said.

Several local experts said patients can often expect full recovery from injuries such as those sustained by Schuller.

Dr. Monte S. Buchsbaum, director of the UC Irvine Brain Imaging Center, said he was not concerned by the possible time lag between the injury and the surgery.

“This is not an uncommon story for a head injury,” Buchsbaum said. “It sounds as if they got to this thing in time.”

Buchsbaum, an acquaintance of Schuller, oversees brain damage assessments at the imaging center. A severe injury could result from an accident like that ascribed to Schuller, he said, because “the brain is a fragile organ.”

The left side of the brain, Buchsbaum said, involves the right hand, as well as speech and language.

“Those would be the things to watch in his recovery,” he said.

Dr. Ronald F. Young, chief of neurosurgery at UCI, said that “the sooner a clot is removed the better the outcome,” but agreed that the time lag in treatment was “typical” in situations like that of Schuller’s apparent injury and that blood leaking from a vein may do so quite slowly.

Young noted that the aging process sometimes plays a role in such injuries.

Because the brain has a tendency to shrink within the skull over time, stretching the veins, “it is easier in older people to rupture the brain with relatively minor head injuries,” and there is more room between the brain and the skull for blood to accumulate.

At the same time, since the blood from the injury can collect in that space without damaging brain tissue, he said, a person with such an injury has “a very good chance of full recovery.”

In Amsterdam, aides said they expected Schuller to remain in the hospital for several days. Schuller’s travel plans, which included an audience Wednesday in Rome with Pope John Paul II, are uncertain pending further medical evaluation, aides said.

When they heard the news Monday morning, Schuller’s wife, Arvella, and son, Robert A. Schuller, pastor of a San Juan Capistrano congregation, left immediately for Amsterdam and were expected to arrive this afternoon.

In Garden Grove, officials opened up the huge glass and steel church, which had been closed for Labor Day. Choir member Darlene Feit, 43, came over to pray after she heard the news. “It’s in God’s hands,” she said. “But you feel so helpless at a time like this. You just want to do something.”

Nevertheless, in the spirit of Schuller’s signature phrase, “possibility thinking,” the mood of his followers was decidedly positive. “How can we help but be upbeat?” said Bill Burkes, 67, of Anaheim.

“We know regardless of how it goes, we still have a blessing out of it.”

Schuller, who began preaching from atop a snack stand to a congregation gathered at a drive-in theater, has risen to become pastor of the architecturally renowned Crystal Cathedral, affiliated with the Reformed Church of America, and a national television ministry with property and other holdings worth an estimated $75 million.

While a number of prominent televangelists fell from grace and church attendance dropped nationally in the 1980s, Schuller’s ministry was relatively untainted by scandal and survived well despite difficult times for organized religion.

In recent years, his efforts to spread the gospel to Soviet citizens had paid off in several television programs aired by Gostelradio, a state-owned network in the Soviet Union.

After the failure of the attempted coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Schuller was invited by Gostelradio to visit the Soviet Union, Nason said. “The trip was very important to him. When he received the invitation he was overwhelmed and looking forward to taping this message and delivering it to the Soviet Union. He wanted it to be a beacon of hope for them.”

Laced with aphorisms and anecdotes of a sort well known to his American audiences, the sermon he had prepared for the Soviet people outlines five principles of success: values, positive attitudes and positive reactions, faith and spirit.

“You want freedom? Then go for it! . . . Do you want dignity? Go for it! Do you want peace? Then work at it! Do you want prosperity? Then achieve it!

“God has been carrying you through the darkest, most terrible times and now He’s putting you back on your feet again, for the greatest success in the history of your life and your country,” he had written.

Times staff writers Mark I. Pinsky, Dan Weikel and Tammerlin Drummond contributed to this story.