Doctors Predict Full Recovery for Schuller

Doctors for The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, televangelist and founder of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, were predicting a “full and complete recovery” for the popular preacher, who was released Tuesday from intensive care after emergency brain surgery.

Michael Nason, a Schuller aide who discovered the pastor unconscious in his Amsterdam hotel room Monday, released a statement from Dutch doctors saying that Schuller’s condition remains stable.

“Dr. Schuller continues to make significant progress in his recovery,” Dr. J. Wolbers, senior neurosurgeon at the Free University Hospital, said in the statement. “His neurological signs are good. We do not anticipate any complications. And a full and complete recovery is expected.”

Surgeons removed a blood clot that had formed in the left side of Schuller’s brain after he bumped his head while entering a car, Nason said.

“I don’t want to minimize the fact that Dr. Schuller has undergone major surgery and this was a major trauma for him,” Nason said. “It will be a slow recovery.”

Doctors will decide in the next day or two when Schuller, 64, can be released, Nason said. After that, he will return to Orange County and be admitted to an undetermined hospital for observation, he added.

Meanwhile, Schuller’s wife, Arvella, and son, Robert A. Schuller, arrived Tuesday in Amsterdam, where they received a sympathy message from President and Mrs. Bush, delivered by U.S. Embassy officials.

Church officials have been swamped with sympathy messages from around the world for the stricken minister. “There seems to be a tremendous outpouring of goodwill,” said Beth Owen, church publicist.

Schuller had been en route to Moscow to reinstate his pioneering Christian broadcast “Heart to Heart” over the state-owned broadcast network, Gostelradio. Nason said Robert Schuller and the elder Schuller’s son-in-law, Paul David Dunn, will continue on to Moscow to deliver a videotape of Schuller’s prerecorded sermon.

Times staff writer Dan Weikel contributed to this story.