Schuller’s Flock Prays en Masse for Ailing Pastor : Church services: Crystal Cathedral congregation is cheered by messages about the televangelist’s speedy recovery from surgery.

In the first Sunday services at Crystal Cathedral since the Rev. Robert H. Schuller underwent emergency brain surgery in Amsterdam, followers prayed en masse for their ailing pastor and listened to brief messages from his wife and two daughters.

In an international phone call, broadcast live over the church’s sound system, Arvella Schuller told the 8:30 a.m. congregation that her husband’s recuperation was continuing at Free University Hospital, where he was operated on Monday for a blood clot on the brain.

“That Schuller sparkle is back,” she said through static, while a still photo of her flashed on the cathedral’s giant video screen. “We hope by next Sunday to be back home with you in California.”

Arvella Schuller went on to say that the televangelist, who injured himself when he bumped his head getting into a car, was again “so vital, so very much himself” Sunday that she was surprised by the speed of his recovery.

“Would you believe they put him in a chair and wheeled him to the waiting room (today) and he watched the ‘Hour of Power’?” Arvella Schuller said, referring to a prerecorded episode of her husband’s syndicated show, which is seen in 31 countries. The congregation laughed when she added that the preacher sang inspirational songs after the airing “and he was on tune.” Her message was replayed at later services.

While Schuller’s spokesman, Michael Nason, could not be reached in Amsterdam to give an update on his condition, Schuller’s daughter, Gretchen Penner, told the 9:30 a.m. congregation that she had just spoken to her father via phone. Penner said she and her sister, Sheila Coleman, were visiting the cathedral Sunday to thank parishioners for their prayers.

“Just a moment ago, you might have seen us get called away,” Penner said from the pulpit with tears in her eyes. “There was a phone call from my brother-in-law (in Amsterdam), and I picked it up, and about two seconds later, I heard my father’s voice on the other end of the line for the first time since all this happened.”

Penner said that because Schuller’s room is in an intensive-care ward, where there are no phones, she had until Sunday only been able to hear about his condition secondhand.

Schuller injured himself while en route to both Moscow, where he planned to deliver a tape-recorded sermon for Soviet television, and Rome, where he was scheduled to confer with Pope John Paul II. His recovery suffered a setback Thursday, when doctors discovered swelling and blood residue between the skull and brain, but he was back on track Friday thanks to medication, his spokesman said Saturday. That temporary decline had loved ones and followers worried, but now most seem convinced that he will be fine.

“You can feel in your heart that he is going to be OK; you can just feel it,” said Santa Ana resident Jane Machado, who has been a Schuller follower since he was preaching at an Orange drive-in theater in the early 1960s. “Everyone has been praying for him, and we know he will be fine. With his family and his faith, he has God on his side.”