Power Struggle Overshadows Sunrise Service : Hollywood Bowl: Dissidents opposed to the role of a televangelist in the annual observance will get to use the facility this Easter. Rival group plans an event elsewhere.

At odds over the role of a popular television ministry, supporters of the Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service have split in a struggle to control one of Southern California’s oldest religious celebrations.

Dissidents opposed to the involvement of televangelist Paul Crouch and his wife, Jan, have won approval from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. to use the Hollywood Bowl this Easter, provided they can raise the money to produce the April 11 service.

The other group says it will try to stage the 73rd annual event at the Universal Amphitheater or some other venue.

“As far as I’m concerned, our opponents are a bunch of renegades who are trying to take Christ out of Easter,” said Bee Beyer, who sides with the group seeking to stage the service away from the Bowl. Beyer is one of two people who claim the presidency of the Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service board.

Beyer’s critics accuse her of handing over control of the service last year to the Crouches’ Trinity Broadcasting Network, an Orange County-based TV ministry.

In January, the critics “ousted” Beyer and elected their own board, which they contend legitimately represents the group that has sponsored the sunrise service for 50 years.

A Superior Court judge this week rejected Beyer’s request to prevent her opponents from using the sunrise service name, saying her claim to legitimacy was “precarious at best.”

But Judge Robert H. O’Brien warned that his ruling should not be interpreted as concluding that either side is on firm legal ground in its claim to represent the sunrise service.

Beyer, a minister who said she was ordained by an East Coast Pentecostal group, gained control of the board in 1991.

Volunteers say her alliance with the Tustin-based television ministry last year undermined the service’s multidenominational character and all but chased away Hollywood stars, who for decades had accounted for much of its appeal.

Critics were upset that TBN’s “prayer line” number was superimposed on the screen during the live telecast and two rebroadcasts of the service, and suggested that TBN may have stood to gain financially--which the ministry denied.

TBN officials said the service was shown on more than 200 television stations worldwide.

Beyer and her daughter, Gemma Wenger, quietly signed an agreement last year giving Trinity control over the service in return for the network’s producing and televising it.

Court documents made public this week show that the board Beyer controls voted to make her “president for life” a month after last year’s service and stipulated that in the event she stepped down, TBN would be reimbursed for the money it had spent on the show.

As part of the arrangement, TBN would receive up to half of the donations collected at last year’s service, attended by about 14,000 people.

Officials of the Philharmonic, which leases the Hollywood Bowl from Los Angeles County, said Beyer misled them about TBN’s role last year, adding that had they been fully informed, the ministry would have been required to pay a location fee.

This year, the Philharmonic rejected Beyer’s bid for the bowl, even though her proposal included an offer by Trinity to pay the financially strapped orchestra association a $25,000 location fee.

Instead, the Philharmonic chose to deal with Beyer’s opponents, led by Beverly Hills publicist Norma Foster, who produced the service for several years.

“We regard (TBN) as we would a for-profit enterprise,” said Anne Parsons, the Philharmonic Assn.’s general manager.

A spokesman for the Crouches, New York-based lawyer Colby M. May, said the TV ministry’s interest in the sunrise service remains purely spiritual. The Crouches declined to be interviewed.

May suggested that Trinity may not even be interested in becoming involved with the service this year. He insisted that the TV ministry “has to my knowledge not even been approached by anyone about it.”

But Barry Pfailer, TBN’s program director, said the ministry had been engaged in discussions with Beyer about sponsoring this year’s service since December.

Beyer said she told the Philharmonic in February that TBN was willing to pay a $25,000 location fee, only to be told that the association had changed its mind and wanted $50,000.

TBN was considering whether to pay $50,000 when the association decided to accept the Foster group’s proposal two weeks ago, Beyer said.

“After all TBN did to save the service from financial ruin in 1992, I certainly think they were treated poorly,” she said.

Critics of Beyer and Trinity expressed a different view.

“It says something about how much money they figure is in it to be considering those kinds of (location) fees,” said Gerald T. Manpearl, a lawyer for Beyer’s opponents.

“They may call it a prayer line, but we call it a pitch line,” he said.

Sources familiar with the agreement say the Foster group, which is paying no location fee, has until March 29 to pay the Philharmonic an initial $10,000, with $15,000 due April 5 and the remainder to be paid the day of the service. Foster said the group needs to raise about $56,000 to produce the service.

For the past 50 years, the Philharmonic had subleased the bowl to the sunrise service board for $1, waiving location fees and expenses it charges other productions.

Both sides say that no matter what happens this Easter, they will press lawsuits to establish control of the service next year.

To avoid further legal challenges, supporters of the service scheduled for the Bowl decided not to sponsor it under the name Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service. Instead, it will be sponsored by the Southside Cultural Society, which operates the Paul Robeson Center in South-Central Los Angeles.

“The important thing is that the sunrise service is saved for the community and not some narrow religious interest,” Foster said.