Televangelist Building O.C. Studio

His hands were said to heal the defective heart of heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield. His silver hair and wild gestures inspired Steve Martin in his movie “Leap of Faith.”

Parents take their disabled children across state lines to see him. And some of those who closely watch television evangelists call him a manipulator who makes millions off the desperate and desperately ill.

Benny Hinn is regarded as one of the fastest-rising televangelists in the country. And he’s coming to Orange County.

The controversial Hinn, 44, is building a multimillion-dollar TV production studio and world ministry center in Aliso Viejo, northeast of Laguna Beach, calling on faithful followers to help defray the cost.

“It’s going to be a major presence, not only in Southern California but in the production of television programming,” Harold Ezell, a local board member of Benny Hinn Media Ministries, said of the Aliso Viejo facility.

The World Media Center, described in a Hinn brochure as a 30,000-square-foot building purchased for $2.5 million, will become the new operations center for “This Is Your Day!,” the Hinn program broadcast daily on more than 90 stations and cable outlets across the country.

It will also serve as the hub for a global TV ministry, producing foreign language translations of the show to be broadcast worldwide, Ezell said.

Hinn currently tapes the show at various facilities, including Tustin’s Trinity Broadcasting Network, which airs it, as well as at studios in Oklahoma, North Carolina and Canada.

The Southern California location for the new studio facility was “something that was the pastor’s choice and involved the availability of technical people in that part of the country,” Hinn spokesman George Parson said.

Ministry officials are making an appeal to supporters to cover the total $4.5-million cost of buying and renovating the building. For a $1,500 gift, donors will receive a gold-and-bronze-colored leaf embossed with their names that will hang on a “Tree of Remembrance” in the building’s lobby. Others are urged to give more, even up to $10,000 each.

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Hinn has come a long way since his youth. A shy boy with a stutter, Hinn was raised Greek Orthodox in Israel. At age 14, he moved to Toronto with his family and was “born again,” saying he lost his stutter at a church gathering when he rose to speak of his conversion. His crusades, which feature believers “slain in the spirit” reeling into the waiting arms of “catchers,” was influenced by the late faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman, whom he has said he first saw at a Pittsburgh church revival in the 1970s.

Based in Orlando, Fla., Hinn ministers to 12,000 people a week at his World Outreach Center and takes his Miracle Crusades around the world, saying he can cure such ailments as varicose veins and cancer.

The evangelist, who admits to some theatrics during his crusades, blows on his followers, knocks them gently under the chin, rubs his suit jacket over his body--which he says is electric with the power of the Holy Spirit--and flicks it at the audience. At the end of many of his half-hour programs, Hinn reaches to the camera and implores viewers to come toward the screen.

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“I see a leg losing feeling,” Hinn said on a recent show. “Lord, restore feeling to that leg!”

For now, the Aliso Viejo center--visible from the San Joaquin Hills toll road--is surrounded by a chain-link fence, the white building wrapped in a banner proclaiming Hinn’s impending arrival.

An application for a permit to renovate the building’s interior is pending, county records show. Once complete, Parson said, the building will hold a permanent studio for “This Is Your Day!”

While some have wondered whether it heralds a permanent move for Hinn, Parson denied that. “He is still the senior pastor of the World Outreach Center in Orlando,” he said. “This is where his family is. His kids are in school here. He’s indicated pretty strongly to the congregation here that he won’t be moving.”

Ezell, former Western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and architect of the anti-illegal-immigration measure Proposition 187, said he could not discuss matters relating to the Hinn media ministries board.

Hinn is scheduled to hold a crusade at the Anaheim Convention Center on Nov. 2. He already spends a good deal of time on the West Coast and will undoubtedly be here more once the production studios are completed, Ezell said.

“He’ll be maintaining a both-coasts operation,” Ezell said. “I don’t know how the guy’s gonna do it.”

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Ezell met Hinn several years ago through a friend and said the evangelist invited him to join the board last spring when he was restructuring his ministry.

“My dad was a minister, and I’ve been around the ministry all my life,” Ezell said. “I would say that Benny Hinn probably is one of the most dynamic guys. He’s extremely bright and a real communicator.”

But some of those who study television evangelists say Hinn sometimes goes too far.

“We’ve had numerous complaints about Mr. Hinn that have had to do with people stopping taking their medicine based on promises that they were healed by him,” said Ole Anthony, founder of the Trinity Foundation, a group in Dallas that investigates complaints about televangelists.

Anthony said his organization has tried unsuccessfully to get Hinn to verify testimonials before airing them and wait at least six months to make sure improvements in believers’ health are not the result of remission or psychological influence.

“I think Benny believes in what he’s doing. I like Benny. We feel that it’s deceptive what he’s doing, in giving false hope to these people, millions of people,” Anthony said.

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Faith healers have been making such promises “throughout history, and it’s not going to happen,” said Hank Hanegraaff, who heads the Irvine-based Christian Research Institute. “A lot of people think I just have an ax to grind with Benny Hinn,” he said. “I have dinner with him. I spend time with him. I have nothing against him personally. The problem is when he communicates these things, there are consequences.”

Parson has said the evangelist always tells those who claim they no longer need their medication to see a doctor and get a thorough physical examination.

Hinn himself recently said, “If Benny Hinn can give people only one thing, I am satisfied. And that is hope.”