Loma Linda University Church of Seventh-day Adventists

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History of the Loma Linda University Church

Beginnings

The roots of the Loma Linda University Church go back to the Loma Linda Sanitarium (hospital) established in 1905. Employees of the Sanitarium soon began meeting in the parlor for church services. The Loma Linda Seventh-day Adventist Church was officially organized with sixteen members on January 6, 1906.

By 1928 the congregation had grown to over 1,000 members. On December 8, 1928 the church decided to split and form the College Church. The new church began with 284 members, mostly faculty, students and staff of The College of Medical Evangelists (as Loma Linda University was first known). They began meeting in the chapel of West Hall, the renamed original hospital on the lower campus.

Experiencing growth problems, Burden Hall was built in 1934 as a multipurpose building for scientific lectures, chapel exercises, and community programs in addition to the church services. By the mid-1950s the 450 Seats in Burden Hall were not enough to hold the 1400 members—even in two services. So plans were begun to build a new College Church building to seat 2,000 at an estimated cost of $500,000 across from the new Dental School.

A Growing Congregation

On September 10, 1960 the members marched from Burden Hall to the new 2,200-seat College Church built at a cost of $610,000. Leaders had hoped that the entire congregation could now worship together under one roof at the same time. This lasted only 25 months until a second service was added.

When the College of Medical Evangelists became Loma Linda University in 1961, the College Church was renamed University Church. In 1977 the 127-rank Casavant Freres pipe organ with 7,036 pipes was dedicated. In 1986 the church expanded its ministry to children with the establishment of the Loma Linda Children’s Center to provide childcare in a Christian atmosphere. A joint venture between the University, Medical Center and the church, the Children's Center serves many of the children of the University and Medical Center employees.

Expanding the Vision

ACTS (Adventist Community Team Services) was established to meet the needs of persons in the community. ACTS utilizes many volunteers to provide such services as helping people through crisis situations, providing Meals on Wheels, Parish Nursing, transportation, feeding the homeless and making and providing baby quilts for the Children’s Hospital.

Ray Arnold had provided hard wire connections from the Hill Church to nearby homes allowing the church services to be
heard on radios that Ray had modified for them.

Dr. Pearson considered how the Burden Hall services similarly might be available to the community. He was the faculty sponsor of the
amateur radio club. So a carrier current broadcast station was established in the ham shack in the early 1950s. The radio signal was coupled into the powerline allowing the Burden Hall services to be received on radio in all of Loma Linda and several nearby communities.
Dr. Glenn Foster was part of the team then.

In the early 1980s volunteers began videotaping the worship services to share with homebound members. The venture was soon expanded with better equipment and trained crew members. Broadcasts of the worship services were channeled to the Medical Center and later on the local cable access channel. In the 1990s a Media Ministries grew to include a flegling television network, the Loma Linda Broadcasting Network (LLBN), now a seperate non-profit organization. LLBN continues to broadcast University Church programming several times a week by satellite across North and Central America and by Internet around the world.

During the same decade, in the early 1990s, EXCELL (Exchanges in Community, Education, Living and Learning) was established as an endeavor to reach into the community to provide mentoring and tutoring by volunteers to underprivileged children. Many church members and university students have enjoyed ministering to these students.

New Beginnings

By the year 2000 expansion of facilities was once again necessary. Membership had grown to over 6000 and the growing number of young adults and children led to the South Wing project. This sizable endeavor aimed at replacing the existing south wing of the church with a much larger multi-story edifice to serve as an educational wing.

The project took a turn when a required fire sprinkler system installation in the sanctuary uncovered asbestos which had to be removed. Since the building by that time was over 40 years old and in need of attention, it was decided to allocate all resources to the complete renovation of the sanctuary. The congregation moved out in October 2003, and began meeting in the Gentry Gymnasium, courtesy of Loma Linda University. It would be 16 months before the project would be completed.

On January 22, 2005 the University Church congregation, in the fashion of the original march, made its way from Gentry Gymnasium to its newly renovated home. Now seating more than 1900 people, the Loma Linda University Church sanctuary functions as a state-of-the-art worship facility, home to dozens of monthly events including worship services, traditional and contemporary concerts, lectures, television broadcasts, and Loma Linda University events.

The approximately 6,500 members of the Loma Linda University Church, the largest Adventist congregation in North America, now look to rebuild the South Educational wing to provide more Sabbath School rooms to meet the growing needs of our children, youth and young adults to provide much needed multipurpose rooms for a variety of uses.