By 1953, the congregation of the College Church had far surpassed the capacity of Burden Hall. A joint committee composed of appointees from the Church, the Southeastern California Conference, and the College decided to recommend the construction of a separate auditorium southeast and adjacent to Burden Hall, and to remodel Burden Hall to provide needed class rooms and offices.
On June 30, 1955, however, the CME Board of Trustees voted that the Building Committee should consider reserving an adequate area for a new College Church bounded on the north by Central Avenue (now University Court), on the west by San Bernardino Street (now Campus Street), and on the east by the new campus mall. It would face the School of Dentistry, then in its final stages of construction. (This space would be large and it could be expected to last for a while!) Something else to remember was the fact that each new class added to the School of Dentistry would impact church membership.
On May 22, 1956, College President Godfrey T. Anderson and Controller John C. Shull presented to the College of Medical Evangelists Board a preliminary architect’s sketch of the new church building, tentatively designed to seat 2,000. Emphasizing the need for the new facility, they reported that Burden Hall’s seating capacity of 450 would never accommodate the College Church’s 1,400 members. In the summer of 1945, Pastor Norval F. Pease had started two church services each Sabbath, but Burden Hall could not come near meeting the demand. (Pastor Pease also inaugurated the College Church’s first bulletin.) The congregation also needed additional Sabbath School facilities. Mr. Shull reported that M. Webster Prince, DDS, first Dean of the School of Dentistry, had agreed to serve as Chair of the Fund-Raising Committee to raise from members $175,000 of the estimated $500,000 cost of construction.
Within two months, the Church conducted three church services, one in Cutler Hall, and two -in Burden Hall. The church invited some visitors to bring their own chairs. The children’s divisions were scattered from library stack rooms, basements, and amphitheaters to old store buildings. Something had to be done.
By January 1958, plans had developed well enough for Charles E. Winter, PhD, Chair of the College Church Building Committee, to present slides to the CME Board, showing elevations and floor plans for a new house of worship. During that meeting the Board voted to lease land for the church to the Southeastern California Conference and stated that additional needs of the church should be studied when it considered land lying south of the church property for assignment to another project. The Board approved construction of the new College Church on May 28, 1959. On August 1, 700 people witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony.
During construction, CME’s medical and dental students scheduled car-wash-and-wax sessions to benefit the building project. On one day, junior dental students washed 140 cars in an average of one minute, forty-five seconds each. They brought in $141.53. They also saved gold and platinum scraps from their laboratory work to be sold to a refinery, the proceeds to go to the College Church building fund. On two Fridays approximately 90% of the sophomore student physicians accepted $10 donations and raised more than $800 toward their class goal.
On September 10, 1960, the College Church congregation moved from John Burden Hall into the new 2,200-seat, $610,000 College Church (the third dedicated Seventh-day Adventist Church building in Loma Linda). The new plant included ten educational classrooms for children and youth. Leaders had expressed hope that the entire congregation would now be able to worship together under one roof at the same time. Nearly 3,000 members and friends witnessed the inaugural service and address by Reuben R. Figuhr, President of the General Conference.
Francis D. Nichol, Editor of The Review and Herald, delivered the dedicatory address on May 27, 1961. (He was that eight-year-old boy who was too young to join the first congregation in January 1906.)
After the College of Medical Evangelists became Loma Linda University on July 1, 1961, the College Church was renamed University Church of Seventh-day Adventists.