My early Church experience in Riverside California

I started in Scientology in 1976 at the Riverside mission in California. At the time Riverside was the number one mission in Scientology, and, perhaps, one of the 3 or 4 largest organizations in Scientology worldwide. With a conservative internal constitution based on green on white Standard Policy, and a very aggressive external posture, in the areas of dissemination and defense - it seemed to embody the very best of what Standard Tech combined with Standard Policy could accomplish. Run by two OTVIIs, with a Class 8 Case Supervisor, it is difficult for me to imagine how benign intentions, or the 'greater good', could have cleared something that robust, out from present time. In 1976 Riverside was the number one mission in the world, built around a staff of 190. A staff member confided in me that the mission was sitting on a half million in reserves - worth 2 or 3 times that today, when adjusted for inflation.

Riverside is the county seat for a largish California county of the same name. Ron was in Riverside, the county, in and around this time, getting Golden Era Productions going, out 50 kilometers toward the southern part of the county. The county newspaper, the Press Enterprise, ran a series on Scientology in general, and the Riverside Mission in particular. The articles were "investigative" with a modest effort at being impartial while "protecting the public", presumably from Scientology. I believe it was a Riverside court's effort to subpoena Ron that presumably motivated him to drop from sight during the final years of his life. It was also during my "public" days at the Riverside Mission, that the FBI raided the complex in Los Angeles. It seemed to me, at the time, that "The Government" had it "in" for Scientology. And, of course, they did, in a manner of speaking. Anything that disturbs the public equilibrium, as a growing Church of Scientology did at that time, invites official attention and attempts to regulate. (One would hope that the current church Office of Special Affairs is able to resist acting out the more powerful valence in regards to the FreeZone.)

Bent and Mary had a very successful operation. Perhaps too successful. The only area that I would agree did get a little out of hand is that they started there own Credit Union. Anyone, mostly relatives of people connected to the mission, were solicited to put in savings, all guaranteed by state regulated Credit Union rules and insurance mechanisms. Needless to say the Credit Union had a very understanding policy on loans to borrowers that wished to use the proceeds to pay for auditing. With 190 staff members, many of them borrowers, as long as the mission did well - then so did the Credit Union.

Sometime around 1978, give or take a year, a price increase was announced. So as to motivate additional donations and make the best of a somewhat negative event, the increases were instituted in an incrementing 5% per month fashion. I believed this would proceed for a few months before pausing. I was wrong. After priced had risen from the $600 per 12 1/2 hour intensive range, up to the $800 area I decided to buy as much as possible before they went out of sight completely. I ended up about a years salary in the hole. And dug myself out over the next 3 1/2 years. No regrets. The money lasted me all the way through OTIII and a little beyond.

The mission however, didn't fair so well, ultimately. At first, as people donated early to avoid the final high prices - the mission was awash in money. I presume that when donation rates stopped rising, income became more difficult to obtain. Simultaneously, and possibly motivating the price increases, technical estimates of the amount of auditing that people would require, dropped sharply with the advent of New Era Dianetics. PreClears that went clear on Dianetics suddenly wanted to transfer their money up the line to the Advanced Organizations to do their OT levels. I was given a deal where I spent 10% of my money in the mission book store and they would send the other 90% on to the Advanced Organization in Los Angeles. I took it.

So the Credit Union was dissolved at some point. After the fact, it looked like financial slight of hand, but actually the weaknesses inherent in the scheme were exacerbated by the financial environment that the idea tried to weather.

Ultimately Riverside Mission fell victim to the '82 Mission Holders Conference which Ralph has documented at this link. I had finished OTIII and started the Briefing Course well before '82 and really never even heard about those events until much later.

An interesting footnote to readers that are inclined to lump me and the mission into a comfortable category, is that Dr. Denk, (who was Ron s attending physician at his death in 1986), was at Riverside. At the time I was rather impressed that for me to get off course for a mild runny nose, I had to go see the Mission's doctor in his little booth in the basement. In addition, when Bent took the mission independent, a fair number of staff elected to stay with the Church network and went on to staff other missions and orgs. I didn't follow many but heard that two were, or are, mission holders in California.

Overall my impression is that a semi-independent mission or franchise network was a more productive mechanism than the current network organization that is run by Scientology Missions International. Maybe I'm just being reactionary, but it seems to me that history has proved repeatedly that entrepreneurial self interest always seems to produce more result that ideology alone. In addition, in my search of the web I have only been able to locate two independent auditors associated with the Church. There should be more than 10 independent auditors for every mission. 10 independent missions for every church. Over regulation and restrictive pricing are what have narrowed the base of the pyramid such that the whole organization is excessively top heavy. Excessive bureaucracy at the top and restrictive / excessive pricing at the bottom are bracketing the expansion of the Scientology Religion from both ends of the organizational structure.

Updated June 25, 2004