HISTORY OF CENTRAL CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE

The first pastor in Central California was hired with $135 worth of gold.

The initial gold rush had passed, and many of the 49ers faded away; but they'd made San Francisco the major West Coast City. Yet when layman Merritt Kellogg (the younger brother of John Harvey and Will Kellogg) and his family arrived there in 1859, they found themselves the sole Seventh-Day Adventists. Kellogg's first convert was B.G. St. John, and together the two men gathered a company of believers that worshipped in St. John's home. By 1865, they realized that they needed a pastor. Raw gold was still common currency in the City by the Bay, so the company sent a gift of gold to the General Conference with a request for a minister.

Three years later evangelists J. N. Loughborough and D.T. Bordeau arrived. Kellogg had returned east, but Loughborough and Bordeau found the company of Adventist believers Kellogg had promised them, and preached to them.

Interest in areas north - Petaluma, Sonoma County, and Santa Rosa - occupied the two evangelists for the next several years. Soon there were enough believers that Loughborough and Bordeau felt the need for a formal organization to coordinate evangelism and organize churches. This precursor to the California Conference appointed Bordeau president, assisted by a three-man executive committee.

Believers erected an Adventist church building in Santa Rosa in 1869 - the first Adventist church west of the Rockies. But it wasn't until 1871 that Loughborough returned to San Francisco, where he baptized 70, including almost all of a local Millerite Advent Christian Church. James and Ellen White visited the San Francisco believers in 1872. The success in San Francisco led to meetings throughout the area, including San Jose, Santa Clara, Gilroy and Hollister.

In 1873, at a camp meeting in Yountville, Loughborough and Bordeau's initial organization officially became the California Conference, with 7 churches and 253 members. Loughborough was the first president.

Sitting in the audience at that camp meeting one evening was Moses J. Church, then engaged in digging a thirteen-mile irrigation canal from the Kings River to a wheat growing venture in Fresno. (That canal would be the start of a massive irrigation system that would make the San Joaquin Valley one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.) Church believed what he heard; upon his conversion he made a solemn pledge that none of his irrigation canals would henceforth be dug on the Sabbath.

Once back home, Church exerted all his influence, toward raising up an Adventist church. Before long, he had a church of 50 members. Church was a tireless promoter who wrote tracts and letters encouraging people to move to Fresno. (So many of those who located were Adventists, that Ellen White became concerned: she'd wanted Adventist to spread out, not to congregate in Fresno.) When in 1874 the first ministers were licensed in California, one of them was sent to follow up Moses Church's work in the San Joaquin Valley. By 1888 there were enough Fresno Adventists that they were able to build the largest church building in the city.

Congregations began to spring up everywhere in the next two decades. San Francisco had been the first, but was quickly followed by Lemoore, San Jose, Fresno, Arroyo Grande, Armona, Bakersfield, Hanford, and Modesto. D. N. Canright rose up the church at Watsonville. The Fresno believers began the first church school in the state in 1897. Before long, Conference leaders saw the need to divide the vast California Conference into manageable pieces. They first split off Southern California Conference in 1901; ten years later, the remaining territory was further divided. The San Joaquin Valley down to Bakersfield, and the coastal regions from San Luis Obispo up to Monterey, made up the first Central California Conference, with a conference office in Fresno. The original California Conference retained only the counties near San Francisco, but in 1932 it was dissolved altogether, giving Central California Conference San Francisco and adjoining areas to the south of the bay.

Schools and camps followed. Armona Union Academy established the first 12-grade academy in 1911. In 1929, the Conference purchased a small camp meeting site in Fresno, but in 1947, camp meeting moved to the present location in Soquel. A mere five acres in Yosemite National Park (now grown to 31) formed the first Wawona summer campground. Monterey Bay Academy opened in 1950 on land that had been a World War II military base.

Central has long been one of the most ethnically diverse Conferences in North America. In the first part of the century, evangelists raised Italian churches, German churches (four in San Francisco's Chinatown), a Japanese church and a Russian church. In 1923, O.A. Troy formed the first African-American church in our territory in San Francisco. In 1950 there were at least 4 Hispanic churches in Fresno, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Maria. In recent years, Central California Conference has added Hmong, Vietnamese, Samoan, Korean, and Filipino companies and churches.

The Conference office moved to San Jose in 1931. Pacific Press relocated from Oakland to Mountain View in 1904. These institutions left the Bay Area in the early 1980's - the Conference office to the Fresno/Clovis area and Pacific Press to Nampa, Idaho.

Today, Central has 33,630 members in 137 churches/companies and 25 schools with over 2,300 students. Our total administrative, pastoral and education work force is about 1,700 and tithe is now in excess of $25 million annually.