Triumphant Campaign

Some 2,000 church members crowded into the church. The photographers poised their flashlight bulbs. The parson's wife stepped to an oil lamp and held the mortgage contract over the chimney. In less than a minute, one of the tidiest church mortgages in the country (from a banker's viewpoint) was a crisp char of expensive ashes. The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles was free of debt, and the banks and other mortgagors owned $750,000 less of the more than $500,000,000 they now hold in U.S. church mortgages.

The man behind this mortgage burning is the First Congregational's minister, the Rev. James W. Fifield Jr., 43. In the eight years of his pastorate, Dr. Fifield has made his Los Angeles church the biggest Congregational church in the U.S.

When he took it over, the bank was demanding long overdue payments on the mortgage. Into this desperate situation Dr. Fifield descended from the skies: he arrived from Grand Rapids by plane in response to pleas from the First Congregational's Committee of Eleven.

Let There Be Light. Dr. Fifield's predecessor, a man of 73, used to prowl through the empty church, turning off the electric lights, in a pathetic attempt at economy. Dr. Fifield turned all the lights on again. In almost no time the First Congregational blazed brighter than the San Francisco Fair, had almost as many exhibits.

There were five Sunday services (including the 8 a.m. Golfers' Service). There were daily radio programs presented by members of the church, a gymnasium, a Drama Workshop, a cafeteria, a day nursery, a kindergarten; a Children's Church in which children act as deacons, choir, ushers; a music library; a complete service for brides ($5 for 25 guests in the chapel; $50 for a big church wedding.) A College of Life offered instruction in foreign languages, piano playing, elocution, world affairs, contract bridge, the rumba.

High-Power Panhandling. To keep this ecclesiastical hive humming requires a paid staff of 42 people, including seven other ministers. It costs (including debt payments) more than $850 a day.

The outlay does not worry Dr. Fifield at all. He believes that new activities bring new people, and new people bring new money. Besides, he has a genius for attracting donations and legacies. There is a story that at a meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce two members were standing in front of a hotel when they saw a panhandler approaching from one direction, Dr. Fifield from the other. They pointed out Dr. Fifield to the panhandler, saying that the parson had plenty of money. The panhandler closed with the parson. When the panhandler left, Dr. Fifield revealed to the startled pair that he had half the panhandler's take for the day.

Said one observer: "General Motors lost a good salesman when Fifield went into the ministry." (Dr. Fifield's present salary: $16,000 a year.)

Dr. Fifield's drive to pay off the mortgage on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the First Congregational Church is his greatest high-pressure campaign to date. Practically everything was done to church members to make the money roll out of their pockets except stand them on their heads. There were pledges, mite boxes (for children's pennies) which yielded as much as $100 a week. Special publicity promised church members who pledged even the smallest amount that their names and their children's names would be printed on a vast parchment scroll to be permanently displayed in a glassed niche cut in the church wall.

At the end of the triumphant campaign Dr. Fifield made one small mistake. In his elation he invited an official of the bank which held the mortgage to witness the mortgage payment. The banker wired: "Please be reminded that officers of the bank do not at this period derive an ecstasy of pleasure upon the payment in full of a satisfactory mortgage. However. . . ."

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