VIDEO: Scientology begs for staff in Chicago as it prepares to go ‘ideal’ — as soon as Saturday?

This weekend, Mike Rinder suggested at his blog that recent chatter coming out of Chicago may indicate that Scientology’s “Ideal Org” there may be having its grand opening as soon as this Saturday.

This is a pretty big deal, because David Miscavige’s program for opening new Scientology cathedrals has been on hold since its last grand opening in Ventura, California in February 2020.

The pandemic shut down public gatherings for more than a year, of course, but that hasn’t explained why Miscavige hasn’t resumed the events more recently. And especially with new facilities in Chicago and Austin sitting ready to go.

Miscavige started his grand project of replacing existing “orgs” in major cities with grander “Ideal Orgs” in 2003 in places like Buffalo and Tampa. He now has more than 60 gleaming (and empty) palaces in locations from Phoenix to Tokyo. And we’ve shown you church fliers indicating that he wants many more buildings across the country, in places like Hawaii, Long Island, Battle Creek, and New Haven.

Each of them can cost tens of millions of dollars, which is put on local Scientologists to raise. But with membership dwindling, we’re seeing more and more evidence that Miscavige is using grants from the IAS (Scientology’s membership organization) to fund the projects.

Since the pandemic began to recede, a couple of other factors may have been delaying the program. First, Miscavige himself, who likes to attend the grand openings, has been dodging process servers for a few different lawsuits, and he may be wary about showing up in such public places.

But also, we suspect that what’s been an issue with the new cathedrals is finding the people to staff them. When Ideal Orgs first open, they are under pressure to show a lot of initial success before, inevitably, they settle back into quietude. And as part of that initial push, they are supposed to be fully staffed. But who wants to join org staff these days?

One of our researchers noticed that the effort to draw Scientologists to Chicago to work for pennies at its new Ideal Org has been pretty involved. There’s a website, and several videos, and we wanted to show you that today.

We want to get your thoughts on the video, above, that features Jessica talking about her decision, as a second-generation Scientologist, to join Chicago staff.

And we wanted to show you just a few pages from the website that was put in place about three months ago. You tell us, would this get you to move to the Windy City to work for Dave?

Please note that the photos here show these Chicago staffers at the Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida, where they are getting special training before the Ideal Org opens.

You too could get Flag certified to bring home the bacon! What are you waiting for!

Chicago peeps: Please keep an eye on the building at 650 S Clark St and let us know if you see preparations being made for a grand opening this weekend. Is there a big ribbon on the building? A space for an audience being roped off out in front?

Please let us know.

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning…