Rice Field

When we talk about missionaries, we often envision a person or a family who goes on their own to a foreign land to start a church or translate the Bible. For decades this has been a primary, effective model  of ministry to share the message of Christ internationally. Americans are sent to foreign lands where the Gospel has not yet been preached.

Though there are still unreached people groups, our world is becoming more and more globalized. Christ continues to rescue, save and free people in the most hurting places around the globe! God is on the move and is raising up leaders in every nation for the sake of the Gospel! Missionaries are being sent out from Africa and South America and many other places to love people and share about a Kingdom of the Living God that has come to bring hope to their darkness.

And many of those missionaries are being sent to the USA! 

Our Missionary Journey begins with a desire to live out the love of Jesus, with a community of Christ followers, seeking God together and  passionately announcing the Kingdom of the Living God in a Globalized City. 

• We have intentionally moved into a neighborhood along with 25 others. With these folks, we love and serve those who live around us, those who join us and those whom we  befriend in the city. 
• The “foreign land” is actually a neighborhood called Golden Hill in San Diego, CA.
• We’re not here to start a church service, but rather, to serve and love people as we follow Jesus together. As we live out what it means to be the “body of Christ,” we believe people will come to know Jesus as God. 
• We invite young, emerging leaders to come live near us and with us as apprentices for 1 to 2 years, living out this life of mission together in our neighborhood and city. We mentor these apprentices in one-one-one coaching relationships as well as larger group teaching times. We then send these leaders around the world to live out the next step in God’s call for their lives.
• We partner with local church bodies to come along side them in their missional efforts. 
• We learn from the Bible with both Christ followers and those exploring who Christ is. We listen and learn and teach and follow, as well as disciple.
• We host people in our home and in our community.
• With San Diego as our base, we lead worship through music in several different communities of Christ followers around the world.

CRM and NieuCommunities

We have joined a mission organization called, CRM (Church Resource Ministries) who’s mission is to empower leaders to start and strengthen churches world wide. NieuCommunities is a division of CRM which is a collective of missional communities in cities around the world, committed to apprenticing the next generation of missionaries. Learn more about NieuCommunities by clicking here.

We will follow God wherever He leads us. As God was calling us to Missions, we opened our hearts and said, “Lord, send us wherever you want! We will go!”  And God said, “San Diego!” :) 

Golden Hill, San Diego

Why San Diego? What does it look like for us to follow God in the way of Jesus in Golden Hill and the greater San Diego city area? 

San Diego is often referred to as “America’s Finest City” with its beaches, city life, urban villages and entertainment attractions.  Yet there’s another side to the city that we often miss or forget about. Below the surface of success and entertainment there’s brokenness, loneliness and hopeless spirituality.  There are single parent families, children lost in the social system, racial gang violence and addictions of all kinds.  Hopelessness and addiction have no socioeconomic bias.  We believe Jesus wants to bring freedom, refuge, and peace to this city. 

We live among people from all walks of life.  As ones who seek to love and befriend whomever God brings to our community, it’s important for us to remember that the city’s majority population is non-white, non-middle class.  These folks are not necessarily the ones sipping cappuccinos in the hip part of the city, but they do cook most of the food and wash most of the dishes.  They cut people’s lawns, build their homes and raise their children.  They often work 2 to 3 jobs a day to survive and rarely visit the places that tourists enjoy every day.  San Diego is also one of the United States’ designated “sanctuary” cities.  There are refugee populations from Africa and Southeast Asia sprinkled throughout downtown neighborhoods.  We believe Jesus sees these people and wants to bring purpose and hope to their lives. 

San Diego is one of our country’s major sex trafficking gateway cities.  Thousands of young people, many underage, are smuggled into San Diego every year from Mexico City via Tijuana.  They come from places like Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America.  They are drugged, sold, enslaved, and held in buildings many of us may have walked passed but have never noticed.  We believe Jesus wants to set these captives free, bring justice and healing to these broken bodies.

The legal border between the United Sates and Mexico lies 15 miles south of the city center, but the real border lies about 1500 yards south of downtown where cultures from around the world collide. This is the neighborhood we believe God has called us to move into, to serve, and from within to train up and develop young missional leaders to send all over the world.  This is where we worship God as a community, inviting others to join us.

So this is where God has led us as missionaries. It may sound different from the missionary story of the past but we know our creative God wants to love our new world in new ways.