New Song Community Church

From its founding on September 27, 1992, New Song has strived to be a church that helps people outside of traditional church find Christ and grow in relationship with Him. It has never been our intention simply to serve ourselves. We have always wanted to be a community of faith that invites people far from God to find out how life-changing a relationship with Him can be. We’ve wanted to be a prevailing church. One that reflected Jesus’ declared intention in Matthew 16:18 when He said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” That vision started with Founding Pastor Hal Seed and his wife Lori eighteen months before they moved to Oceanside, on faith, to start our initial  small group. 

“It was like God grabbed me by the collar and whispered, ‘If not you, who? If not now, when?’ God had been so good to me, how could I do any less than respond to His call? Even though it meant leaving behind a nice church in a nice city, with nice buildings, nice friends, and a nice salary to come to a place where we knew no one, to start a church that had no name, no people, no buildings, and no finances. We had to respond.”

The first small group was held in the Seed’s home on January 9, 1992 in a house near Rancho Del Oro Road. From the very beginning, the group was captivated by God’s description of the first church in Acts 2:42-47:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had a need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.                                                                             

A month later, Scott and Susan Evans moved from Colorado to utilize their gifts in helping to build a strong foundation for the new community that God was building. The Evans’ move typifies how God has led in New Songers' lives over the years. Susan was pregnant, they were unable to sell their house before moving, and they needed to raise financial support to join the church planting effort. Undeterred, they came because they believed God was in it and would provide for them.

By May of 1992, 14 people had made a commitment to found a new church, called “New Song.” Their hope was to fulfill the words of Psalm 40:3:

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

On September 27, 1992 we opened the doors of the Mini-Theater at Mira Costa College and invited our friends to attend. 194 came to the first service. Without even given an invitation, a man named Hans came forward and asked if he could receive Christ. God has been prevailing in New Song ever since.

A year later, New Song was politely invited to find a new meeting location. With only four weeks’ notice, we prayed hard and found a willing principal at Breeze Hill Elementary School in Vista. Breeze Hill was a brand new school, with a brand new auditorium. So new, in fact, that it wasn’t completed. At the 11^th hour, Hal received a phone call from a pastor whose church was vacated Ivey Ranch Elementary School. The school’s janitor was enjoying the weekend overtime pay and wanted to host a church on weekends. New Song moved to Ivey Ranch for nine weeks (the months of September and October, 1993), until the Breeze Hill auditorium was completed.

In November, 1993 New Song held their first services at Breeze Hill. The church had sent an invitation to the neighbors to attend the first service, so, when auditorium failed to pass its occupancy permit, the decision was made to hold the first service outdoors. Everyone in attendance discovered why the area was named, “Breeze Hill” that day!                                                                                                

During 1994, New Song gave birth to its first daughter church: New Hope Community Church, in San Marcos, under the leadership of Dr. Mark Williams. That December, New Song was once again invited to find a new location. At the same time, the landlord of our rented offices asked that we consider renovating a section of his building and holding church there. The church was in a quandary: leasing a seven day a week space would be far more expensive than renting a school on Sundays only, but the school district no longer wanted a children’s ministry that used six classrooms every weekend. So the choices were limited to, lease and build, or stop meeting as a church.

New Song drew up plans, pulled permits, and negotiated with the Vista school district to use one of the nearest school, which was Alamosa Park Elementary School for six months. Services were held at Alamosa from January, 1995 to September, 1995 (a delay of three months).

On September 10, New Song moved into 4065 Oceanside Blvd. We were 230 strong. It quickly became obvious that we would not be able to pay staff salaries and our increased lease payment until the church grew larger. So all staff members were given pink slips with the request that they stay on, by faith, as we watched God provide. By mid-1996, growth made it necessary to add a second Sunday service and we were able to pay both salaries and lease payments.

Meanwhile, Scott Evans began receiving requests from other churches to help create invitations and other printed materials for their churches. This outside revenue helped pay Scott’s salary and led to the incorporation of Outreach Marketing a few months later. Outreach’s purpose was to “help more churches reach people for less money.” Outreach, Inc., as it is now called, has helped invite millions of people to various churches around the country by helping tens of thousands of churches with semi-custom invitational pieces, outreach training, Outreach Magazine, Sermon Central, Outreach Pictures, Outreach Books, Comedy Central, and more.

Also in 1996, New Song began a partnership with Paul Becker and Dynamic Church Planting International to assess and train church planters nationally and internationally. Through Paul and DCPI, New Song has stimulated the birthing of 103,000 churches in over 90 countries. To our knowledge, this is the largest movement of church planters in history. DCPI’s vision is to plant 5,000,000 churches by 2050. We also coach, train and care for missionaries, church planters, and church leaders throughout the Western Hemisphere through Karry Kelley, the Western Hemisphere Director for World Team.

In September 1998, New Song added a Saturday night service to alleviate crowding and parking problems in our two Sunday morning services. That October, we gave birth to our second daughter church, Rock Springs Community Church under the direction of Jim Boyd. Rock Springs is a GenX style church targeting the Carrillo Ranch area of Carlsbad, CA.

In February 1999, our third daughter church, Iglesia Christiana Emanuel went public, meeting Sunday afternoons in our own building. Francisco Giron was the church planting pastor for this Spanish speaking ministry, targeting the 33% of North County that is Spanish speaking. In its first year, I.C.E. saw 50+ people come to Christ.

The thing that excites us most is what we see God doing to reach people who have previously been outside of a relationship with Him. In 1995, 53 people came to Christ, (one every seven days). In 1996, 61 people came to Christ, (one every six days). In 1997, 78 people came to Christ, (one every five days). In 1998, 96 people came to Christ, (one every four days). In 1999, 163 came to Christ, (one every three days). In 2000, 186 came to Christ (one every other day). And in 2001 we saw 513 come to Christ (more than one a day.) Evangelistically, 2002 was a consolidation period of us, seeing 215 first time decisions for Christ. Every subsequent year has seen between accelerated fruitfulness, with over 750 decisions in 2007, over 650 in 2008, and over 975 in 2009.

On August 18, 2000 we closed escrow on a 60,000 square foot former Dixieline Lumber building at 3985 Mission Avenue, giving New Song a permanent location for generations to come. The first phase of our build-out was completed in March, 2001. The first New Song service was held in our new 500 seat auditorium on April 1, 2001.

In early 2002, three New Song families began a new web-based ministry called Community Church Builder. Chris Fowler and Free Grafton now resource hundreds of churches with this web-based management system that enables churches to build community with their members online.

In October, 2002, Hal volunteered mentorship and support to Pastor Fabian Molino, who began planting Nueva Cancion (New Song) Church in Hermosilla, Mexico. Fabian has since turned the leadership of Nueva Cancion over to a new pastor and is planting a (for us) granddaughter church in Utah.

As we approached our tenth anniversary, a task force was formed to evaluate our mission and vision going forward. Since our mission is to help unchurched people become fully devoted followers of Christ (i.e., the Great Commission), that will never change. But we studied Jesus admonition to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and decided that we should become a church that loves her neighbors as herself as well. Since that day, we have worked to become, “The Church Next Door” – a great neighbor to the peoples, institutions, and agencies of our city.

In our desire to be a great neighbor, we partner with practically every Christian group in Oceanside, from Brother Benno's to Solutions for Change, Bread of Life, Stand Up For Kids, SOS, and several more. A team of New Song men minister to recruits at Edson Range Chapel every other weekend. These same men teach marriage, seeker, and discipleship classes to the recruits as well. Our volunteer Gangland minister, Roy Vallez, has been so effective in Oceanside that the police tell us that gang activity is down 35% in the last three years. Douglas and Monette Campbell’s Children By Choice ministry serves children and parents in incredible ways. The Red Cross tells us that our semi-annual Blood Drives make us the fourth largest blood donor group in San Diego County. Pound for pound, New Song may do as much charitable work in Oceanside as any group around.

In July, 2005, New Song helped Mike Fabarez launch Compass Bible Church in Aliso Viejo. Three of our pastors and Board members constituted the founding Elder Board for Compass Bible. The church is thriving, with a radio ministry, over 3,000 in attendance, and has begun daughtering churches of its own.

In December, 2005 New Song began helping Pastor Johnny Williams plant a new church in Beaumont, TX. Johnny’s church in New Orleans was destroyed by the Katrina Hurricane. 15 of the church’s families relocated to Beaumont with their pastor and are currently building a church in his living room.

2007 weekend attendance was approximately 900, meeting in a multitude of youth, children, and adult venues on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

During 2008, Wilmer Pena launched a new para-church ministry called First The Kingdom. FTK’s mission is to raise evangelists and the value of evangelism in local churches by training members and taking them on short-term missions trips to Mexico. Wilmer’s plan is to identify villages with new church planters and partner with one or two church planters in starting a church during each trip. New Song will participate in 8-10 of these trips per year, so our goal is to help launch at least one, and perhaps as many as eight new churches per year in Mexico.

In the fall of 2008, we commissioned Dave and Lilly Christman to serve with Campus Crusade for Christ on the San Jose State campus.                                                                         

In November, 2008, Seven24 became our official Sunday evening congregation. Targeting mostly 20-somethings, but open to all, this congregation meets at 6:30 p.m.

As of January, 2009, New Song’s attendance was averaging 1,100 per weekend. This jumped to 1300 by March, 2010. We believe that for every person in attendance, there are approximately 1.8 people who consider New Song their church. So our best guess is that there are about 2,300 people who would consider themselves to be “New Songers.”

In March, 2009, Chip Ball launched a new web-based evangelistic ministry called FindTruthOnline. Chip’s plan is to use New Song as the initial testing site for a ministry linking FindTruthOnline with a website that presents the gospel and directs responders to a church in their area.

In May of 2009, Edwin and Amy Samson were commissioned to plant a church for us in Quezon City, the Philippines.

In July, 2009, we commissioned Sandy Flores to reach prostitutes in Bangkok, Thailand with a ministry called, NightLight.

In January, 2010, we released a feature length film called To Save A Life. The message of the movie is that we are never more like Jesus than when we are reaching out to the hurting and lonely. During the theater release phase, youth and adults all over the country were helped with issues like suicide and self-injury. Several thousand churches were helped with To Save A Life and “To Save a Family” curricula and campaigns. Our prayer has been that God will use these tools to prevent 1,000 suicides, help 10,000 churches, and improve the lives of 250,000 families. With the movie showing in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, So. Africa, and Australia, it looks like that’s on the way to happening.

In September, 2010 we added a third Sunday morning service. In January, 2011, we launched a Spanish speaking service called “New Song en Espanol,” under the leadership of Dey Padilla. And we hope we will be able to move to a two service format at our Bonsall campus, New Song Inland Hills, very soon, giving us eight weekend worship opportunities in two languages and two locations.