San Diego Part 1

    So, last weekend I took a quick trip to San Diego with a couple of friends to check out some great churches.  Besides the fantastic weather and views like this one we got to experience some different worship services and steal all their great ideas.
    We started out at NorthCoast church which is this killer church in Vista that bought this old car dealership and turned it into a multiple venue church.  I've heard about this church since my days in Las Vegas so I was stoked to get to see it in person.  The first thing you notice about SoCal church is that a LOT of stuff happens outside.  If you live in San Diego where it's 70 degrees 364 days a year and the one day it's not it's 68, you can do a lot outdoors.  I mean, all the doors where wide open to every single venue.  The coffee was all sitting outside.  The greeters were all standing outside.  You could have had the service outside.  I don't think anyone really wanted to go inside.  It made the venues all really inviting.  It was really cool.  I just wish we could bottle some of that weather and bring it back to CCC and have all of our stuff outside.
    We got there early so we could walk around the venues and take pictures and talk to people.  Besides having a rock service, a live contemporary service, a country service, and a video service, they had different rooms and bands for their children, junior high, and senior high.  The two that stood out to me were the rock venue and the senior high room.  None of these rooms were huge, but they used the space well and the aesthetics of the room really matched the vibe they were going for.  Here are some pics.

    I went to service at the rock venue, which is called The Edge, for two reasons.  One, to check out the music, and two, to see how they did live video teaching at their first service of the weekend.  It being the first service, they didn't have the luxury of a pre-recorded dvd, so they had to time it well.  I thought they did a great job of timing it and their idea to tell the other venues when to switch to video was genius.  They had an old traffic light at the back of the room and when it was green things were fine.  When it went to yellow they knew they were getting close to the teaching.  When it was red, yep, live message.
    The music itself made me feel really good, because I wasn't blown away.  I'm definitely not saying it wasn't good.  It was, but I realized that we could take any of our bands at CCC and put them in there and they would do great.  You never know, with art, how you measure up against other places who are doing the same kind of thing as you.  I just think it's really cool that you can be in Chicago or San Diego or probably thousands of other cities in America and hear great music that tells God's story.
    All in all, a great experience at NorthCoast with some awesome take aways.  You'll see some of them at CCC in the coming weeks, because I'm borrowing their great ideas.
    The next morning we stayed in San Diego and visited another church I had heard a ton about called The Rock church.  This is another church with a lot of stuff happening outside.  They're in a business park way off the interstate and at first we were wondering how they ever got anyone to drive all the way out and find them.  Because it was in a business park the parking was terrible.  Just ask Bill Carroll and that white Lexus behind us.
    One of the first things I noticed was that everybody was about my age.  It was crazy.  I would say 80% of the people at this church were under 35.  It was the youngest church I'd ever seen.  We later found out that they were running about 8,000 over 6 weekend services.  That's a lot of young people.

   Unfortunately, neither their Lead Pastor or their worship artists were there that day so I won't really comment on those things, but there were two huge parts of the service that blew us away.  First of all, they did alot of announcements by video.  It's a whole piece they call RockTv.  As soon as the intro for RockTv came up, the crowd applauded like they knew what they were about to see was going to be great.  It was like being at a theater and this movie you've been anticipating for months finally begins.  The videos were incredibly done and very professional.  I think I'll still take our videos at CCC though.  After RockTv a pastor came up and said it was time to take the offering and what totally tripped us out was that everyone once again applauded.  I was like, "what just happened?"  That guy just said they were going to take the offering.  These people must be confused.  I've never heard anybody clap when they got a chance to give their money away.  I just thought this was such a cool value that obviously their Lead Pastor had instilled in this congregation.  It is pretty awesome that we can worship God with our money.  The fact that we have so much we can give it away is so humbling.  People get confused about tithing.  Sometimes we think the church just wants our money so they can buy new computers or pay their pastors more.  You miss your chance if that's your mindset.  God wants every single part of us.  The hardest thing for us to give up is our money.  So logically, worshiping God by showing him that he is more important to us than our money is a huge part of our walk with him.  I hope we all feel like clapping when our churches say it's time for the offering.
    Our experience at The Rock was great and I will definitely be stealing alot of their ideas.  We got to connect with some people there and we even ran into a former CCC'er who is stationed in San Diego in the Navy.  That was really cool.
    Another interesting fact about The Rock; they are building a 280,000 square foot building in San Diego near the airport to expand many of the ministries they have and start some new ones.
    I encourage everyone to cheer these two great churches on and pray for them as they try to make a huge impact in San Diego.
    Part 2 of my San Diego posts will be more about experiencing San Diego the city and all the fun we had while there for a short 30 hours or so.  I LOVE my job!