Loving their neighbors: Thousands from North Coast Church plan weekend of community service

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Thursday, April 19, 2007 7:34 PM PDT ∞

The seats at North Coast Church in Vista will be empty the weekend of April 29, but members won't exactly have the day off.

The church, which attracts about 6,500 people on weekends, is planning the largest community-service event in its history, with participants painting, landscaping, washing and rolling up their sleeves for various jobs at 54 sites throughout North County on April 28 and 29.

In all, congregants will tackle 92 major projects, including painting and landscaping Washington Middle School in Vista and Claire Burgener Academy in Oceanside, with up to 200 people working at each site.

"Jesus said the Commandments can be summed up in two things," said senior pastor Larry Osborne. That message: Love God, and love your neighbor.

The Weekend of Service will put that love of neighbors into action, said Osborne, senior pastor at the mega-church since 1980.

"We've always felt spirituality isn't something that's just in church, but it's going out and doing it, day to day," he said.

Community service is nothing new for churches, including North Coast. For years, the small study groups that about 80 percent of the members attend have been quietly performing a variety of services throughout North County.

That work became more focused about three years ago, when the church hired Casey Yorman as its first community service pastor. About a year and a half ago, Yorman said the idea of a churchwide project was planted after he attended a meeting with Leadership Network, a national group focused on church strategies for pastors.

Yorman said discussion at the meeting was on what it means to be an externally focused church, or a church that cares about its community rather than just its own congregation.

"Most people think of a church as a secret club, but we want to be externally focused," Yorman said, "a church that cares for its community and wants to show it."

The previous community-service work paid off for the church when it came time to select projects for the Weekend of Service.

"When we went out, a lot of people already knew who we were or said, 'Oh yeah, you've worked with us before,'" Yorman said.

The church's reputation for doing quality work comes in part from a number of professionals who are on the volunteer crews. Yorman said a couple of hundred contractors are leaders on the volunteer teams.

The Weekend of Service doesn't mean the church will spend less time on its smaller projects throughout the year. Rather, each individual study group is being asked to do at least one project every season. Osborne said he is not sure whether the Weekend of Service will become an annual event.

About 80 percent of the thousands of people who attend Sunday services also meet in groups of about a dozen during the week at a home for a more personal Bible study, Yorman said.

North Coast itself began in 1977 as a home Bible study in Carlsbad. It has grown to be the country's largest member of the Evangelical Free Church of America, an association of 1,400 autonomous churches. Osborne describes the church as conservative Christian, although its method for delivering that message is far from traditional.

In 1998, North Coast spearheaded the multisite church movement. Besides its main campus on North Melrose Drive, North Coast also has services at Madison Middle School in Oceanside and Fallbrook High School. It has broken ground near Guajome Park in Vista for a structure that will replace the main campus in fall 2008.

On weekends, people attending services at the main campus experience a multimedia, a la carte approach to church. The bustling foot traffic outside the buildings resembles a street fair, while worship services inside are a smorgasbord of styles.

Churchgoers have a selection of venues to attend Saturday night and Sunday morning. In North Coast Live, a room that holds about 500, Osborne or pastor Chris Brown delivers a sermon from a stage shared with a band. From the overhead stage lighting to the technician in the control booth, the production is smooth and polished, although Osborne, who has an affinity for Hawaiian shirts, likes to keep things casual.

At another venue called Traditions, an older crowd enters the room through a facade that resembles an white, wooden church. Inside, choirs sing traditional music from a stage bracketed by deep-purple banners that read "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords." The service breaks for the broadcast of Osborne's or Brown's sermon in the North Coast Live venue.

Likewise at two other venues on campus, worshippers hear the same sermons projected on a large screen onstage. In the Video Cafe, the feel is more of a coffee shop and the music is played on acoustic instruments. In the rock 'n' roll venue called The Edge, gospel music is a bit louder, the subwoofers are bigger and the artwork is more urban.

Worshippers at the Fallbrook and Oceanside campuses hear the same sermons as their fellow congregants in Vista, although the message is recorded and brought to the sites.

All those rooms will be quiet in about a week, however, as the culmination of more than two months of planning is put into play with service projects throughout North County. The church will calculate the estimated value of the work in man hours and material later, but Yorman said a conservative estimate will be more than $400,000.

But the real value of the projects is more intangible.

"One of the things we talked about is changing how people think," Yorman said about planning the event. "They may think Christianity is just something in church on Sunday. This is the ultimate object lesson. When you close down church services on Sunday and go out and love your neighbor, it shows how serious you are."

-- Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

Weekend of Serivce projects:

This is a partial list of projects North Coast Church will be working on during its Weekend of Service on April 28 and 29.

San Diego Blood Bank: Donations.

Boys & Girls Club, La Costa: Maintenance repair and cleaning.

Boys & Girls Club, Oceanside: Painting, carpet-cleaning and mural painting.

Boys & Girls Club, Vista: Painting the gym and other work.

Brother Benno's: Maintenance, repairs and upgrading.

Buena Vista Elementary School: Campus beautification.

Camp Fire USA: Painting, maintenance and repairs.

Casita Center Magnet School: Carpentry, fencing, repairs.

Clair Burgener Academy: Exterior improvements, landscaping, painting.

Crown Heights Community Resource Center: Painting, building brick wall, bookshelves.

Downstown Inc.: Landscaping, painting, fence repairs.

Rancho Buena Vista Creek: Cleanup.

Green Oak Ranch: Maintenance, repairs.

California Avenue Preschool and Mary Loud Clark Center: Construction, repairs and maintenance.

Joe Chavez Resource Center: Painting, upgrade flooring.

Leo Carrillo Ranch: Landscaping, clean-up, maintenance.

Libby Lake Community Center: Outdoor refurbishment, clean-up, maintenance.

North Santa Fe Avenue lots and malls: Clean-ups.

Project OZ: Painting, electrical work, irrigation decorating, gardening.

Salvation Army: Painting, repair basketball court.

San Luis Rey Valley Community Resource Center: Painting, carpet-cleaning.

San Marcos Historical Society: Fence-building.

Washington Middle School: Multi-purpose room irrigation and landscaping, creating signs and murals, upgrades, clean-up, repairs.