TEMECULA: Church members exchange services for service

Sunridge members take their worship to the streets on Sunday

By NICOLE SACK - Staff Writer | Friday, November 14, 2008 9:07 PM PST ∞

TEMECULA ---- Sunridge Community Church is canceling its Sunday services.

But the worship is set to go on as more than 600 church members and their children will spend the Sabbath serving others. Whether it be cleaning up the Chaparral High School campus, landscaping at Rancho Damacitas, stringing Christmas lights for the city of Murrieta or feeding the needy ---- there is plenty of work to be done.

Greg Sidders, senior pastor of Sunridge Church, said that while nixing Sunday morning services is new, having parishioners work in the community is not.

He said the tendency to work outside the walls of the church goes back to the beginnings of Sunridge in 1989.

"Back then, we were known as 'church in a box,'" Sidders said. "For the first 13 years we met in a school, and the last five years we've been located in a converted metal factory. It's never been the physical building that made us a church."

Sunridge Community Church is located at 42299 Winchester Road in Temecula, and has a congregation of 800 adults and their children.

This Sunday marks a culmination of a 10-week sermon series, "Give Love Away," Sidders said.

"We have been studying everything the Bible teaches about love," he said.

Sidders takes some pride in saying that the church is "decentralized" and seeks guidance from its members, which he said often leads to profound ideas, such as Sunday's service in the community.

"We have a lot of people that are already involved in the community, and they have better ideas than I could come up with," he said. "But I think you are seeing similar things happening in churches across the country. The level of compassion has increased dramatically; we are learning, more than ever before, that it matters how we care for people who lack the resources we have."

Last month, two other Southwest County churches canceled their Sunday worship to tackle service projects.

More than 300 members of LifeChurch in Murrieta fanned out across the Oak Grove Center for Education, Treatment and the Arts campus and gave the facility a major makeover.

And more than 160 members of Temecula's Community Church of the Valley congregation gathered at a park one Sunday and filled shoe boxes with gifts for less fortunate children around the world.

This weekend, Marlys and Danny Rukel of Temecula, who have been Sunridge members for 10 years, will be using their Sunday to serve breakfast to the homeless at Sam Hicks Memorial Park in Old Town, as well as collect food for the underprivileged. She said that while her family has been service-oriented, being surrounded by like-minded individuals at church has opened her eyes to new areas of need.

"We didn't even know there were homeless in Temecula until a year ago," she said. "It's fun to give back, especially in your own community."

Rukel said community members are encouraged to drop off canned and packaged goods between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. She said the food will go to St. Martha's Community Pantry as well as into "take-home bags" for needy people. She said about 150 church members will be at the park that morning.

"While everyone had the freedom to do what they wanted, interest really grew once we heard we weren't having church on Sunday," she said. "I was just so excited we were doing something that was basic and practical ---- not necessarily just the missing Sunday morning thing. But the branching out of the church walls to reach out to those who need help, that's just an extension of what we usually do."

Contact staff writer Nicole Sack at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2616, or nsack@californian.com.