PowerPlant San Diego

During this week-long mission experience, students helped church plants reach out to their communities through block parties, canvassing neighborhoods, and coaching kids at a Summer Olympics (photo below).

Nate Keating has seen first-hand what happens when churches work together to minister to a community.

“I’m always really excited about any kind of ministry that allows us to partner with other churches, because you really get to experience the unity of the body, really being the body of Christ the way that God has intended it to be,” said Keating, who’s part of San Diego’s Cloudbreak Church.

During the week of July 5-11, Keating and Cloudbreak partnered with Vision Church of Southern California as part of PowerPlant, a week-long missions experience that unites church plants with student teams from around the country. Each day, morning training time is focused on evangelism skills and church planting principles; then, students get to go out in the mission field and work with new churches. In San Diego, ministry teams were involved in survey work, Vacation Bible School, sports camps, servant evangelism, and more.

“PowerPlant has done a great job of effectively equipping and extremely challenging the students and adults alike as they send us out to apply our training,” said Liz Raethel, an adult leader from First Baptist Church of Houston.

PowerPlant is all about unity in the body of Christ, reminding participants that church is not about buildings, but reaching out to people in a community. Not only did churches from outside of San Diego come to help, neighboring churches also worked together. Part of Raethel’s group worked with Seven San Diego and San Miguel Community Church, who combined their efforts for a Summer Olympics celebration where 15 kids decided to put their faith in Jesus.

Throughout the week, 90 volunteers from Texas, Arizona and California worked with six of San Diego’s church plants to get the word out about the churches, and to encourage people in the community to check out an upcoming service or event. Their partnership was especially helpful to brand new Church @ the Beach, which began meeting at San Diego’s Mission Beach on July 6.

Whether they were inviting beach-goers to join a pick-up soccer game, filming a documentary to be shown at a worship service, or coaching kids at the Summer Olympics, the PowerPlanters were building relationships with people in San Diego.

For more information about how you can be involved in what God is doing here, call 1.877.817.4777.