San Diego First Assembly
August 12th, 2004Website: http://www.sandiegofirstassembly.com
Church Review
Scriptural View: 3/5
Beliefs: 3/5
Community: 3/5
Website Review
Site Usabilility: 3/5
Site Design: 3/5
Site Content: 4/5
Summary: The First Assembly churches website is fairly busy, with a primary focus on communicating the ‘where’s and when’ of their services and other meetings. Each of the main buttons compartmentalize the different groups you can attend, ie Children, Youth, College, 55+, Couples, Recovery, etc. It seems there is a lot of opportunity for different community groups.
The church posts the Nicene Creed and Apostles´Creed as their statements of faith. They fall within the broad evangelical base which holds a strong view of scripture as truth. They are a pentecostal which puts an “emphasis on Spirit-driven service to our world”. A quote from their website says: “Divine healing is an integral part of the gospel”. If this is speaking about healing in terms of Christ works to redeem us through His work, yes, if it is about physical healing, this is where we disagree on what the ‘gospel’ is. It is at this place that many will differ on their beliefs with San Diego First Assembly. This issue can be devisive. If you’d like read more from an essay by John MacArthur titled, “A Look at the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement Is it Biblical?”
Confessing church which holds a pentecostal position. Suggest you learn more about this if you plan on attending.
June 16th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Dear San Diego Church Reviews & Guide,
I’m the Senior Pastor at San Diego First Assembly. I appreciate your desire to give insight into the churches in San Diego and help people in their church selection. Yet, it appears your reviews are based on incomplete information.
In your comments about our church you linked to an article by John MacArthur. MacArthur is actually one of my favorite Bible expositors. I own his library of commentaries and often refer to them. He is correct on a segment of the Pentecostal movement but is painting with too broad of a brush in his article. It certainly does not typify my views or the views of our church.
Have you ever been to one of our 10:45 services? I do feel it would change some of your views about who we are and what we are like. Currently on our website is an apologetic series we completed. Our teaching is orthodox and Biblically solid. Yes we do believe in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12) and believe in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as experienced by Christians in Acts 8 and 19. Of course, if this is seen by you as Biblically unsound, I understand your rating – but you have rated other with the identical view much higher.
As far as missional view, we are extremely aggressive about fulfilling the Great Commission and reaching the un-reached and unchurched. The church I led in Texas baptized between 100 and 200 people on a yearly basis. SDFA is increasingly developing an outreach focused mindset and a passion for the Great Commission. We are not focused on Post Moderns alone but are endeavoring to reach a wide demographic of ages, races, and people of various socio-economic positions. A good portion of our outreach is toward the poor and disenfranchised.
I admit that our web site needs some updating. It probably doesn’t do a very good job of portraying who we really are. I’ve been at the church 18 months and we’ve made only limited changes to the site. By years end it should be totally revamped.
I’m not writing to ask you to change your ratings or your comments. Instead I just want to make you aware that some of your reviews (at least ours) are based on inaccurate information. If you ever want to discuss who we are as a church or would like to better understand our doctrinal view, I’d be glad to visit with you.
Sincerely,
Todd Hudnall
Pastor
San Diego First Assembly
www.sandiegofirst.com
June 16th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Pastor Todd Hudnall is the new Pastor at SDFA and based on his comments and some further review, we have changed our ratings on the church.
June 16th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
[…] learning more about the church from the Senior Pastor, their review has been updated: New San Diego First Assembly review. […]
June 20th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Dear San Diego Churches,
I’m writing again to thank you for changing the status of our church on your website. As I mentioned, I feel MacArthur’s article painted with too broad of a brush. He portrayed the worst of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and their doctrine in his article. I’m just as alarmed by the abuses he wrote about as he. Be assured, though there is much error, it does not typify the majority of Pentecostals and Charismatics.
Some social historians call the “Pentecostal” movement the fastest growing movement in the history of the world, growing from a handful 100 years ago, until now some say it makes up over ½ of the Protestant Church (500,000,000 plus). The church in Africa, China and South America (arguably much more vibrant and devoted churches than the America church) are overwhelmingly Pentecostal or Charismatic. As such the movement can no longer be seen as a small and marginalized fringe element of the evangelical church.
I’m not trying to be an apologist for the movement. I simply want to point out that every segment of the church including Reformed, Baptist, and Bible Churches have people who have shipwrecked doctrinally or morally. So have some in our movement. TBN, Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland do not represent the majority of Pentecostals and Charismatic. They certainly do not represent our local church or the Assemblies of God.
Today I inadvertently ran across an article by Dr. Sam Storms listing the 10 worst Christian books. Though he is an admirer of MacArthur’s other works, he lists his treatment of Pentecostals and Charismatics as a poor portrayal. Below are his comments and his website. You may want to reconsider using MacArthur as a source when it comes to labeling all Pentecostal and Charimatic churches.
Thanks for considering this.
Sincerely,
Todd Hudnall
(8) “Charismatic Chaos,” by John MacArthur (Zondervan). I have tremendous respect for MacArthur and cherish him as a brother in Christ. But this book is bad. It takes the worst in the Pentecostal-Charismatic world (and yes, there are some pretty bad things in that world) and portrays them as typical of charismatics in general. His arguments for cessationism and against the contemporary validity of so-called miraculous spiritual gifts is extremely weak. But I want to say again how much I appreciate most of the other books MacArthur has written.
http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/article2.asp?id=572