Website: http://www.sandiegocbc.org
Church Review
Scriptural View: 3/5
Beliefs: 3/5
Community: 3/5
Website Review
Site Usabilility: 3/5
Site Design: 3/5
Site Content: 3/5
Summary: Community Bible Church (CBC) has a good foundational belief in Scripture and God. In their what they believe section most of what they write is both profitable and accurate for both a believer and unbeliever to consider. On salvational issues we are in agreement and so this church is comprised of brothers and sisters in the Lord. There are a few beliefs that they hold to that I believe to be inaccurate. These errors of doctrine should be a caution for the church seeker.
First, an error that many churches make, is taking a firm stance on ‘End Times’ issues. It is sad to see so many churches read through Revelation as a book of clues to try to figure out the symbolic language and interpret all of the world’s events through this filter. CBC spells out their beliefs on Dispensationalism (the Rapture, Tribulation, etc.), or as most people now view it the ‘Left Behind’ ideas brought by Tim Lahaye. As a church we should be firm in areas we are sure of, such as the need for Jesus Christ as our savior, but quiet on areas we are not certain and the end times is one of these issues. A disproportionate amount of time is being spent in the church devoted to the sensational tribulation ideas. And quite frankly, we don’t know these things and we will never know them.
Secondly, the book of the month is a book called, “Treasure Principle”, by Randy C. Alcorn. The review on their site tells us, “God has entrusted His wealth to us and called upon us to manage and invest His money. This is in everyone’s best interests, including our own.” I read one critique on the book that a reader posted at Amazon.com saying ,”Jesus never said that you can “invest” your worldly money in the church to receive rewards in heaven.” Too often American churches are focused on what we should receive as treasures, how God should bless us. (Just consider the Prayer of Jabez which made God a giant piñata.) Our country does have more wealth than we need and we should be stewards of this, including distributing it to the needs of the church worldwide.
Overall CBC looks to be a mainstream church with an evangelical position. With that said I can recommend this church but I would urge you to examine the above ideas and others that are often being taught by churches today. Far too often the average ‘christian’ is ignorant of scripture and easily swallow the concepts of people like Tim Lahaye who spend way too much time emphasizing areas away from the good news message of Jesus Christ and our mission as a church to communicate this to our world.
CBC preaches/teaches core salvational beliefs but I can’t strongly recommend them.
well I strongly dissagree with this review. I found the church on your site and decided to go check it out. for the one reason that you can never trust some peoples reviews. I have attended this church for about 6mo and the one thing that I can say about CBC is that the people walk what they talk. what is the Greatest commandment? well we know what it is but what do we get caught up on all that time? Your Doctrine is not right so as a brother in that Lord we say I will fight with you or the nice way (Debate) you to show the world that the church as a whole does’nt know where they are going. I attened Kaleo for about a year and a half. Good people. well the pastor he found the reformed doctine and now every person that does not believe in that doctrine he has to debate. oh we are so willing to debate each other but again what is the Greatest Commandment? I feel that as the Breans we as Bible beliveing christians should not rely on these reviews only but check out the facts for ourselves. it does sound as if the reviewers of this site have a Bias and that is if it is not reformed it is not a 5 star church. because you all reviewed the Rock Miles church and it got I think and even lower review. what is the Goal of all the reviews on this site. to bring unity in the church. that is what you say on paper but how is it lived out?
Shawn,
Thanks for your comments. This site is just one opinion amongst many, I thank you for your reminder that people need to be like the Bereans and pick up their Bible and do some good research. Our goal is to provide tools for people to find churches. We hope comments like yours and others will create a healthy conversation about churches and their ministries. To encourage the discussion, I forwared your comments to one of the Pastors at Kaleo Church.
Shawn,
With all due respect, I think it is odd that you would chastise these reviewers for making observations and comments about churches they have attended, then go right on and make one about us having to “debate” everyone. As you well know I did not come to the doctrines of grace in the midst of our church plant. That was well before I ever thought of planting. One of the motivating factors for planting Kaleo was to not just have heart (feelings) towards God without mind (intellect) about who He is and what He has communicated in the Word. There can be mistakes on both sides and one develops intellectualism while the other pursues emotionalism. Kaleo desires to make neither mistake by ensuring what we feel is appropriately filtered by scripture and not the other way around. I have had many conversations with you on doctrine and have explained those doctrines carefully and with love for you. It’s alright to disagree over non-essentials, however, if someone asks doctrinal questions, I and every other pastor called by God to hold to His truth has a responsibility to effectively and truthfully explain those doctrines so that the inquiring party is given an answer from Scripture. I have no need, nor desire to simply “debate” for debating sake. I would rather see the lost come to the living God in faith and spend my time preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to all men and let God be God.
Glad to see your comments, feel free to respond back if you are interested.
Respectfully,
David Fairchild
David has a point in that how I said “you can Never trust some peoples reviews” I do not think that I was Chastiseing these people for a review. my thought was how long has each of these reviewers gone to each church? have they talked one on one with each pastor? as I have thought about reviewing churches as we review a movie what is the main purpose? I would like to know if those who have started this review website have scripture that they could show me that calls us to do this. thank you for your response site admin and David.
We usually visit the church once and speak with the pastor before writing a review. The review will let people know how many times we’ve visited, whether we spoke with the pastor, etc. based on what we report.
It’s hard to fathom how you can write a critique of a church’s theology, doctrine and community effectiveness after attending one or two services and browsing their website. The only valid way to evaluate a church is to regularly attend, for a reasonable period of time, and learn the breath and depth of what is being taught there, how the congregation is growing in their walk with Christ and the effectiveness of their out-reach programs. Your evaluation methodology seems more akin to sitting in on a random 5-minute segment of a motion picture, and then based solely on those 5 minutes, publishing a comprehensive Movie Review.
I’ve been a member and regular attendee of CBC for roughly 8 years and (in my humble opinion) your review is far off-mark.
Your review warns that CBC’s “errors of doctrine should be a caution for the church seeker”, then goes on to specify only two alleged “doctrine errors”:
[1] “taking a firm stance on ‘End Times’ issues” – First, your reviewer implies that CBC attempts to identify current events as fulfillment of End Times prophecies from Revelations (in reality, this is something that has been EXPLICITLY avoided from the pulpit at CBC).
Later, your reviewer states: “A disproportionate amount of time is being spent in the church devoted to the sensational tribulation ideas.”, while in actuality at CBC, ‘End Times’ preaching comprises a very small portion of the Biblical topics covered (something your reviewer might know if he/she had attended more than 1 or 2 services) and in my 8 years there I have never seen it sensationalized.
Finally, your reviewer makes the statement: “As a church we should be firm in areas we are sure of… but quiet on areas we are not certain”, which seems quite hypocritical of your web-site, given that your posted diatribe on the Calvary Chapel theology (“Calvary’s Attack on God’s Sovereignty”) takes Calvary to task for believing that man has Free Will to accept or reject God’s gift of salvation, while the (Free-Will .vs. Pre-Destination) question is debated among Bible-believing brothers and sisters in Christ at least as (if not more) vigorously as ‘End Times’ beliefs. At CBC we are taught to differentiate between the “essentials” of Christian faith (i.e. necessary beliefs for salvation) and the “peripherals” (e.g. “End Times” beliefs [Pre/Mid/Post Trib, etc...], Pre-Destination/Free-Will, Worship style, etc…).
Also, “Left Behind” (by Lahaye & Jenkins) is a series of FICTIONAL novels, based upon one interpretation of Biblical eschatology. As Christians, we should know to look to the Bible for our theology, not works of fiction.
[2] “the book of the month is a book called, ‘Treasure Principle’” – First, when a church website recommends a ‘Book of the Month’, it means only that someone within that church feels that book would be helpful to the walk of church members and other Christians, it is NOT a declaration of that church’s doctrine.
Secondly, your reviewer implies that CBC is “focused on what we should receive as treasures, how God should bless us”, in turn implying that CBC buys into the “Health, Wealth & Prosperity Gospel”, which in reality is the furthest thing from the truth. While proper Biblical stewardship is taught from the pulpit, I (in my 8+ years of attendance) have never seen a focus on “what rewards we can get for our service and our tithes and offerings”. In fact, unlike many churches, CBC requests that guest do not give, to make it clear to the new-comer that our church is more interested in reaching your soul than getting your money.
Lastly, your review implies that CBC church attendees are “ignorant of Scripture”, in yet another apparent attempt to generalize based on very little factual information about CBC. Reality is, once again, quite different. We, at CBC, are continually admonished to “search the Scriptures daily” and a large portion of the congregation participates in weekly small-group Bible studies. In addition, CBC now host’s a Bible Institute, where Christians can undertake a more in-depth study of the ‘meat’ of God’s Word.
In publishing a “Guide to area Churches”, you take on an implied responsibility to provide your readers with with a fair, accurate and reasonably comprehensive evaluation of the churches that you will recommend/not recommend. Personally, I don’t see how that is possible given your cursory review methodology… any more than a comprehensive Movie Review could be produced after screening a random 5-minute segment of the movie.