We at Kaleo see ourselves as being called out of darkness

Kaleo Church

• Membership: 100
• Pastor: Tim Cain
• Age: 40
• Born: Wheaton, IL
• Formation: Moody Bible Institute, Chicago; Westminster Seminary West, Escondido
• Years Ordained: 14

San Diego Reader: How long do you spend writing your sermon?

Pastor Tim Cain: I try to go book-by-book through the Bible, and typically spend Thursdays, half a day Friday, and half a day Saturday — approximately two full days. If the sermon is not going well, I have to get up earlier to make sure it’s where it needs to be. Our church meets on a Saturday night at the First Baptist Church of El Cajon, so I have to have my sermon done by around 2 p.m. on Saturday. We’re a church plant and we’re small, so we want to focus giving our money to our staff who take care of the people of our church and on mission to reach the lost and take care of the poor around the world and in El Cajon. We divide our budget into those two areas and try to spend as little as we can on a building. First Baptist lets us meet at their church for a very reasonable rate, and since they’re set up as a church we can give the majority of our money to these other priorities.

SDR: What’s the mission of your church?

PC: Our name, Kaleo, comes from the Greek of the New Testament. It means the “called ones” or the “called-out ones.” I take it from I Peter 2:9, which talks about God’s people being called out of darkness into his marvelous light to proclaim the excellence of the one who called us out of that darkness in the first place. We at Kaleo see ourselves as being called out of that darkness. Among the things we do which we’re thankful for as a church, we invite the homeless of El Cajon to our house. My wife makes dinner for them. We don’t see it as a soup kitchen; we call it feasting with the poor. We eat together and then we do a little Bible study. That’s been happening for about nine years. The walls it has broken down and the friendships we made from that — some of my best friends are people we met on the streets on a Friday night, and some of them are off the streets now and doing very well. One of our children is adopted from a mom we met on a Friday night.

SDR: Where do you go when you die?

PC: The Bible teaches that there are two paths. One is all sorrow and hate and misery, and all the worst experiences we had in life are a drop in the bucket of what that world is without any of the balancing joy and beauty we have experienced in this world. That’s the world we all deserve because of our rebellion against God, and because we thought we could do better than God. But that’s what makes the Gospel so beautiful. God sent his son to endure that terrible world of hell for us, and to take our place and die on the cross the death we deserve so he can offer us the world he deserves, a world of love, peace, joy and beauty. The greatest experiences we had in this world are a little taste of what that world will be like for all eternity.