New Song Community Church: to help unchurched people become fully devoted followers of Christ

New Song Community Church

Contact: 3985 Mission Ave., Oceanside 760-560-5000 (Carlsbad Campus: 3780 Pio Pico Dr., Carlsbad) www.newsongchurch.com

Membership: 800

Pastor: Hal Seed

Age: 66

Born: Santa Barbara

Formation: Wheaton College, Denver Seminary, Littleton, CO; Fuller Seminary, Pasadena

Years Ordained: 38

San Diego Reader: What’s your main concern as a member of the clergy?

Pastor Hal Seed: The lostness of our culture. Jesus wept over Jerusalem…because he saw the people were, as he said, harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. You see that in the polarization of our country these days. There’s a lack of a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong—there’s so much disagreement about what is true and what isn’t. Our solution is to help one life at a time, to help individual people connect with God, who then becomes their shepherd and guides their paths and helps them to become positive contributing members of society.

SDR: Why Southern Baptist?

PS: The Southern Baptists are the best church-planting organization in the world, and they have an unsurpassed direct-relief ministry all over the world. Right now, they’ve got hundreds of people in Maui and Gaza and Israel. Every place there is a disaster, when you turn on the news and see someone in a yellow T-shirt, it’s a Southern Baptist helping out. I was raised Episcopalian, so I thought the Southern Baptists were of another stripe. It surprised me when God called me to lead my church into the Southern Baptist movement. But I’m glad he did, because they’re a wonderful people who do quality things in everything they do.

SDR: What is the mission of your church?

PS: To help as many people as possible who don’t know God to come into relationship with him. The formal way we say it is that we want to help unchurched people become fully devoted followers of Christ… As for the name of our church, New Song, Psalm 40:3 says, “He put a new song in my heart, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” When we started the church, we wanted to do things that were new and relevant to the culture, and to stay relevant and sing new songs. But the name also reflects that we’re Biblical and that we want to see people have God’s new song in their hearts, so they will see and hear and fear and put their trust in God—and by “fear,” we mean the Biblical term for reverent awe.

SDR: Where do you go when you die?

PS: The Bible is clear that everyone lives somewhere forever. The question is whether you’re going to live with God, which is by choice. You choose him and he makes provisions for you. But if you choose to go your own way, he allows the consequences of your own choice, which, by definition, is hell. God is beautifully in community with himself. He is the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—so if you remove beauty and all sense of community, you’re isolated, by yourself, with nothing to do and no reason to do it, and only your regrets to live with—that sounds a lot like hell, doesn’t it? God made provisions for all of us through Jesus so that all we need to do is believe and receive and if we do, we will be with him forever. If we choose to reject him, then he sadly allows us to have the fruits of our choice.