Last year’s Good Friday service at Petco Park may have seemed like just another successful Rock Church event. It was actually a pivotal moment in Rock Church history. For some time, Pastor Miles, using a football metaphor, has exhorted audiences to think of Rock Church as a place where we gather to huddle, but the actual game is played out on the streets of our city. We are called to bring the hope of Jesus to every street and every person. We have had success sending out pockets of people to take on certain needs, but Good Friday created an opportunity to actually step outside of the walls of Rock Church on a corporate, church-wide level.

The gathering outside the gates of Petco Park in downtown San Diego brought 4,345 people in attendance and 34 commitments were made for Christ. But many of the church staff simultaneously felt like something more than an outreach was happening.“I walked into the Good Friday celebration as a young adult leader,” says Rock Church Pastor, Mingo Palacios. “I walked out a church planter.”

From the Good Friday/Easter weekend event, the concept of micro-sites was born, where Rock Church rolls out from the walls of our building to the hurting and forgotten right where they are. Each Sunday, Pastor Mingo and his team bring screens, sound equipment, and the ability to stream Rock Church services to bars, missions, laundromats, low-income housing, and retirement homes.

Many people have given their lives to Christ at multiple micro-site locations and have been given a second chance at not merely belonging to a church, but taken up the mission of Pervasive Hope. In addition, the micro-site concept is now firmly a part of our multi-site philosophy. It has even garnered interest from other churches that may look to Rock Church for micro-site leadership.

Adds, Mingo, “It all started with our Good Friday service at Petco. Who knows what else God will do with a church willing to mobilize and step outside the church walls?”