History
Saddleback's first public service was held on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1980, with two hundred people in attendance at the Laguna Hills High School Theater. Warren's church growth methods led to rapid growth and the church has used nearly eighty different facilities in its 30-year history.
Saddleback did not build its first permanent building until it had 10,000 weekly attenders. When the current Lake Forest campus was purchased in the early 1990s, a 2,300-seat plastic tent was used for worship services for several years, with four services each weekend. In 1995, the current Worship Center was completed with a seating capacity of 3,500. The Children's Ministry Center (housing the "Saddleback Kids" ministry) and staff office building were completed over the next few years. In 2008, former Pastor of Life Development, Doug Fields, saw his dream of over 15 years come to fruition with the completion of the Refinery, Saddleback's first permanent student ministry facility. Costing $20 million, the state-of-the-art facility is considered the premier student ministry facility in the world. The Refinery houses Saddleback's middle school ministry (Wildside), high school ministry (HSM), college ministry (Crave), and young adults ministry, (Fuel). Since moving into the Refinery, all the student ministries have seen tremendous growth, with more than 2,500 young people attending services in the facility each week. The Refinery was built using the resources and voluntary giving raised through the "Extending the Vision" campaign.
The Purpose Driven Church (PDC) curriculum and Celebrate Recovery program were founded at Saddleback Church. Saddleback currently has 9 regional campuses (not including the Lake Forest campus): San Clemente, Irvine, Corona, Orange, Huntington Beach, Rancho Capistrano, Anaheim (Spanish), Anaheim and Laguna Woods. Several more campuses are planned in the next few years. In addition, Saddleback is "virtually" attended by those around the country who listen to services on the live webcast.
Read more about this topic: Saddleback Church
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)