Is Restoration Abbey a Spanish-speaking church?

Worship at Restoration Abbey is mostly in English, with Spanish mixed in, and Deacon Vania preaches in Spanish from time to time. Spanish is present in the wider life of the church through shared work and shared events with neighbors in San Marcos, including Universidad Popular. You will not be the only person in the room switching between the two.

Does Restoration Abbey support immigrants in San Marcos?

Yes. Restoration Abbey walks with immigrant families in San Marcos and partners with Universidad Popular, a local organization led by and for the immigrant community. The commitment is ordinary and ongoing rather than a seasonal service project.

Start by showing up on a Sunday at 10am and getting to know people; that is genuinely how most of it begins. Nearly all of the practical work at Restoration Abbey gets organized through relationships and through the congregation’s Slack, which is shared in person rather than posted online.

Our neighbors

Joined to a neighborhood

Restoration is God's work, and it is already underway in this town. We would rather join it than run our own.

An abbey is for the people around it. That is not a metaphor we reach for once a year. It decides what we do with the building, the calendar, and most of our weeknights.

San Marcos is a city where a lot of people work the jobs that keep North County running and cannot afford to live comfortably in it. Some of our neighbors are undocumented. Some are waiting on paperwork that has been pending for years. We are not positioned above that situation, dispensing help downward. We live in it, and some of us are in it.

Universidad Popular

Learning alongside, not delivering to

We share tables and time with Universidad Popular, an organization led by and for the immigrant community here in San Marcos. We are not the experts arriving with a program. We show up where we are invited, we learn, and we bring what we have when somebody actually wants it.

Each fall we help host Día de los Muertos, and in December the Posada. Hundreds of people come to both, and both are happily crowded. Christians have kept a feast for the faithful departed for centuries; this one is kept with the people who live here.

The rest of the year is less photogenic and matters more. Tutoring every week for people studying for the citizenship test. Food we collect and hand on. And companioning families through whatever the first months here ask of them, for as long as that takes.

See what is coming up →

The Abbey's terracotta roof and bell tower against the hills.

On the property

A garden is a slow way to know someone

There is a community garden taking shape on our land. It is new, and there is more bare ground than harvest out there at the moment.

What it turns into has not been decided, which is the honest invitation. Come help dig it, plant it, and argue about what it should be for the people who live around it. The neighborhood has a better idea than we do of what would actually be useful growing here, and the only way that gets into the ground is if the people who know come and put it there.

You do not have to belong to this church to work in it, and you are welcome to come for the dirt alone. If the garden turns out to be the only part of us you ever want, that is a whole relationship and a good one. An hour of digging beside someone tells you more about a place than a service will. That is most of why it is here.

Other ways in →

Common questions

Is Restoration Abbey a Spanish-speaking church?: Worship at Restoration Abbey is mostly in English, with Spanish mixed in, and Deacon Vania preaches in Spanish from time to time. Spanish is present in the wider life of the church through shared work and shared events with neighbors in San Marcos, including Universidad Popular. You will not be the only person in the room switching between the two.
Does Restoration Abbey support immigrants in San Marcos?: Yes. Restoration Abbey walks with immigrant families in San Marcos and partners with Universidad Popular, a local organization led by and for the immigrant community. The commitment is ordinary and ongoing rather than a seasonal service project.
How can I help?: Start by showing up on a Sunday at 10am and getting to know people; that is genuinely how most of it begins. Nearly all of the practical work at Restoration Abbey gets organized through relationships and through the congregation’s Slack, which is shared in person rather than posted online.

Honestly

The gap we have not closed

We say we want a church of unlikely friends, and the people who actually find us are mostly people worn out by the evangelical church. The neighbors we most want to know are immigrants and working families a few streets away. Those two groups do not merge because a church puts a nice sentence about diversity on its website.

So we are naming it here rather than quietly hoping you do not notice. The work is slow: showing up week after week, going where we are invited, letting other people set the agenda, and being changed by company we did not grow up with. If that sounds like something you want to be part of building, there is room.

Come and see

Sundays at 10am, 800 W Mission Road, San Marcos. Bring whatever questions you have.

Plan a visit