A 130-Year Story on College Avenue
College Ave Church gathers on the corner of College Avenue and Adams Avenue in San Diego's College Area, a few blocks east of San Diego State University. It also meets at a satellite campus three miles east on La Mesa Boulevard. The church's single sentence mission - to know, love, and follow the real Jesus - hangs over everything from Sunday worship to its school partnerships in the surrounding neighborhood.
The story begins the day before Thanksgiving in 1891, when Rev. Augustus Bernhard Orgren arrived in San Diego from Sweden and began meeting with a small colony of Swedish immigrants. Bethel Swedish Baptist Church was organized on July 14, 1892 at 19th and Market downtown. For its first three decades the congregation worshipped and was taught only in Swedish, even running on a salary of $300 a year supplemented by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. By the 1920s the younger generation had grown weary of long Swedish sermons, and on January 1, 1935 the church voted to conduct every service in English.
The move to College Avenue happened in 1938, when Pastor Lew Coates urged the church to buy two lots at the corner of College and Adams Avenues. A new chapel was dedicated on July 28, 1940 with 60 members, and the name was changed to College Avenue Baptist Church. Under Pastor Milo Nixon (1949-1967) the campus grew with a sanctuary seating 1,400, a preschool building, and new halls, and membership climbed past 1,400. Later decades brought the Family Center, a Student Center, and Bethel Seminary West, which the church hosted on its campus for many years.
Pastor Jerry Sheveland led the congregation through the 1990s and grew weekly attendance above 4,000, then left to lead Converge (then the Baptist General Conference), the Baptist network the church still belongs to. A long and difficult search followed. After almost a decade without a lead pastor, Pastor Carlton Harris arrived in 2006 and worked for years to unify a fractured congregation. He left in 2021, and in February 2023 Chris Hilken was called as senior pastor. In the first year of his ministry the church more than quadrupled in size, an early chapter of a new season for a congregation now 130-plus years old.
Sundays at the College Area Campus
Three Sunday services are held at the College Area campus at 4747 College Avenue: 8:30 AM, 10:00 AM, and 11:30 AM. They take place across four venues that share one church but offer different worship settings.
The Sanctuary is the main room, with live worship music and live teaching at every service. The 11:30 AM gathering ends with a Q&A. The Worship Center is a contemporary venue across the courtyard, with live worship and livestreamed teaching, sofa and high-top seating that work well for note-taking. Bethel Chapel offers traditional hymn worship with livestreamed teaching at 8:30 and 10:00 AM and celebrates communion on the first Sunday of every month. Fireside is a quieter room where the full service is livestreamed, designed with young families and nursing mothers in mind.
Kids ministry runs at every service from birth through fifth grade, with check-in opening fifteen minutes before each gathering. Free coffee and donuts are available in the courtyard before and between services, and the Connection Center is staffed for first-time questions.
Parking at the College Area campus is tight. Visitors are asked to use the main lot entrance, while members and regulars are encouraged to carpool, ride-share, or park at one of four nearby off-site lots: Beth Jacob Congregation at 4855 College Ave, Chase Bank at 3490 College Ave, Rize Eagles Business Park at 6244 El Cajon Blvd, and Wells Fargo at 4690 63rd St. The East Lot is accessible from Rose Street and El Cajon Boulevard.
The La Mesa Campus
Three miles east of the College Area campus, College Ave La Mesa meets at 8076 La Mesa Boulevard, in the La Mesa Springs Shopping Center. Services are held on Sundays at 9:00 and 10:30 AM, with live worship led by the College Ave worship team and teaching delivered via livestream from the College Area campus. Kids ministry for infants through fifth grade runs at both services, and a coffee shop serves free coffee and donuts before and between gatherings. The shopping center lot offers plenty of parking, with additional street parking on La Mesa Boulevard and in the surrounding neighborhood.
The La Mesa campus opened after a season of fast growth on the College Avenue campus, when the congregation was running out of room. The space formerly housed Legacy, a sister church, and was repurposed as a satellite location for College Ave.
Life Groups: The Heart of Community
Life Groups are how College Ave does community. Groups of roughly ten to fourteen people meet weekly for about ninety minutes to two hours, often in a home, organized by life stage and centered on the same passage of Scripture preached the previous Sunday. The model follows the early Christian community in Acts 2, with time for fellowship over a meal or dessert, study, honest accountability, and prayer.
Life Groups meet in three eight-to-eleven-week quarters across the fall, winter, and spring. Most groups are adults-only, but on Tuesday nights from 6:00 to 7:30 PM the Kids Ministry runs a Life Group KIDS program for ages one through fifth grade so parents can attend their group while their children have their own time of faith and fun. The fall quarter begins September 13.
Children, Students, and Young Adults
College Ave Kids runs programs at all three Sunday services at the College Area campus and at both La Mesa services, offering age-appropriate biblical teaching, worship, creative activities, bounce houses, and games in the backyard of the Kids building. A Children's Library is open on Sundays from 8:45 AM to noon, and child dedications are scheduled regularly.
Middle school students (sixth through eighth grade) meet on Sundays at 8:30 AM at the College Area campus and at 9:00 AM at La Mesa, and gather again on Wednesday nights from 7:00 to 8:45 PM in the Youth Room. The Wednesday night format combines high-energy games, worship, teaching, and small group time. A Student Leadership track meets during the 10:00 AM service for students who want to grow in ministry.
High school ministry (HSM) gathers every Wednesday from 7:00 to 8:45 PM in Adams Hall. Students spend the night in worship, teaching from the Old Testament, and small group discussion. LIGHT, a student leadership program, lets high schoolers serve on the welcome team, social media, event planning, and musical worship. Middle and high school students are also sent to winter and summer camps each year.
Young Adults meet on Sunday nights at 6:30 PM, with a serve team, a Young Professionals community, and a one-year Ministry Residency pathway. The church also offers a Women's Bible Study on Wednesday mornings in three seasonal sessions each year; the fall session studies Old Testament kings and prophets.
What the Church Believes
College Ave Church belongs to the Converge network of Baptist churches, a fellowship formerly known as the Baptist General Conference, and traces its doctrinal roots back to its Swedish Baptist founders. The church's statement of faith affirms belief in one living and true God, eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in every divine perfection.
The statement confesses belief in God the Father as an infinite, personal spirit perfect in holiness, wisdom, power, and love. It confesses belief in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles and teachings, substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension, perpetual intercession, and personal visible return. It confesses belief in the Holy Spirit, who convicts, regenerates, sanctifies, and empowers every believer.
The Bible is held to be the Word of God, fully inspired and without error in the original manuscripts, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and of supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. The church is described as the body of Christ sent into the world to shine forth the glory of God, made up of those who have personally appropriated the gospel. The church's mission is summed up in three words: know, love, and follow the real Jesus.
Sermons and Teaching
Sunday services are livestreamed on YouTube at 8:30 and 10:00 AM. Sermon notes for the current series and a deep archive of previous series are posted online, with past series walking verse by verse through books of the Bible such as Colossians, Ephesians, Ruth, Jonah, James, John, Ecclesiastes, and Philemon, alongside apologetics series like Questions and Truth, and the Homecoming series for those new to or returning to the church.
Weekly sermon notes include homework that doubles as the Life Group discussion guide for the following week, so that the same passage studied on Sunday is the passage discussed around the table midweek.
Baptism, Membership, and the Next Steps
Baptism is celebrated every six to eight weeks during Sunday services as a public declaration of faith and a step of obedience for those who have trusted Jesus. The church baptizes by immersion in water. Parents interested in dedicating infants or young children can sign up online.
Membership begins with a Welcome Dinner held once a quarter at the College Area campus. Pastors and staff walk through membership requirements, commitments, and the application, and help newcomers find a place to serve.
The College Ave Preschool
Owned and operated by College Avenue Baptist Church for more than twenty-five years, College Ave Preschool and Daycare is a year-round, tuition-supported, non-profit religious program licensed by the State of California for children ages two through five. The preschool shares the church's mission of celebrating life in Christ through God's love and creation, with all staff professing their faith as a living testimony. Play-based learning, multi-sensory activities, and weekly Bible stories are paired with loving, nurturing teachers.
Missions: Messenger, Multiply, Mercy
Twelve percent of every dollar given at College Ave goes toward local and global missions, organized into three teams.
Messenger focuses on sending and supporting missionaries. The church partners with families and individuals serving with agencies including OMF International, Pioneers, Ethnos360, Wycliffe Bible Translators, WorldTeam, Converge Worldwide, Mission Aviation Fellowship, WEC International, People International, One Challenge International, Global Serve International, Servant Partners, and Agape Myanmar Mission. Their fields range from Southeast Asia and Cambodia to Ecuador, Uzbekistan, France, North Africa, and beyond.
Multiply supports church planting. Locally, College Ave is a member of Converge Southwest, a regional part of the Converge movement of about 1,600 churches that has helped plant forty-two new congregations across Southern California, Arizona, and Texas in the past five years. One of those plants, Garden Church in Chula Vista, is currently sponsored by College Ave. Globally, the church partners with The Timothy Initiative, a movement committed to placing a church in every village.
Mercy expresses the gospel through tangible acts of service, both locally and globally. Locally, the church partners with Marshall Elementary (a Title I school with over twenty-six languages spoken among its refugee population), Cubberley Elementary (where a new Kid's Bible Club has launched on half-day Wednesdays), Teen Challenge of Southern California (delivering meals and encouragement to men in recovery), P.A.T.H. El Cerrito (monthly food support and life skills classes for families in affordable housing), Food Rescue (sorting and packing rescued food each month), and GriefShare (a multi-week grief recovery series held on Thursday evenings at the College Area campus). Globally, Mercy channels support to the annual MexiGO Mission Trip, Operation Christmas Child (the church has packed 1,500 shoebox gifts), and Compassion International child sponsorship.
The Benevolence Fund
A Deacon and Deaconess team manages the Benevolence Fund, a confidential pool of resources gathered through the generosity of the congregation. Assistance is available to members, regular attenders, staff, and supported missionaries for short-term documented needs: physical (food, shelter, utilities, transportation, auto repairs), medical (co-pays, procedures, pharmaceuticals, dental), spiritual (counseling, memorials), and limited legal aid. Food bags and clothing are available to anyone visiting the campus, regardless of membership. The team also visits the Deacon/Deaconess table in the courtyard on Sundays to pray, listen, and help connect people with care.
The College Ave Residency
The College Ave Residency is a one-year program running from June to May for young adults exploring vocational ministry. Residents live together in a recently renovated building in the heart of College Area, take theology classes taught by Senior Pastor Chris Hilken and key staff, and are apprenticed to a ministry director in Kids, Middle School, High School, Young Adults, Life Groups, Production, Creative, Worship, or Pastoral Ministry. The program begins each June with a week-long mission trip to Mexico in partnership with the church's missions team and YUGO Ministries. About twenty hours a week of structured time is expected, including Sunday services, midweek youth gatherings, staff meetings, and discipleship.
Giving and Stewardship
Giving is described by the church as another form of worship. Regular giving supports the congregation and its mission partners, with twelve percent directed to local and global missions. Online giving, check, and stock or donor-advised fund transfers are all available. A separate Homecoming campaign focuses on spiritual growth and the stewardship of the church's campus and community.
Getting Connected
Office hours at the College Area campus are Monday through Wednesday from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Visitors can fill out a connect form online, stop by the Connection Center on a Sunday morning, or email connect@collegeave.church. Newcomers are invited to join a Life Group, attend a Welcome Dinner toward membership, serve on a team, and consider being baptized.