Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a reformed, confessional church located in Escondido, CA (North San Diego County). We began as a mission work in the winter of 2002. After meeting for prayer for several months about beginning an OPC congregation in Escondido, three professors and a few student families from Westminster Seminary California began 
meeting for a Sunday evening Bible Study. When community residents who were looking for a Reformed congregation joined the Bible study, it became clear that there would be enough interest from the community to establish a congregation with maturity and depth outside the walls of the seminary.
The group was now ready to petition the Southern California Presbytery of the OPC to recognize it as a church plant and provide elder oversight. The Presbytery answered the petition and provided three elders, including the Southern California Home Missions Secretary, the Rev. Don Poundstone. By the end of 2002, the group began a Sunday morning worship service, meeting at the Escondido Community Center. In February of 2003, the group began renting the Westminster Seminary Chapel for morning and evening Lord’s Day services, with Mr. Zachary Keele as our Evangelist by 2004. In June 2006, the group was large enough to be organized as a permanent congregation. Mr. Keele was called to be the Pastor.
Love for the Gospel and the Means of Grace in corporate worship motivated this congregation from the beginning, and still motivates us. As pilgrims in this life, we recognize our great need for the
means that God has provided to strengthen our faith in Christ, namely the preaching of the Gospel, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and prayer and fellowship. All of these we receive in abundance at Escondido OPC.
Recognizing our children as members of God’s covenant and recipients of His promises, we include them in corporate worship. We also meet as families after morning worship for a study of the Westminster Shorter Catechism or other Reformed or historical documents, or for Bible study or a Christian living topic. Recently, we discussed Christian ethics with a professor from Westminster Seminary. We have also used the time to improve our singing of God’s praises by learning to sing in parts.
Also important to us as a congregation are fellowship opportunities where we can get to know and love one another more and more. We have a monthly luncheon following morning worship and catechism, and other 
fellowship and encouragement opportunities come up as we bear one another’s burdens during trials, hardships, and the stages of life.
Now that we are a self-supporting, particular congregation of the OPC, we can begin to look outward. We hope eventually, by God’s provision, to build our own church building, and then perhaps to sponsor the planting of another congregation. In the meantime, we are thankful for the way God draws us together and continues to add to our number.
