Oceanside Christian Fellowship sits on Coral Circle in El Segundo, just a few blocks from the coast in the South Bay. What distinguishes OCF from many churches its size is not the building or the neighborhood, but the pulpit: there is no senior pastor. The church is led by a team of eight pastor-elders who share preaching, shepherding, and the day-to-day work of ministry, an arrangement the elders describe as rooted in the New Testament and healthier for everyone involved.
Sundays at 9 and 11
Services are held at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., with the 9:00 a.m. service also livestreamed on YouTube. Each gathering includes contemporary worship, prayer, and biblical teaching. On the last Sunday of every month, the congregation takes the Lord's Supper together during the service. Visitors are welcomed to come as they are; the congregation is described as casual and easy going about clothing, so dress in whatever makes you comfortable.
Three of the pastor-elders take regular turns preaching: Brandon Cash, Ryan Guzman, and Mark Stepp. The worship team opens and closes each service with contemporary Christian songs, and the church's music is meant to ready hearts to receive the teaching.
Children's classes run during both services for newborns through fifth grade, with a family room available for nursing mothers who want a quieter space. A welcome desk in the children's wing handles first-time check-in, and the church uses two-part name tags plus a unique family security number to make pickup safe.
Middle schoolers meet at 11:00 a.m. in the youth room for their own teaching and small groups, except on the last Sunday of the month, when they join the rest of the church in the main auditorium for communion. High schoolers gather at 5:00 p.m. on Sundays. Both groups also meet on Wednesday evenings.
Parking
Parking on Sundays can be tight, and the church recommends arriving early. In addition to its main lot on Coral Circle, OCF directs overflow cars to two nearby lots, one at Beach Babies and another at PDI. On weekdays and Saturdays, parking is limited to the church lot and street parking.
A Team of Pastor-Elders
OCF's leadership page begins with a confession: "Our church is structured around a team of pastor-elders. In the New Testament, the terms 'pastor, elder, bishop' are used interchangeably for local church leaders." Instead of a single senior figure, the church is governed by a council of elders who share the work of preaching, pastoral care, and oversight.
The current roster includes Brandon Cash, Ryan Guzman, Larry Medler Jr., Dan Olson, Jonny Osgood, and Mark Stepp. A blog series on plurality leadership, written by one of the elders, lays out the reasoning in detail: the New Testament consistently portrays early churches led by groups of elders, the practice guards against celebrity-style leadership, and team ministry protects pastors from the isolation and burnout that frequently plague solo leaders.
The elders meet weekly on Wednesday mornings for an hour and a half to pray for one another, for their families, and for the prayer requests that the congregation submits. Once a month they gather on Saturday for ministry planning, working toward consensus rather than majority votes. The arrangement means no one pastor carries the weight alone, and no single personality comes to define the church.
Kids, Youth, and Young Adults
The children's ministry takes the whole Bible seriously. Its curriculum walks kids from newborn through fifth grade through the entire Bible over three years, organized around four core values: God Knows Me, Jesus Loves Me, The Holy Spirit Leads Me, and I Am a Child of God. Each year balances Old Testament and New Testament stories, with special Christmas and Easter series tying the testaments together. A weekly family resource called Wonder@Home gives parents conversation topics and activities that reinforce Sunday lessons, and a monthly newsletter keeps families up to date on what's coming up.
Student ministries cover middle school and high school. Hannah Hosseini directs the program, with Luke Poarch as assistant director. On Sundays, middle schoolers gather during the 11:00 a.m. service, join the adults for opening worship, then move to the youth room for teaching and discussion that follows the same passage being preached in the main service. On Communion Sundays, they sit with their families in the auditorium instead. On Wednesdays, middle school runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and high school from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., with a crossover time for joint worship before the older students break off for their own teaching and Life Groups. Both groups have the chance to attend Hume Lake Christian Camp each summer.
A program called Serve and Save meets on the first Sunday of each month from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m., giving high schoolers tools for evangelism and hands-on experience serving outside the church.
Young adults, defined as adults roughly 18 to 30, gather for First Fridays each month and a mix of formal and informal events through the year, including a yearly retreat, lunches after church, beach outings, and paint nights. Willa Ma and Chris Hansen help coordinate.
Community Groups and Adult Classes
Community Groups are the church's primary engine for midweek fellowship. Dozens of groups meet throughout the South Bay, gathering weekly to discuss the text from the previous Sunday's sermon, pray together, and simply do life together. Discussion questions for the current week are emailed out so anyone can follow along. Sean McLeish oversees the network.
Adult Classes run throughout the year, ranging from short topical series to longer Bible studies. Past classes have included studies that work their way through books of the Bible.
Women's and Men's Ministry
The women's ministry centers on Bible study, discipleship, and cross-generational friendship. A long-running Wednesday morning study called Everyday Gospel uses Paul David Tripp's devotional to walk through the Bible, currently picking up in the second half of the Old Testament starting with Ezra. It meets from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. with childcare provided. Valerie Baggett and Donna Gunn lead the study. Other groups and mentoring relationships branch out from there, and the ministry periodically gathers women of different generations for shared meals and encouragement.
The men's ministry resists the caricatures of toxic masculinity or indifference, choosing instead to model itself on Jesus. The headline gathering is Men's Fraternity, which meets Thursday mornings from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. in the youth room. No registration is required; participants walk through a book of the Bible together (most recently Proverbs) and finish in time to get to work. Brandon Cash leads it.
OCF Helps: Practical Care Inside the Church
OCF Helps is the church's in-house volunteer network for practical needs. Volunteers sign up to do things like driving someone to a doctor's appointment, picking up groceries, mowing a lawn, walking a dog during a recovery, helping fix a leaky sink, putting together a resume, or translating for a non-English speaker. Meals, transportation, handyman work, auto maintenance, budgeting help, house cleaning, hauling, yard work, and language interpretation are all on the menu. The ministry exists to make life a little easier for people in the OCF family during illness, recovery, or any other time of unusual need, and to give willing helpers a way to use their gifts. Volunteers and those needing help connect through Sean McLeish and others on staff.
Soul Care and the Wisdom Council
Soul Care is the spiritual counterpart to OCF Helps, focused on inner life rather than outer circumstances. It offers three streams of support.
Spiritual Counseling is a free, biblically based lay counseling ministry. Counselors walk with individuals through emotional, relational, and spiritual challenges for three to four sessions and refer on if more help is needed. Spiritual Direction offers a quieter space to pay attention to what God is doing in a person's life and to explore questions of prayer and discernment with a trained listener. Spiritual Deliverance, for those who feel spiritually oppressed, uses a step-by-step method called Controlled Confrontation Therapy that draws on Colossians 2 and Christ's victory over the powers of darkness.
The Wisdom Council is a separate ministry for people facing significant life decisions. A small group of seasoned believers meets with the person, prays, and helps them discern a path forward without making the decision for them. Marina Wallis oversees the council.
For unplanned pregnancies and post-abortion healing, the church calls itself a House of Refuge. Volunteers are ready to mentor, throw baby showers, and connect women with practical resources inside and outside the church. The ministry emphasizes confidentiality, accountability for the fathers, and, for those who have experienced abortion, access to Bible studies designed for healing.
Membership
OCF treats membership as a covenant rather than a club. Anyone who has professed faith in Christ and been baptized and who agrees with the church's statement of faith and by-laws is invited to apply. The path runs through a four-session Membership Class, followed by a Covenant Gathering where prospective members meet two elders, share their testimony, and sign a covenant and application. New members are publicly acknowledged in a worship service.
Members commit to growing as a disciple, honoring church leadership, working for unity, participating in the church's mission, attending services regularly, using their gifts in ministry, and reaffirming their covenant when asked. Members vote on key matters in congregational meetings; non-members may not. The elders handle discipline, taught in Matthew 18 and other passages, with the goal always being restoration.
Missions Near and Far
OCF's mission statement borrows Acts 1:8 and aims at the neighborhood, the region, and the ends of the earth.
The York House in Hawthorne
The most visible local mission is the OCF York House, a transitional home in Hawthorne that OCF acquired in August 2021 to bridge families from homelessness to permanent housing. The house is an extension of the church's long-running partnership with Family Promise of the South Bay, which OCF began hosting in 2014. OCF has long served as a host site for Family Promise's rotation program, opening its building to families four times a year, including the weeks of Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The York House takes that commitment further, providing a stable address and a community of support while families work toward self-sufficiency. Laura Survant coordinates the ministry.
Church Planting with Acts 29
In 2017, OCF formalized its partnership with the Acts 29 church planting network. The church functions as a support church for new plants, contributing finances, mentoring, and people on the ground. Current partnerships include Arise Ventura (Pastor Steve Ross), First Evangelical Free Church of Los Angeles (Pastor Scott Yetter), the Reformed Church of LA (Reverend Rudy Rubio), and The Well SGV (Pastor David Park). Several planters have come from within the OCF community itself.
Missionaries Supported
OCF supports a roster of cross-cultural missionaries. The "F" family plants churches in Southeast Asia among the urban poor, combining medical and community development with discipleship. Pastor Sumi works through the Antioch Initiative to reach unreached people groups in the Himalayas. Mike and Donna Gunn lead the Antioch Initiative, training and equipping church planters in hard-to-reach areas of the world with a focus on sustainable, indigenous ministry. Michael and Morgan LeBlanc live among the Kuyu people in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, working toward a mature, self-sustaining church and Bible translation. Matt and Becca S. serve through the EFCA in the United Kingdom, planting churches among unreached South Asians through a food pantry, English language lessons, youth clubs, and hospitality in their home. Closer to home, Scott and Sarah Yetter run the SAY Yes! Youth Center and Nehemiah House internship in Pico Union, and Paola Resendiz serves with Cru Inner City in Los Angeles.
What OCF Believes
The church's statement of faith is classically evangelical and Trinitarian. OCF confesses one God, Creator of all things, existing eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Old and New Testaments are the verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God, the complete revelation of His will for salvation and the ultimate authority for every area of life.
Adam and Eve were created in God's image but fell into sin through Satan's temptation, and human beings are now sinners by nature and choice, alienated from God and under His wrath. Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully God and fully man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, and now sits at the Father's right hand as High Priest and Advocate. His atoning death and resurrection are the only ground for salvation.
The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, regenerates sinners, unites them to Christ, indwells them, and empowers them for Christ-like living and service. The true church is made up of all who have been justified by grace through faith in Christ alone, manifest in local congregations whose membership is composed of believers. The Lord Jesus mandated two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, which visibly express the gospel though they are not the means of salvation.
Justifying grace cannot be separated from sanctifying power. Christians are to love God supremely and others sacrificially, care for the poor, pursue justice, and make disciples among all nations. OCF looks for the personal, bodily, and glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the bodily resurrection of the dead, final judgment, and the eternal blessedness of believers in the new heaven and new earth.
EFCA and Acts 29
Oceanside Christian Fellowship belongs to the Evangelical Free Church of America, an association of autonomous churches united around a shared statement of faith and committed to fulfilling the Great Commission together. OCF is also part of the Acts 29 network of church-planting churches, a relationship the church formalized in 2017 to be more intentional about planting new churches in places like Seattle, India, Northern California, and Southern California.
RightNow Media and Other Resources
OCF sponsors free RightNow Media accounts for anyone in the church family. Often called the "Netflix of Bible studies," the platform hosts more than 20,000 videos on topics ranging from marriage and parenting to youth ministry, with content for kids and a steady stream of new material. Other recommended resources include the EFCA's own theology podcasts, Desiring God, the Gospel Coalition, T4G (Together for the Gospel), and Biola's Good Book Blog, along with Bible reading plans through Bible Gateway.
Prayer
The prayer ministry runs on three tracks. Weekly prayer requests are shared with the prayer group and the elders. Urgent prayer requests, for accidents, surgeries, or crises, are routed to a dedicated urgent prayer team. And after each Sunday service, an elder is available at the front of the worship center to pray with anyone who would like it. Praise reports are welcomed too.
Getting Connected
The best on-ramp for newcomers is the connection card, which the church uses to follow up personally. A weekly e-bulletin keeps the congregation up to date, and additional newsletters serve families with kids and youth. From there, most newcomers find their way into a Community Group, a men's or women's Bible study, or a serve team within OCF Helps.