Both our services follow the same format. The 10:30 service is normally the most crowded. Our services are a little over one hour long and consist of a worship time with contemporary music for the first 35 minutes and a time of Bible teaching for the last 35 minutes. Most people at our services are dressed casually, particularly during the summer when some will come in shorts.
Each worship service provides contemporary music, including a keyboard, electric guitars and drums. We believe the music is tastefully done in a manner that exalts the Lord and assists our corporate worship of Him. We often include a hymn in with the music set.
You may get a flavor of our music from our Music Ministry page and of our Bible teaching from our Sermons webpage.
Yes, this is not a problem. Some young children may find it difficult to leave their parents in an unfamiliar setting. Yet we believe our children's ministry, in the long run, is the best place for helping the children of Valley Bible Church learn more about God. We hope that families who begin to attend our church will come to appreciate the value of their children developing close friendships with their peers in the context of the local church.
Well, it depends on how you count. On any given weekend we will have nearly 500 people attending one of our four worship services. This does not
count around 200 children who enjoy our children's ministries rather than be in the worship services. If you count all the people that regularly
attend Valley, we would be over one thousand people.
We have people in our church and our church leadership from different racial groups. Our ethnic diversity basically mirrors our community, which is to say that most of our church is white. Yet we expect this to gradually change as the years go by. Race has never been an issue in our church.
We were founded as an independent Bible church in 1956. Dale Whitehead has been our primary teaching pastor since 1973. For more information about the history of our church, click here.
We use many Bible versions. The version most commonly used at Valley Bible is the New American Standard Bible, which is the translation of choice during our worship services. We find that the New American Standard Bible is probably the best word-for-word Bible translation. Some people who ask this question have been taught that the King James Version is the only acceptable Bible translation. To read our position paper that addresses this view, click here.
We are not supported by a denomination or any other outside entity. Our budget is funded entirely through the giving of the people who attend our church. The combined giving of the people of Valley Bible Church to both our general fund and our building fund surpasses a half million dollars annually. Our church is also debt-free.
While passing an offering plate during the worship service is not wrong, we have chosen to provide boxes in the rear of the auditorium instead. The main reason for this is to decrease the possibility of someone giving to Valley Bible Church under a sense of compulsion (2 Corinthians 9:7). We desire that the giving to Valley Bible Church be done by people who truly desire to give cheerfully and we believe that those people with this motivation will be able to find the box to place their giving.
Our church is led by our elders. We believe this follows the pattern of government described in the New Testament. Currently there are five elders, Gerry Andersen, Dan Jenison, Jim Kross, Lance Richards and Dale Whitehead. Our elders work as a pastoral team and agree before decisions are made. There is no time limit to the service of our elders. We also have deacons, who assist our elders in the leadership of Valley Bible Church. For more information about our practice of church leadership, click here.
Dale Whitehead attended Talbot Theological Seminary and graduated with a Masters of Divinity in 1973. Gerry Andersen attended Dallas Theological Seminary and graduated with a Masters of Arts in Biblical Studies in 1987. We have assisted members of our congregation with tuition at The Master's Seminary and are in agreement with their beliefs. One of our deacons, Daisuke Okada, whom we support in ministry in Japan, is a Master's graduate in 2000. Another of our deacons, Terry Riley, who serves in our adult education ministry, is a Master's graduate also.
While we consider those who hold to doctrines that define the charismatic movement to be fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we do not agree with or support the charismatic movement. For more information on our concerns with charismatic theology, read our position papers.
Our beliefs can be found in our church constitution and in our position papers for more in-depth doctrinal issues that we face from time to time. Our teaching is based upon what God says in the Bible and we certainly hope that it will be embraced by everyone. However, we expect that not everyone will agree with everything we teach. We do ask that you accept what we believe, even if you do not agree. What we mean by "accept" is that you will allow us to teach our beliefs without opposing us. We ask this not because we cannot be wrong but rather for the sake of the unity of the church. We are willing and eager to discuss doctrinal issues with everyone who attends Valley Bible.
Yes, we believe we have a very strong children ministry and youth ministry. You may either view our web pages for our children's ministry and youth ministry, or simply contact the church office (942-2218) for more information.
We have chosen to limit the weddings we conduct to people who attend our church. This is primarily because of the time constraints due to the demand of our church ministry.
If we remove all of the activity that occurs with our site from development and testing, and from "robots" that catalog our site for search engines, we still have over five million "hits" on our site each year. A "hit" is any web page, audio file, picture, etc. that is accessed successfully. Every day several hundred different people access our site. In the past year we were accessed from over 130 different countries. Our web site has truly grown beyond our imagination.