Gospel-Centered, Grace-Driven, and Mission-Minded. That is what we want to be about.

 

About Sun Valley Church

With every sermon that is preached, word of counsel given, and conversation had over coffee…a culture is cultivated in the life of a church. An ethos is being shaped. At Sun Valley we want to be intentional about cultivating the culture of our church. From the sermons we preach, the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the family conversations around the dinner table at home, around the water cooler at work and in the backyard with your small group, we desire to cultivate life at SVC around three main distinctives: being Gospel-Centered, Grace-Driven, and Mission-Minded.

We believe that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through a knowledge of him. We don't need to invent something "cutting edge," pithy or unique. His purposes for us have been clearly communicated to us through His revelation to us in the Bible.

You will notice that we don't have a lot of programs at Sun Valley Church. We intentionally have un-programmed our church so that everyone attending Sun Valley can fulfill the commands in the New Testament to live in community serving one another, loving one another, accepting one another, praying for one another, encouraging one another, etc. We like to think of it as "strategic simplification." We don't go to church, we are the church. We are the family of God demonstrated in our local community. We desire that Sun Valley Church be a place where the people of God practice being Gospel-Centered, Grace-Driven, and Mission-Minded.

Sun Valley Church exists to glorify God by creating an authentic Christian community that is Gospel-Centered, Grace-Driven, and Mission-Minded.

  • Every church has a functional center…something that motivates what they do, how they do it, and how they understand who they are. Sometimes this “center” is not clearly defined and other times what is stated as the central motivation is not what really motivates church life. At Sun Valley Church we aim to be a church that is centered on the Gospel. This means that the Gospel shapes the character of this church…the practices (worship, ministries, etc.), commitments, and behavior of the church. We would like to be able to say, we are a church that brings all of life ‘in step with the gospel’” (Gal. 2:14).

    Being gospel-centered not only brings us to God but it changes us into His likeness.

  • What does it mean to cultivate an ethos that is Grace-Driven? It means that we live with an understanding that real transformation is motivated by what God has done for us in Christ and not by what we have to do to earn His favor or people’s approval. More than just understanding it, we want our lives to reflect the massive implications that being “Grace-Driven” has for how we relate not only to God, but to ourselves and others as well (Eph. 4:32).

  • Theologian Christopher Wright wrote, “It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world…mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.”

    As we become more Gospel-Centered and Grace-Driven, we will naturally become Mission-Minded people, whose focus is on God’s mission to advance His kingdom here on earth not on building our own little kingdoms.

    Being Mission-Minded allows us to speak with confidence about the gospel without being condescending because the gospel keeps us from basing our identity on the approval of others. If our value is centered on the gospel and our lives are driven by grace, we will not feel the need to win arguments. We proclaim the gospel because we love people and we love people because God first loved us.

    As a Mission-Minded church, we have true hope for everyone. The gospel produces real hope that sees no one as hopeless since every transformation, including our own, is a miracle of God.