History of Sovereign Grace

A Brief History of Sovereign Grace

In 2006 a few men came together with the goal of starting a new church-planting church in Bakersfield. Our goal was to plant a church that would be known as God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered, Bible-saturated, and Missions-mobilizing. We started with several months of prayer and discussion during the Fall of 2005 through the Summer of 2006. On September 7, 2006 we started a Thursday evening service at RiverValley Community Church off Truxtun Ave.

In order to thoroughly ground the new church in the Gospel, we started with expository preaching through Paul’s Epistle to Rome. During the second week of October, we had our first “vision” meeting. We had about 28 people who committed to being part of the core group for Sovereign Grace. On December 24, 2006 we held our first Sunday morning service at Hodel’s. This service went very well with over 150 people in attendance. We also announced that we would start regular Sunday morning services on January 21, 2007.

We started our Sunday morning services at Stockdale Elementary with an average of about 50 in attendance. After 6 weeks, we moved into Ronald Reagan Elementary where God blessed us with steady growth. In the Fall of 2007, Randy Lovegreen took over our music ministry and we saw incredible development in our band.  We also were privileged to send Daniel Healy to Guinea-Bissau as our first full-time missionary and to be a major supporter of a Bible college training pastors in central India.

On August 3, 2008 we moved into Liberty High School where we began to make ourselves publicly known for the first time and where we have continued to see much growth. We have witnessed God bless us with several volunteers in children’s, nursery, set-up / tear-down, and music / tech ministries. God has also blessed us with several men who are leading small groups and who are training to be future elders of the church. On December 30, 2008 God blessed Sovereign Grace with 18.2 acres of land on the corner of Snow and Old Farm. We have been blessed to see God’s hand of favor on the church during our first three years. We look forward to what he will do in the future.