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 River Valley 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.
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 continued to see much growth. We witnessed God bless us with several volunteers in children’s, nursery, set-up / tear-down, and music / tech ministries. God also blessed us with several men who are leading small groups and who trained to be 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 hired our first Associate Pastor, Jason Faber, in August of 2009. We ordained our first lay elders in 2010. We have continued to see growth over the years to several hundred regular attenders. We also have the privielge of training young pastoral residents for full-time pastoral ministry. Additionally, we have seen God raise up many missionaries from our church whom we have trained, sent, and continue to support as they preach the gospel to the ends of the earth.
On November 1, 2015 we moved into Frontier High School which is closer to where our Church building will be built, and also provides a substantial amount of room to grow! We have been blessed to see God’s hand of favor on the church during our first several years. We look forward to what he will do in the future.