Lead Pastor

Build Groups•West Valley City, UT

10d•Onsite

About The Position

ValleyLight Church exists to make Jesus unignorable on the westside of the Salt Lake Valley. Since launching in September 2023, this young church plant has grown to an average of 140 people on Sunday mornings, with more than 50 baptisms! ValleyLight serves one of the most strategic mission fields in the country. West Valley City is Utah's second-largest city and one of its most diverse. ValleyLight is the only English-speaking evangelical church serving a community of roughly 65,000 people, a community that ranks among the least-reached in the United States. It is also a religiously unique and spiritually complex mission field, where many who walk through ValleyLight's doors are meeting the gospel for the first time while others are finding gospel clarity, often for the first time. We experience new guests regularly who found us online because they are spiritually hungry and searching for something more. ValleyLight is a multicultural, multigenerational, family-oriented congregation. New and longtime believers, honest seekers, families, kids, teenagers, and adults from many different backgrounds worship side by side, and everyone is still growing in faith. People here love being together and they love their church. Beyond that, ValleyLight has built a strong reputation in the community it serves. The Foundation Is Already Here ValleyLight is not starting from zero. There is real gospel fruit, real community awareness, and real opportunity already in place. ValleyLight averages around 140 on Sundays More than 50 baptisms in 3 years Multiple services with 300 to 400 people present Has contact information for more than 1,000 people who have come through the ministry This opportunity doesn't require the most gifted and experienced leader. It requires a pastor who will love people well and keep showing up in the community. People are already searching, already finding ValleyLight, and already walking through the door. ValleyLight also has meaningful ministry partners, including several larger churches, and the next pastor will inherit those relationships. Still a Church Plant, Still a Mobile Church This is not a typical pastorate, ValleyLight is very much a church plant. The church currently meets in a school and operates as a mobile church, with limited resources. The church is still developing the systems, leaders, and ministry structures needed for long-term health. Very little here is permanent, polished, or already built. The right candidate will feel like the missing leadership piece who can help pull the opportunity together. This is a great opportunity for the right leader to shape the future and ministry of the church.

Requirements

Missionary-minded pastor with a church planter's heart
Resourceful and adaptable
Comfortable leading when everything is not yet permanent, polished, or already built
Minimum of five years of pastoral experience is preferred
Proven track record of fruit and character
Experience in discipleship and leadership development
Wants to live among the people he serves rather than commute in from somewhere else
Feels genuinely called to this specific, multicultural, lower-income part of the valley as part of an incarnational, missional strategy
Willing to raise and steward support
Must be willing to learn how to cast vision, build trust with partners, steward relationships, and help raise outside support when needed
Missionary mindset and a church planter's heart
Creativity and resourcefulness to lead a mobile church without everything already built
Willing and called to live in West Valley City/Magna
Ability to see the foundation of a much larger work and help develop the partnerships, systems, and leadership needed to get there

Nice To Haves

Prior church-planting experience is a bonus
Formal education is preferred, but not required
Alignment with, or a genuine appreciation for, Southern Baptist Convention doctrine and practice
A track record of discipling people and building teams and leaders, not just running programs