Valley Assembly Offspring Begins Sunday Services

Tim Johnson finds inspiration on the basketball court.

The 35-year-old assistant pastor of the Valley Assembly of God Church treks down to Sta-Fit each week to shoot hoops with “regular guys.”

There’s no ulterior motive - just hard, clean basketball. But for Johnson, it’s also a reminder of his mission.

“I try to boil it down to a simple form: love God, love people,” he says.

Those words are the motivating force behind a new mission for Johnson.

This weekend, he’ll leave his six-year post at Valley Assembly to become the founding pastor of the Valley’s newest church, the MeadowWood Christian Center.

The church, which has its first service this Sunday at Otis Orchards Elementary, is an outgrowth of the Valley Assembly of God’s bustling congregation at 15618 E. Broadway.

Last fall, pastors from Valley Assembly started toying with the thought of starting a new church.

Faced with growth at a rate of 15 percent a year, the pastors came up with a few options: start another service, build a larger sanctuary, or “plant” a new church.

“The strongest vote was for the birthing of a new church,” said Al Hulten, senior pastor of Valley Assembly since 1986. More than half of the 550-person congregation chose to start a new church in Liberty Lake.

About 50 people from Valley Assembly have committed to going to the new church, where Johnson will be pastor. Valley Assembly will pay his salary for the first year.

To bolster its own commitment to the new church, Valley Assembly sent out 9,700 mailings and spent about $2,000 on flyers advertising MeadowWood Christian Center.

For now, church members will meet at Otis Orchards Elementary, 22000 E. Wellesley. Later, Johnson hopes to move the meetings to Liberty Lake Elementary, which has not yet been completed. The church has also leased office space at 4904 N. Harvard Road.

While the Valley Assembly has a full staff of seven, Johnson will be the lone paid pastor at MeadowWood Christian. Organizers are counting on volunteers to take up the slack, serving as office staff and lay ministers.

Johnson graduated from Northwest College in Kirkland, Wash., with a degree in youth ministry. He served as a youth pastor at Assembly of God churches near Tacoma and in Coeur d’Alene before coming to the Valley.

Birthing an infant church will be easier for Johnson than becoming pastor of an older one, Hulten predicted.

Established churches often come laced with conflicts handed down over the years, he said. Johnson will have the advantage of starting fresh.

, DataTimes