Valley church keeps growing

A church still in its toddler years is packing hundreds of people into Sunday services each week on South Barker Road. The church building itself is even newer, only opening its doors in September.

Valley Real Life Church got its start five years ago in the halls of Central Valley High School, founded by a group of people from Real Life Church in Post Falls. Since then church membership has been growing steadily and spiked by 400 new members when the new building opened. The church, on former farmland in the Saltese Flats area, now draws about 1,650 people a week.

The new building, on 48 acres, includes an auditorium for services, classrooms and a room for community meetings. The auditorium easily converts into a gym, with basketball hoops and volleyball nets.

Outside two soccer/football fields are taking shape, as are two baseball fields. There is a playground and a spot for outdoor movies in the summer. “This is supposed to be a park-like environment,” said senior pastor Matt King.

The goal is to make the building and grounds available to the community, not something that is only used once or twice a week. “That’s what we’re supposed to be: a community center,” King said. “Now it gets used every day of the week.”

Church leaders are considering creating a nonprofit organization to manage the sports fields and partner with local corporations and businesses. “I think it would be a wonderful thing,” he said.

The land was purchased from the Hepton family, which used to have a large farm. King said the family gave the church a “good deal” on the property but declined to give a specific number. Records from the Spokane County Assessors Office list a sale price of $300,000 in 2006. The church building itself cost $8.5 million, for which the church took out a loan. “The price of construction blew this up,” King said.

The only bump in the road has been the narrow, winding Barker Road. The two-lane road was sufficient for the family farms that used to be in the area, but now housing developments are on either side of the new church. On Sunday mornings, traffic is an issue. Relief is on the horizon, but no one is sure when it will come.

The church has a lengthy driveway leading from Barker Road. It was laid out so it could eventually be taken over as a county road and extended east to Henry Road. “They really have thought it out,” King said. “What will force it is not so much years, but demand.”

The church has more than a dozen people on staff, but even then would be hard-pressed to individually minister to each member. The church is organized in multiple small groups, giving each member individual attention and spiritual teaching. There are numerous women’s groups, Bible study groups, children’s classes, parenting classes and more. Many of the groups meet in people’s homes. “We are a small-groups church,” King said. “We do stuff that’s fun.”

King, who was a member of Real Life Church, doesn’t see himself as a traditional pastor. He’s in his first leadership position in a church and asks that everyone call him by his first name, eschewing the term “pastor.” He never attended a Bible college or seminary. “I’d rather be Matt King, a guy who really, really, really loves God and that’s it,” he said.

His ultimate goal is to lead people closer to God rather than focusing on people’s sins and what they’ve done wrong in the past. “That’s a cool job,” he said. “That I can do. But be a typical pastor? That I can’t.”

Some of that stems from King’s personal faith experience. As a young man he wanted nothing more than to be a father. He married his wife, Nona, almost 17 years ago. Over the years his wife has had four miscarriages, one of them a set of twins. “Pretty much, I lost it,” he said. “I just walked away.”

The couple now has an adopted child and a biological child.

It was years before King realized God loved him and regained his faith. He was surprised when he felt called to become a pastor, but he now works to spread the same news of God’s love that touched him when he needed it.

“It’s a real battle when you’ve got so many people who distrust the word ‘Christianity,’ ” he said.