Wasilla Bible Church is an established church located in Wasilla, Alaska, approximately one hour north of Anchorage, the largest and most populated city in Alaska. It sits within the Matanuska-Susitna Borough (“the Valley”), which is roughly the size of West Virginia and is home to roughly 115,000 people. 90% of these people live in the area surrounding Wasilla and Palmer, which are roughly 10 miles apart. Alaskans are a generally individualistic, independent-minded people – which comes with its own shepherding benefits and challenges. (I will happily answer any cultural, missional questions you may have regarding our specific ministry context during the application process.)
WBC has gathered and served in the Valley for almost 50 years. We truly are a “non-denominational” community church with people and leaders from a variety of denominational backgrounds – Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Assemblies of God, Pentecostal, Catholic, and Orthodox, just to name a few – as well as people who have absolutely no church background. With this said, our church teaching positions generally fall within the historical stream of Reformed theology. To make this work well, we have learned to approach our points of disagreement with grace as we stand on the truth of Scripture, which is a non-negotiable skill for anyone who serves on our staff and leadership team.
We currently gather on Sundays with a worship attendance of approximately 700 adults and 200 kids/students. As an established church, our demographics range from toddlers to seniors, with the bulk of our people being career-age adults, families, and kids. We are not a flashy or cutting-edge church, but we have a long history of faithful consistency as we endeavor to live lives of witness together as a church, in our community and in our world.
This past summer, we planted our first church from within our own church body. That church plant (Restoration Community Church) is located approximately 15 minutes away, in another community of the Valley. We are excited to continue partnering with them in ministry as we, together, pursue our shared vision of lives of witness, lived together as, not just a single local church, but as a growing family of inter-dependent churches.
Our desire as a family of faith is to live lives of witness together as a church in our community and in our world. Practically speaking, in the next 20 years, I would love to see WBC have a hand in saturating the Valley with the gospel. I long to make it hard to go to hell from the Mat-Su because of how prevalent our witness is as individuals, as a family of faith, and in partnership with other local churches! What might that look like in measurable terms? My desire would be to see, on any given Sunday, at least 10% of the people in the Valley in attendance at a WBC-related church (WBC, WBC church plant, or other local churches with whom WBC intentionally partners). Ideally, half of those in attendance would be committed disciples, deliberately moving Godward as committed members of those churches. The other half would be people who are in the process of turning Godward and becoming committed to following King Jesus. The reason for this goal percentage is that it would likely result in any person in the Valley being no more than one degree of separation from a committed follower of Jesus who can share the gospel with them. And that same desire for gospel saturation ripples out around the globe! This is why we partner with local churches on every inhabited continent – to strengthen and grow them for witness in their own contexts, so that more and more people will step out of darkness and into the light of King Jesus’ Unshakable Kingdom.