About ValleyLight Church
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 Opportunity and the Reality
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.
About the Ideal Candidate (Lead Pastor)
ValleyLight is looking for a Lead Pastor who will preach, shepherd, and build, helping the church mature into its next season. We are looking for a missionary-minded pastor with a church planter's heart, who sees ValleyLight as the foundation for something much larger and is willing to build with limited resources. This is a calling for someone who wants to be planted long-term.
A Shepherd-Builder with a Planter's Heart
This role calls for a shepherd-builder, not a preacher-maintainer. You need to be resourceful and adaptable, and comfortable leading when everything is not yet permanent, polished, or already built. Prior church-planting experience is a bonus, not a requirement, but you should understand what it means to build something with limited resources. If you've ever wrestled with whether God is calling you to plant a church of your own, this role may be a way to live out that calling by stepping into an existing work that is still in its formative years.
Seasoned, Not Rigid
ValleyLight isn't looking for someone brand new to vocational ministry; a minimum of five years of pastoral experience is preferred. That said, a proven track record of fruit and character matters more than a particular resume. While formal education is preferred, it is not required. Experience, especially in discipleship and leadership development, carries more weight than credentials.
Called to This Specific Place
West Valley City is not the polished side of the Salt Lake Valley, and Magna keeps its own working-class, small-town identity within it. ValleyLight is looking for someone who wants to live among the people he serves rather than commute in from somewhere else, and who feels genuinely called to this specific, multicultural, lower-income part of the valley as part of an incarnational, missional strategy.
Partnership Development and Vision Casting
ValleyLight can currently offer compensation of around $60,000, and that number can grow. The right leader will be willing to steward and develop ministry partnerships, including outside support, and the additional support he raises can increase his total compensation over time. ValleyLight already has meaningful partner relationships, including several larger churches. The next pastor will inherit some of those relationships and will need to strengthen and grow them, and those partners will be looking to him to determine whether and how they continue partnering with ValleyLight. A big part of the role is about partnership development, vision casting, and support raising.
Qualifications at a Glance
- Five or more years of vocational ministry experience preferred; church planting experience is a strong plus
- No formal education requirement; ministry fruit, character, and experience carry more weight than a degree
- 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
- Willingness to raise and steward support: you do not need to arrive as an experienced fundraiser, but you must be willing to learn how to cast vision, build trust with partners, steward relationships, and help raise outside support when needed
- A missionary mindset and a church planter's heart, with the creativity and resourcefulness to lead a mobile church without everything already built
- Willing and called to live in West Valley City/Magna
ValleyLight is not simply hiring someone to pastor a 140-person church. We are looking for someone who can see the foundation of a much larger work and help develop the partnerships, systems, and leadership needed to get there. The foundation is here and the community doors are open. What ValleyLight needs is the right long-term leader to pull the pieces together, strengthen systems, develop leaders, grow partnerships, disciple new believers, and help ValleyLight mature without losing its missionary edge.
About the Community: West Valley City & Magna
West Valley City, Utah's second-largest city, is nestled in the Salt Lake Valley between the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountain ranges. The city's scenic beauty is enhanced by its sense of community and grit.
More than 137,000 people call West Valley City home, and it's one of the most diverse communities in the state, nearly evenly split between Anglo and Hispanic residents, with meaningful Asian and Pacific Islander populations as well. The city is still writing its own story. ValleyLight sees that as an invitation: the church has a real opportunity to help shape what West Valley City becomes, not just serve a community that already knows who it is.
Magna, our neighboring community, has an identity all its own. It is an old mining community with a working-class, small-town identity, and it carries its pride and independence today. It's the kind of place where neighbors know each other and are proud to call Magna home.
That's really the character of the whole area: you can live in a big metro and still feel like you're in a small town. West Valley City sits just 15 to 20 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City, close enough for a Utah Jazz or Utah Mammoth game at the Delta Center, a Real Salt Lake match, or a night out downtown, and just minutes from Salt Lake City International Airport. West Valley is also one of the major concert and event hubs of the Salt Lake Valley, with the Maverik Center and the Utah First Credit Union Amphitheater bringing big concerts and events right into the city.
Outdoor life here is hard to beat. Six world-class ski resorts, Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Park City, and Deer Valley, are within about 45 minutes, and the Great Salt Lake and Utah's mountain lakes offer boating, fishing, and hiking most of the year. Hogle Zoo is about 30 minutes away, and families have their pick of three major universities in the area, the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, and BYU, for sports, arts, and events. Whether it's a winter weekend on the slopes or a summer afternoon at the lake, there's rarely a reason to leave the valley to find something to do.
For the right pastor, West Valley City and Magna offer something rare: a genuine, still forming mission field inside one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, with big-city amenities a short drive away and small-town relationships right outside the door.