Mission
Mountain Valley Church is a warm, caring family of faith actively living out our love for God, love for people, and service to the world.
Values
EXCELLENCE. We will use teamwork in the planning, preparation, and leading of relevant and compelling ministries for all ages. We will use all available arts, media, and technologies to magnify our Lord with creativity and excellence.
CREDIBILITY. We will strive to live authentic lives that are an example of God’s love and grace. We will model integrity in our words and actions. We will work to develop relationships to share God’s love with others and minister to their needs.
CONCERTED PRAYER. We believe that we are completely dependent on God. We will pray together as a congregation and submit to His will.
COMMITMENT. We will challenge each follower of Christ to understand his or her responsibility to answer Christ’s call to discipleship and will equip each to serve in fulfilling Christ’s mission.
COMPASSION. We will engage our world with demonstrable expressions of the love of Christ in our community and around the world. We will be involved in the planting of new churches to reach the world for Christ.
Vision
We are ordinary people who passionately love God and are completely dependent on Him. We have many dreams that we are working together to achieve through the love and grace of God.
Loving God.
1. We value the application of Scripture in our lives and want to communicate God’s Word in a way that is clear and understandable to all people.
2. We want to experience worship that magnifies God and celebrates His love for us.
3. We want our lives to be changed by the presence of God.
4. We want prayer to be so important in our lives that it is like breathing.
Loving People.
1. We want our church to be a safe and caring place that reflects God’s will to accept people of all backgrounds.
2. We want to love each other deeply and from the heart.
3. We want to regularly meet in small groups to share our burdens and hold each other accountable to become more like Christ.
4. Because children are close to God’s heart and are our future, we want to teach them that God is real and His word is the only truth.
Serving the World.
1. We want to share the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection with our community and anticipate that many of them will believe and accept Him as Savior.
2. We want each believer to discover their unique gifts and abilities and to find an area of appropriate service.
3. We want to meet the needs of our community and our world through acts of compassion.4. We want to actively send our members out as missionaries and church planters so that God’s love might be spread throughout the world.
A Fresh Start
Mountain Valley Baptist Church began as a call in the hearts of George and April Hicks. George felt led by God into the Gospel ministry in 2003 and began pursuing his Master of Divinity at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's extension in Birmingham. He served as a lay pastor at Westwood Baptist Church until God gave him a burden for the Montevallo community in 2006. George is an engineer and has a consulting firm in Montevallo. George approached the leadership at Westwood with his desire to reach the Montevallo community for Christ and the feeling that he should begin a new church. Westwood graciously offered to sponsor the new work and has given invaluable encouragement, training, and financial support to its daughter church. The church is also being sponsored by the Shelby Baptist Association and the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
A core group of Westwood members began meeting in September of 2006 to pray and plan for a new church. The group continued to meet at Westwood until holding their first worship service on January 14th, 2007 at the Parnell Memorial Library in Montevallo. Our core group continues to diligently prepare for our planned public launch on April 1, 2007. We are excited about the possibilities for ministry in the Montevallo area and look forward to God's plan for us in the future.
The Need for New Churches
God has given us an exciting mission to reach the world for Him. His eternal strategy for spreading the “Good News” involves you and me. Jesus said that He would send us into the world (John 20:21) to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins based on the resurrection of Christ (Luke 24:46-48). He said we should begin in our communities and spread the Gospel throughout the world (Acts 1:8). Planting new churches effectively fulfills the Great Commission by bringing the Gospel to communities that have not been reached and to those that are experiencing tremendous growth.
Living in the “Bible Belt” gives the false assumption that our communities have already been reached for Jesus. However, recent statistics from the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions show that 64% of Shelby County is unchurched. This statistic coupled with the explosive growth in the county challenges us to begin new churches to reach the lost.
Why Montevallo?
The city of Montevallo is growing at a rapid pace. Developers are currently planning to build over 1,600 homes in the area that will bring approximately 5,000 people to an existing population of 4,500. The Shelby Baptist Association has identified the need to plant a church in the community and God continues to confirm that we should join Montevallo churches in reaching the lost for Christ. (top)
