In a day when American churches are attracting fewer and fewer into their folds – especially in politically progressive California – Chris Henry is inspired to take his Ceres church in a new direction and changing its name to signify that change.

Valley Christian Church at 2745 Second Street is adopting a new name. Hope Tree Church even has a new logo – of a cross running through a tree – which Henry helped design.

“The focus is simple – find hope in the cross,” said Pastor Henry, an energetic man of vision who is in his fourth year at the church. 

The population hemorrhage out of California to red states is taking many conservatives and evangelicals – his Assemblies of God denomination has lost 10 percent of its pastors in the last few years – but Henry, 48, urges his Christian brethren to stay put to change the culture.

“I call it a California focused mission. With so many people wanting to leave I still have some great hopes for the state. I still love my state. I don’t want to leave and so with all these good people leaving we want to give options to tell them, hey, you don’t have to run. God’s put us in mission here.”

The new focus will seek to train new ministers, and focus on serving foster children, young people transitioning out of substance abuse programs and undergirding parents who chose to homeschool their children.

“One of the things that God just really laid on my heart is we need to begin to identify and train pastors for the future, train pastors for the small church,” said Henry. “A lot of times when there’s a minister school it’s usually associated with a larger church – like the House of Harvest in Turlock has a school of ministry. The only thing about that is when the training of these men and women to be minister, they’re training them in the large church mentality. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing but there’s so many small churches sitting empty because we’ve training everybody to, you now, sort of be Joel Osteen or Steven Furtick.”

For clarification Osteen and Furtick are heads of mega churches with members north of 27,000 congregants.

Pastor Henry especially noted the lack of enough pastors in the Assemblies of God denomination in Northern California with some sitting empty for six months or longer with “no pastors willing to take on these rural churches.”

Henry’s church will be interning new ministers with the help of five ordained ministers in his congregation – including his father, Herb Henry who pastored Richland Faith Assembly of God Church in Ceres before stepping down in 2021. Training will come through online courses through the Global University and Pathways, both based in California. Pathways offers a faster program but isn’t an accredited college, Henry said. 

“Like if you went to Global University and you wanted to pursue your master’s (degree) later in life then that’s the way to go. But if you’re just saying ‘God’s calling me to the ministry and I need to get there as fast as possible,’ Pathways is the second option that we offer.”

He explained that the church will assist in monitoring student progress, offer counseling to candidates and serve as a testing center.

“The second part of it is they’re interning with us for a year, being a part of our church, watching what we do, how we do it, how we care for people. Either they continue on with us in the future as ministers or whatever God’s called them to do. If God’s calling them to one of these many rural churches that are empty then that’s great. We want to see that happen. We want to see what we do here in Ceres taken somewhere else.”

Pastor Henry is also moving the church’s focus to foster children and adoptions. He noted that California has close to 47,000 kids in the foster care system with 40 percent being four years of age and younger.

“Out of these foster kids, the average in the United States is close to 30 percent have been completely removed from the parental situation. So they’re just without parents. We see a big bad situation where nobody’s taken care of it so part of this faith – it’s a hard road – we’re calling on families in our church to say, ‘yeah, we want to be foster parents, we want to be adoptive parents.’ And then for the rest of us in the church we are now the support system.”

He noted how foster children grow up to have a much higher chance of landing in prison. Putting them in a loving home has the potential to positively change their future, he added. Of course, leading them to salvation is a chief purpose as well.

Another prong of the new church direction is to utilize empty rooms of houses owned by the church on Central Avenue and Second Street for transitional housing for those graduating out of the Teen Challenge program. Some have been through drug or alcohol recovery programs.

“What we don’t want is somebody who goes through the Teen Challenge system who gets clean, who finds faith in Jesus but then they come out and can’t afford to rent or buy a house. This would provide – at a very much discounted rate to them – the ability to rent out a room so they’ve got six to 12 months. In the old days they would have called this a halfway house; in this case it would be like a re-entry house. This is a way for us to keep them from … going back to what they were doing before.”

The church plans to retain the house nearest to the church building for its food ministry program.

Home school co-op

Henry is also leading the church to form a “home school co-op” to support parents who are “disgusted with the current state of the California education system … redefining morality” and have chosen to homeschool their children.

“It’s not necessarily a teacher thing. It’s not an administration thing. It’s a curriculum thing.”

Henry specifically wants to help parents understand how to homeschool and connect them to resources. His aim is to have a program in place by the time the 2024-25 school year rolls around “so they can have an easier time” homeschooling their children.

Henry’s wife, Beverly, has years of experience as a homeschool mom to their three children and would be one of the resources.

The changing of the name of the church will also help eliminate confused with the myriad of other churches by the same name in California – nine within a 100-mile radius.

“There’s so many Valley Christian Centers and because we’re doing church so differently, I just don’t want anybody confusing us with anybody else.”

Since becoming pastor of the Ceres church, Henry has seen attendance grow – from about 25 attending with no children to about 125 with 25 being children 12 and under. The Wednesday night youth group runs about 20.

“I wouldn’t call it miraculous growth. I call it healthy growth. We’ve got good strong people who are coming in and understanding that the church isn’t a book club we come to every Sunday but we’re on a mission and that is to bring God’s kingdom to Earth just like Jesus’ prayer said.” 

Worship services at the church are at 10:30 a.m. Sundays. For more information call (209) 531-2614.