Spiritual Holiday - Heritage of Faith Family Church

Heritage of Faith Family Church (HFF) is a wonderfully unique church. It describes itself as a covenantal, multi-generational body of believers and a "family of families."

HHF was started on June 3rd 2007 in the living room of Dave and Valerie Monk. Although desirous to be a home church, it was hugely popular and quickly out grew the Monk's home and is now located at Greenfield Junior High, 101 S. Greenfield Rd in Gilbert. They have one Sunday service that starts at 10:30am.

Arriving at the church you quickly notice the vans and SUVs: usually a sign of families, large families. Approaching the church meeting area, the school cafeteria, you are warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by age integrated greeting teams. In addition to the adult greeters, the children and teens are not shy, but shake your hand and quickly involve you in conversation that makes you feel like you’ve met before.

Inside you will find the culture warm, casual and friendly. There is a sense of heritage here - while there were many casually dressed, there were also a few men in ties, a number of women in dresses, and children spruced up for church. No need to ask if children are welcome in this church; they are everywhere and well behaved, but not stifled. There are no nurseries or Sunday schools. That’s right! HHF encourages and expects parents to care and train their own. And this group is not nervous - babies and toddlers are in the back, making some, though surprisingly little, noise. There is patience with little ones, but also some wonderful modeling from the other more experienced families. And we saw many teens and other adults willing to step in and help those families with small children.

After the church service the motif of the area quickly morphs back into the cafeteria, just in time for you to partake of their potluck luncheon. These people love to eat, fellowship and get to know each other. Don’t be concerned if you didn’t bring a dish, they enjoy sharing from their abundance.

We liked the church's doctrinal statement, although they are not reformed. They are unabashedly charismatics who have found the balance of Paul’s exhortation of “doing all things decently and in order.” The music is upbeat, but conservative. Even the worship team was multigenerational - with teens and adults playing instruments and singing together. There were some hymns interspersed with the more modern choruses.

We also appreciated the balance they struck within the church government. They are led by a plurality of elders. The elders are primarily responsible for teaching, training, and shepherding of the congregation. New elders are recommended by the congregation and the elders and are voted in by the congregation. Preaching is mainly by the elders. They have a manifold approach in teaching style that traverses from expository to topical. Sermons run from raising godly children, to Christian courage, to studies on books of the bible such as 1 & 2 Timothy. At this time they do not have a full time pastor - but these godly, mature elders are doing a wonderful job teaching and leading the congregation.

Although this is a relatively small group of believers, they are involved in civic and faith ventures outside their church. They had sent a group to do missions work in Mexico, and had taught on supporting the Biblical view of marriage as between a man and a woman. Very healthy signs! We sensed no legalism, control, or doctrinal hobby horses but lots of empowerment, love of the scriptures, and fellowship. Although they announced from the pulpit that they are not a home school church, it seems that most people do. We met at least one single college student who attends because he likes to be around the families, and we noticed a few empty nesters as well. So if you like to be with families and people of all ages this could be a good place for you.

If we were rating this church as far as a safe and healthy place to raise a family and to participate in sharing the Heritage of Faith multigenerationally, we would give it four out of four thumbs up.