Desert Springs Church located at 19620 S. McQueen in Chandler was started as an Assembly of God church plant back in 1997. They have been meeting in their own attractive and well functioning building for almost a year.
Parking was easy and there were plenty of friendly faces to greet us on our approach to the church doors. Once inside a youthful, early 30s, greeter struck up a conversation with us. She asked lots of conversation generators which prompted us to ask our fair share of questions. At one point our questions garnered an invite to meet and talk with Pastor Brad Davis. We found this man of God warm, engaging and easy to talk with.
Pastor Brad Davis and his lovely wife of over 20 years, Becky Davis, are motivated by their vision to “Touch a Generation for the Kingdom of God.” They are both graduates from North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota where they met. Becky is a talented singer who led us in worship the morning we visited the church.
Their core values are expressed by being people who:
· are filled with passion for God,
· raise the bar,
· are unafraid to dream,
· refuse to settle,
· embrace today,
· leave it better than we found it and
· speak life.
Although striving to be relevant in today’s culture, at least in our first visit, the church is holding to the essentials of the Christian faith.
Their goal is to equip people through praise, relevant preaching, passionate times of prayer and allowing ample time in the service for the Holy Spirit to move.
We commend them on the last point of giving time and place to Spirit. Within their upbeat worship where the saints feel the liberty to raise or clap hands they punctuated with a pause, to listen for the Lord’s promptings, and “singing in the spirit.” And although the church is Pentecostal in its origin, we didn’t believe anyone accustomed to today’s contemporary worship style would feel uncomfortable worshiping with these dear saints.
Pastor Davis has a straight forward easy to listen to teaching style. He is topical rather than expository in his approach to the scriptures.
This particular Sunday we caught one of a five part series on marriage. Using a large flat screen console loaded with the Wii game of baseball he proceeded to demonstrate how this type of game only has meaning when you interact with another person, just like marriage.
In his sermon he walked the fine line between God hating divorce and yet not hating divorced people. He emphasized God’s grace and forgiveness. He supplied plenty of statistics on divorces damaging effects. Yet he did not disqualify the repentant from the kingdom of God. The service concluded with prayer up front for those with needs. Like all the churches we have visited thus far children are welcomed in the services. So if you are looking for community, relevant teaching and Holy Spirit friendly worship, give Desert Springs a chance.
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