An Apostolic Lighthouse in the Heart of Rialto
Inland Lighthouse Church sits on South Cactus Avenue in Rialto, California, just a few turns off Interstate 10 in San Bernardino County. From a single sanctuary on that lot, the ministry now reaches across the Inland Empire and well beyond. Bishop Larry L. Booker leads the work alongside his son, Pastor Joel Booker, and Joel's wife Erica, while a separate Spanish-speaking congregation worships in the same campus under Pastor Carl Brown. Four daughter churches (Riverside, West Covina, San Bernardino, and Phelan) extend the family into surrounding cities, and a K-12 school, a children's bus ministry, and a competitive Bible quizzing program make Inland Lighthouse a Pentecostal hub for the entire region.
The church's gathering identity is Apostolic in doctrine. Salvation, the leaders teach, comes through repentance, water baptism by immersion in the Name of Jesus Christ, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking in other tongues. That Acts 2:38 framework shapes everything from Sunday worship to kids' ministry. The congregation is multigenerational, multiethnic, and outwardly focused. All Nations Sunday in 2026 filled the campus with international tasting booths, cultural decorations, and a Mini Olympics that drew participants of every age, a vivid picture of a body that explicitly welcomes the nations.
Sunday on the Cactus Avenue Campus
The rhythm of the week begins with Sunday School at 10:00 AM, when children move into age-graded classes across the campus and adults gather for elective study groups. Sunday morning worship follows at 11:00 AM and runs roughly ninety minutes, blending spirited congregational singing with preaching. The Sunday evening service at 6:30 PM is often the most evangelistic gathering of the week, frequently punctuated by altar calls and baptisms. A Wednesday Bible Study at 7:30 PM keeps the midweek anchored in teaching.
The Spanish congregation, Iglesia Inland Lighthouse, hosts its own Sunday service at 1:30 PM and a midweek service on Thursday at 7:30 PM. The Spanish work has grown steadily under Pastor Carl and Vicki Brown, with members participating in the church's HarvestFest, Christmas in Rialto outreach, summer conference schedule, and children's programs alongside the English congregation. The Spanish audio stream is available on the church's media page, and archived sermons from the Spanish ministry go back several years.
Visitors can expect a casual dress code (the church family itself tends toward modest, contemporary attire), energetic worship, and a warm welcome from greeters at every door. The sanctuary and adjoining fellowship hall share a campus with children's check-in stations, the Coffee Shop, and a Sunday School store. On Communion Sundays the elements are passed quickly between the sermon and the closing prayer; on baptism Sundays, baptisms take place in a tank behind the stage so the whole room can witness.
Wednesday Night and the Friday Discipleship Track
Wednesday Bible Study at 7:30 PM is the midweek teaching service for the English congregation, drawing a large adult crowd along with youth and college-age groups that meet in adjacent rooms on the same campus. Teaching rotates between Pastor Joel Booker, guest ministers, and ministry leaders, and the corporate prayer line at the close of the service is a hallmark of the night.
Friday nights have become a discipleship laboratory. Three Fridays a month, Rev. Tim Lackey and his wife Shanda host an in-home Bible study with food at 15634 Clove Place in nearby Fontana at 7:00 PM. The fourth Friday is reserved for the monthly ILC Connections gathering, a house-based fellowship hosted by one of roughly a dozen families around the church (the Betor, Rowell, Reighard, Avila, Davis, and Thomas homes are regulars). The result is a rhythm that alternates Word and table, classroom and living room, throughout the month.
The Children's Ministry and the Bus Routes
Of all the ministries at Inland Lighthouse, the children's department may be the most defining. Sunday School classes run every week from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM in dedicated rooms across the campus, divided into Toddlers (ages 2-4), SuperClass (ages 5-9), Young Men and Young Ladies (both ages 10-11), and a College & Career class for older youth. The lessons are written in-house by the Sunday School staff, and each year the team trains together at the SCC Children's Ministry Conference, an outreach of the church that brought eleven speakers and around thirty teaching sessions to the campus in 2025.
The Holy Ghost Riders bus ministry is the school's most visible outreach arm. Color-coded routes travel through Rialto and adjacent neighborhoods every Sunday morning, picking up children who otherwise would not attend any church. A breakfast team feeds dozens of arriving kids each week, the check-in crew greets families at the Coffee Shop entrance, and a Sunday School store (under Sis. Francis Abad) hands out rewards for attendance, Bible memorization, and evangelism. Bro. Julian and Sis. Kim Estrada lead the bus captains, drivers, and mechanics, with Bro. Mark McVay handling the mountain of paperwork that comes with transporting minors. After the 11:00 AM service the children join the larger congregation.
Vacation Bible School is a near-corporate undertaking. The 2025 program drew roughly 100 children a night for an entire week and ran on more than thirty volunteers. Stations included crafts under Raelynne Boggs, games under Bre Hinckley, science-object lessons under Bob Lee and Danny Tirado, and a Bible room under Danny Tirado, with preaching each evening by an evangelist. The 2026 program will follow the same model. Easter week brings its own dramatic production: in 2026, a Resurrection story told from the perspective of a Roman soldier and Easter weekend attendance topped 3,100 across all Inland Lighthouse campuses combined.
Momentum Youth and Men in Training
Teenagers at Inland Lighthouse belong to Momentum Youth, the student ministry led by Jonathan and Alexandria Flores. Momentum meets midweek as part of the regular schedule and runs a packed annual calendar: Winter Retreat at Pine Summit, Junior Camp at Camp MorningStar in Angelus Oaks (for ages 7-13), a spring Youth Explosion, the Bilingual Youth Explosion with Rev. Juan Núñez, summer service projects, Knott's Berry Farm days, an annual Summer Bash, and the massive Youth Blitz each March, when twenty-five or more teenagers distribute flyers for two hours across half a dozen Walmart and shopping-center parking lots ahead of Easter.
For boys ages 8-11, Men in Training (MIT) under Logan Booker offers mud football, camping, fishing trips, snow trips, Topgolf nights, and Sky Zone trips that pair physical challenges with character instruction. The goal is to send young men into adulthood rooted in faith, friendship, and resilience. A Mothers & Daughters group called Daughters of Zion under Mindy Rowe provides the parallel formation for pre-teen girls, complete with outings and life-skills training.
Bible Quizzing: A Serious Sport
Inland Lighthouse's Bible Quizzing program is one of the most consistent in the region and a point of genuine pride. Directed by Larry and Sarah Booker, the program fields teams in Beginner, Junior, Intermediate, and Experienced divisions and travels to tournaments from Fresno to Bakersfield to La Grande, Oregon, and on to the national PEAK tournament each summer. Local quizzers consistently place top in their divisions; teams from Rialto won championships at La Grande in 2025, hosted 45-team invitationals at home, and regularly send high scorers to the All-Tournament team. The program serves ages 5-18 and is structured to put Scripture into young hearts in a competitive, social setting where Apostolic young people from many churches gather.
Soul Sisters, inGroup, Connections, and the Adult Calendar
The women's ministry, Soul Sisters, is led by Care Captain Frances Abad and meets monthly for outings, paint parties, beach trips, clothing swaps, summer camps, and Christmas brunches. Its flagship event is the annual Pismo Beach Trip, a three-day ladies' getaway built around sightseeing, meals, and craft time. Each gathering includes a teaching, a testimony, and time for prayer.
Young adults ages 18-39 belong to the inGroup, with care captains Phillip and Jennifer Booker, David and Abby Avila, James and Leaya Thomas, and Kenny and Natalie Lorenz covering the alphabet. The Forever Group (ages 40-54) and the Keenagers (ages 55+) round out the adult stages with their own fellowships, dinners, and outings, while the College & Career ministry under Caleb and Eunice Pierce ministers to single young adults who have finished high school.
Connections is the church's church-wide monthly home fellowship. Anywhere from 55 to 105 people gather at a different home each month for a meal, dessert, and unhurried conversation. The Davis, Alvarado, Betor, Reighard, McVay, Avila, and Rowell homes have all hosted over the past year, and a Connections gathering is open to anyone in the church or thinking about joining one.
B-Free: Recovery Ministry
B-Free is a faith-based recovery program led by Bob Betor, designed for men and women who want freedom from addiction. The 26-week and 52-week tracks combine Christian discipleship with practical, structured teaching, with no charge for participants. B-Free participants join regular Sunday morning service, attend weekly small-group studies, and serve alongside the wider congregation, so growth happens in the context of the whole church rather than in isolation. Each November, the B-Free class hosts a fish fry at Betor's home along with the wider Connections group, a tradition that has run for several years.
Men's, Ladies', and Marriages
The Men's Department, led by Jared Rowell, gathers several times a year for a Prayer Breakfast with a guest speaker and runs the annual SCC Men's Day that drew several hundred men from across California in 2025. The Ladies' Department, led by Erica Booker, plans the Ladies Christmas Brunch, the annual Ladies Day, and multiple fellowship evenings throughout the year.
Marriage ministry takes couples off site for an annual Marriage Retreat at a local venue, typically with separate tracks for husbands and wives led by guest ministers, followed by a combined session. The 2025 retreat with the Mortons was built around the themes of growth, service, and daily prayer. Young Couples, a newer ministry for newlyweds, gathers quarterly for nights of fellowship and teaching.
Worship, Music, and the Choir
The Music Ministry, directed by Jana McVay with Sarah Booker directing the choir, anchors every Sunday service. The ILC Sanctuary Choir, Worship Teams, the Children of Praise, and Voices in Praise each play a role, and the choir is the heart of major events like the So Cal Sings concert that brings Apostolic choirs together from across Southern California. The Worship Arts side of the church also produces the ARK Podcast and SPARK Magazine, both resources for Apostolic music and teaching.
Outreach and World Missions
Inland Lighthouse runs an annual door-to-door blitz that covers the entire city of Rialto. In 2026 the entire city was covered in about three and a half weeks, with team members hanging invitations on roughly 30,000 homes. HarvestFest, the church's flagship community event each October 31, drew 2,932 people in 2024 with twenty-seven game booths, food booths, a Science Barn, pony rides, shaved ice, and a candy rain that has become a tradition. The church also participates in National Night Out, the Rialto Holiday Festival and Parade, and a Christmas in the Park event hosted by the Spanish congregation.
The church supports a long missionary list across Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Missionaries include Nelson and Kathryn Santos in Porto Alegre, Brazil; Mike Voan and the Bradford family in Mexico; the Schreckhise family in Honduras; WPF in India; missionaries in Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Kenya, Russia, and Taiwan; and shorter-term Ensenada, Mexico work as well. A missionary page lists more than thirty supported fields, with prayer requests and update letters shared throughout the year.
Deaf Ministry
Sign language interpretation is provided during services for the hearing impaired. The team, led by Care Captain Sherrye Bright, includes several interpreters and meets socially for outings and meals in addition to the Sunday translation work. Visitors who need interpretation can request it in advance through the church office.
Lighthouse Christian Academy
Lighthouse Christian Academy, the church's K-12 school, sits under Principal Sharon Pierce. The school offers Christian education from preschool through high school on or near the same campus, employs experienced teachers committed to integrating faith and learning, and holds its own graduation banquet each spring. The 2025 graduating class included seven students who were honored in a Friday evening ceremony, and the school partners with ILC families through tuition assistance, parent volunteering, and chapel events. Its graduates often continue on in ILC's youth and young adult ministries, and many serve on Bible Quizzing teams, in the choir, or on the worship team.
The Four Daughter Churches and the Spanish Work
Beyond Rialto, Inland Lighthouse has planted four daughter churches across the region. ILC Riverside marked its fifth anniversary in 2024 with thirty baptisms, forty Holy Ghost fillings, and average Sunday attendance in the mid-eighties. ILC West Covina celebrated five years with a service led by Rev. Johnny Walker and entered a season of revival with Evangelist Isaiah Dunn in early 2025. ILC San Bernardino, now pastored by the Dillons, observed its fourth anniversary in late 2025 and recently launched a youth group called Triumphant Youth. ILC Phelan grew out of home Bible studies started by Galen DeCosta in 2018, formalized into a church in 2023, and moved into its own building in January 2024.
The Spanish congregation, Iglesia Inland Lighthouse, has the same doctrinal DNA as the English church but its own pastoral team, worship style, and events, including its own Sunday school, Bilingual Youth Explosion nights, and WPF Spanish Conference hosting. The relationship between English and Spanish congregations is intentionally close: bilingual collaboration punctuates events like Vacation Bible School and Bible Quizzing.
What the Church Believes
Inland Lighthouse holds to the Apostolic confession summed up in Acts 2:38. Members affirm that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God; that there is one God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; that water baptism is by immersion in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sin and is essential to New Testament salvation; that believers are to repent, be filled with the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking in other tongues, and live consecrated, separated lives. The church is committed to the Great Commission and to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with love, mercy, and compassion.
Visiting and Getting Connected
Visitors who arrive on a Sunday morning will be greeted at the door and pointed toward the Coffee Shop or directly into the sanctuary. The English service at 11:00 AM is the main weekly gathering for newcomers; the 6:30 PM evening service is smaller and more intimate. The Spanish service at 1:30 PM is the gateway into Iglesia Inland Lighthouse. Anyone interested in joining the Kids' Ministry, attending a Connections night, enrolling at Lighthouse Christian Academy, or finding a small group can call the church office at (909) 820-2393, email info@inlandlighthouse.com, or stop by the Contact Us desk in person. Forgiving questions about baptism, the Holy Ghost, or church membership are welcomed and can be directed to any of the pastors on staff.
Live streaming is available for the Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, and Wednesday Bible Study through the church's online media page, with archived sermons going back to 2017 on SoundCloud. Giving is offered online through dedicated giving pages for the general fund, the Rialto building fund, youth, missions, the Spanish work, and each daughter church. Plans for an expanded building have been submitted and a 3D rendering is available for preview.
Inland Lighthouse Church has long been known as a place where multiple generations and multiple languages gather around an Acts 2:38 gospel, where children are picked up by church buses each Sunday morning, where young people compete nationally in Bible Quizzing, and where recovery, music, and missions are taken seriously. From a single sanctuary on Cactus Avenue in Rialto, the church points both inward toward revival and outward toward the nations, with a clear conviction that its best days are ahead.