A Sabbath on West Drexel Road
The Tucson Midvale Park Seventh-day Adventist Church sits on West Drexel Road on the south side of Tucson, Arizona, in the Midvale Park neighborhood. It is part of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Protestant body of roughly twenty million members across the globe. The congregation at 2071 West Drexel Road makes its home alongside Saguaro Hills Seventh-day Adventist Christian School, sharing a campus where worship, Christian education, and youth programs happen under the same roof of ministries.
What the church is best known for is its steady Sabbath rhythm. Every Saturday morning the building fills twice, first with the Bible-study hour known as Sabbath School and then with the main worship service. A vegetarian potluck follows each Sabbath, drawing members and visitors to a long table of plant-based dishes before they head home. The week closes with a Wednesday evening prayer meeting, keeping the congregation connected between Sabbaths.
Three Services on Sabbath Morning
The Sabbath schedule at Midvale Park follows the traditional Adventist pattern, beginning with study and ending with fellowship around food.
Sabbath School opens the day at 9:20 a.m. and runs until 10:15 a.m. The hour is divided into adult and children's classes, with members gathering in small groups to discuss that week's lesson from the international Seventh-day Adventist Bible Study Guide. The adult Sabbath School ministry at Midvale Park is a weekly chance to share what each person has learned and how it has made a difference in their lives.
The Church Service begins at 10:50 a.m. and continues until 11:50 a.m. This is the main congregational worship hour, with sermons that are recorded and added to the church's online media library. Pastors Gladstone Simmons and Grant Agadjanian are both listed in the sermon archive, alongside visiting speakers who have included Jimmy Sanders, Colin Boyce, Seth Okyere, Tim Riesenberger, Adam Ochoa, Daniel Simmons, and Seth Ream.
The Potluck follows worship at 12:15 p.m., running until 1:30 p.m. The church invites everyone to stay for vegetarian fare and fellowship. The setting out of long tables and the sharing of plant-based dishes is a long-standing Adventist practice rooted in the denomination's teaching on healthful living, and at Midvale Park it has become a defining feature of the Sabbath.
Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
Midweek gatherings at Midvale Park center on prayer. The weekly Prayer Meeting runs Wednesdays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Prayer is the channel of communication between the soul and God, an essential part of the Christian life rather than a formal ritual. Members are encouraged to pray without ceasing and to live and serve in an atmosphere of prayer.
The dedicated Prayer page includes a longer reflection on the importance of persistent prayer, drawn from the devotional book Prayer. God is a loving Father who is interested both when life is going well and when it brings difficult blows, and He is always just a prayer away. The Wednesday meetings are open to anyone who wants to join in praying, reading Scripture, and reflecting together.
Pathfinders, Community Service, and Adult Sabbath School
The ministries are the lifeblood of the congregation, with an invitation for newcomers to find both a place to grow as a disciple and a place to serve.
Pathfinders is the youth ministry described in the most detail. It is a co-ed, scouting-type club for juniors and teens in grades 5 through 12, sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide. Pathfinders welcomes young people of any religion, or of none at all, and encourages them to join the ministry at Midvale Park. Pathfinder clubs across the denomination combine outdoor activities, service projects, and Bible study.
Community Service is the church's outreach arm. Part of being a good neighbor is providing services to the surrounding community. Community Service projects and food are coordinated through the ministry team.
Adult Sabbath School is a third named ministry, providing the small-group lesson study that takes place each Sabbath morning before the worship service. Members join a study group, share what they have learned from the week's lesson, and discuss how it is shaping their daily lives.
A Christ-Centered School on the Same Campus
Saguaro Hills Seventh-day Adventist Christian School is part of the Midvale Park campus, sharing the Drexel Road address. The school is Christ-centered and staffed by teachers committed to providing quality education in a Christ-filled environment. As a Seventh-day Adventist school it weaves biblical faith into the academic day and ties its program to the broader Adventist educational system.
The school is operated separately from the church, with information at www.SaguaroHillsSchool.org. The presence of the school on the same grounds makes Midvale Park a place where multiple generations gather, with parents, students, and congregation members crossing paths on Sabbath mornings.
What Seventh-day Adventists Believe
The basic doctrinal summary common to Seventh-day Adventist congregations follows. Adventists are Protestant Christians who believe in one God made up of three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Salvation was made possible when Jesus, the Son, came to earth as a baby in Bethlehem, lived a sinless life in accordance with the Father's will, was crucified for the sins of the world, and rose again on the third day. After returning to heaven following the resurrection, Jesus left the Holy Spirit to serve as Comforter and Counselor, and He promised to return to earth a second time to complete His plan of salvation.
Adventists also believe that God is concerned with the quality of human life: that everything, including the way people live, eat, speak, think, treat each other, and care for the world around them, is part of His plan. Families, children, jobs, talents, money, and time are all important to Him. The denomination operates a worldwide network that includes 173 hospitals and sanitariums and more than 7,500 schools, with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) working in more than 130 countries on community development and disaster relief.
Sermons and Livestream
Members and friends who cannot attend in person can follow the church online. Worship services are livestreamed on the Midvale Park SDA Church Facebook page and on the church's YouTube channel. A recorded library of past sermons stretches back through 2022 and 2023 and includes messages from Pastor Gladstone Simmons, Pastor Grant Agadjanian, Jimmy Sanders, Colin Boyce, Seth Okyere, Tim Riesenberger, Adam Ochoa, Daniel Simmons, and Seth Ream, with the earliest archived messages going back to 2014. The most recent upload in the catalog, dated April 2025, is a message by Adam Ochoa titled "The Tree of Life and The River of Water of Life."
Giving to the church is handled through the Adventist Giving platform. Donations can also be made in person at the church.
Visiting Midvale Park
The church building is located at 2071 West Drexel Road, Tucson, Arizona 85746-3013, on the south side of the city. Driving directions are available through Google Maps. The phone number is 480-398-0202, with a separate line for the pastor at 520-347-3258. The general email is midvaleparksda@gmail.com and the pastor's email is pastor@midvaleparksda.com.
First-time visitors arriving on a Sabbath will find three doors open to them: Sabbath School at 9:20 a.m., the Church Service at 10:50 a.m., and the vegetarian potluck at 12:15 p.m. Anyone interested in midweek prayer can return on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. for the prayer meeting. Services are held in English. The Midvale Park community on Tucson's south side is the home of this congregation, a place where Sabbath observance, prayer, youth ministry through Pathfinders, and Christ-centered education at Saguaro Hills School all meet on the same stretch of Drexel Road.