Three Campuses, One Church Across Bakersfield
Valley Baptist Church meets in three locations across Bakersfield, California. The main campus, known as the Fruitvale Campus and described by the church as the broadcast campus, sits at 4800 Fruitvale Avenue in northeast Bakersfield. A second campus, Olive Drive, operates from 5500 Olive Drive, just a few blocks west, and is home to a hymn service, a worship band service, the church's middle and high school midweek gathering, and the college-age ministry. A third campus, Mount Vernon at 723 Mt Vernon Avenue on Bakersfield's south side, is the home base for the Spanish-speaking work in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. The church office, with weekday hours Monday through Thursday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and Fridays from 8:00 AM to noon, is located at the Fruitvale address.
The three campuses operate as one congregation under a single set of elders and a shared budget. Giving is centralized through the main office and an online platform, and members are encouraged to move between campuses as needed. The bilingual nature of the work shows up geographically: while the Olive Drive and Fruitvale campuses host English-language services and most weekday ministries, the Mount Vernon campus is entirely Spanish-speaking, and Spanish services are also held on Sunday at 11:00 AM at the Fruitvale Campus.
Three Co-Senior Pastors
Valley Baptist is unusual among Southern Baptist churches in being led by three co-equal senior pastors. Andrew Spradlin, Brian Busby, and Matthew Spradlin share preaching, vision, and pastoral oversight. Andrew grew up at Valley Baptist and earned a Bachelor of Applied Theology from California Baptist University and a Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; he and his wife Kelsey have four children, Micah, Lydia, Ellie, and Titus. Brian Busby moved to Bakersfield from San Diego in 2001 to wrestle at California State University, Bakersfield, and was baptized, discipled, licensed, and ordained at Valley Baptist before earning his Master of Divinity from Southern Seminary; he and his wife Faith have two daughters, Zoe and Abby. Matthew Spradlin was saved and discipled at the church and went on to earn a Bachelor of Biblical Studies and both a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. from Southern Seminary; he and his wife Leanne have four children. Pastor Emeritus Phil Neighbors continues in a supporting role.
Around the three senior pastors is a large pastoral team organized by ministry area. Jeremy Doyle leads missions, Ben Krupla oversees adult Life Groups, Luke Neighbors pastors the membership process, Josh Affleck oversees the Olive Drive campus, Patrick Gomez leads middle school students, Nick McNeill oversees Student Ministries, Marco Weir pastors young adults, Dennis Asuncion serves the Filipino community, Ghassan Al-Nimri serves the Arabic-speaking community, David Quiroa leads the Español ministry, Mike Salazar leads Set Free (the church's recovery ministry), Jake Heath leads Creative Arts, Eric Hann leads content and media, and Richard Long and Josh Meléndez share the Care Pastor role.
Sunday Worship at Fruitvale and Olive Drive
Sunday services at the Fruitvale Campus run at 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 AM, all in English. The Olive Drive Campus runs two Sunday morning services, also in English, with an 8:00 AM hymn service and an 11:00 AM worship band service. A fourth Sunday gathering, in Spanish, takes place at 11:00 AM at the Fruitvale Campus, and a second Spanish gathering meets at 9:00 AM at the Mount Vernon Campus, with a Spanish Life Group (Grupo de Vida) following at 10:30 AM.
Services are blended in style, with a balance of expository preaching, congregational singing, and ordinanced practices that reflect the church's Baptist convictions. Believer's baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper are the two ordinances recognized, and baptism is open to anyone who has received Jesus as Savior and Lord. People interested in being baptized can sign up online. Worship services are livestreamed online so that regular attenders and visitors who cannot be present can follow along. A Spanish-language YouTube channel, Valley Baptist Español, carries the Spanish service and resources, and Facebook Live simulcasts the 11:00 AM Spanish service on the Valley Baptist Español Facebook page.
For first-time guests, the church offers a Plan Your Visit page for each campus, including a dedicated Spanish Plan Your Visit. The church welcomes families with children and makes nursery and children's programming available during morning services.
Wednesday Nights Around the Table
Wednesday nights at Valley Baptist are built around a shared dinner and small-group discussion. Programming runs from 6:00 to 7:15 PM at the Fruitvale Campus Worship Center, with a Wednesday Night Dinner served beforehand and table discussion groups that anyone can join on arrival. The church describes the format as a chance to grow in faith, build friendships, and walk with others.
Wednesday nights also serve as the meeting time for several adult ministries. GriefShare and DivorceCare groups meet at the Fruitvale Campus, DivorceCare in Room W14 of the Worship Center, with childcare available for babies through age three. Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey's money-management course, also runs on Wednesday nights at Fruitvale. Children's programming during this same window is handled by Awana, which runs from 5:45 to 7:30 PM in the Kids Building at Fruitvale for children three years old through fifth grade; check-in begins at 5:45 PM, and parents of Cubbies and Kindergarten Sparks are required to stay on campus.
At the Olive Drive Campus, Wednesday nights at 6:00 PM are set aside for a combined middle and high school service that draws students from across the city. The church describes it as a place for students to connect, worship, and hear teaching aimed at their age group.
Kids: From Newborns Through Fifth Grade
Children's ministry at Valley Baptist stretches from newborns through fifth grade and operates across the campuses. The Kids Director is Kate Neighbors; Heidi Palmer directs the Olive Drive Kids ministry; Elyse Riddle oversees Small Wonders Preschool; Vanessa Bryant directs Small Wonders; and Melanie Sanders co-directs The Rock before- and after-school program. LeAnn Thomas directs the Kids' Worship Choir, and the church offers Awana on Wednesday evenings during the school year.
Parents can preregister their children online before a visit, which speeds up check-in on Sunday morning. Awana registration runs each summer for the upcoming club year (August through May), with fees of $45 for one child, $70 for two, and $90 for three or more, books included, and discounts available for volunteers. Cubbies and Sparks wear vests and book bags, and T&T clubbers wear uniform shirts and book bags.
Two weekday programs operate as extensions of the children's ministry and as Christian schools in their own right. Small Wonders Preschool, located on the church's campus, serves children age two through pre-kindergarten, using the Abeka curriculum with Bible time, music, language, community visitors, and service projects woven into the day. Hours are 7:00 AM to 5:30 PM, Monday through Friday, with two-, three-, four-, or five-day enrollment options. Monthly tuition ranges from $360 to $900 for potty-trained children and $392 to $980 for those still being toilet-trained, with a $100 annual registration fee and a $3.50-per-day optional lunch program.
The Rock is the church's before- and after-school program for kindergarten through sixth grade, open from 7:00 AM to 5:30 PM on school days, with full-day care available during spring break, summer, and other school closures. Summer programming at The Rock includes sound biblical teaching, indoor and outdoor sports, art, science, cooking, field trips, and community service projects. Both Small Wonders and The Rock have their own application packets, parent handbooks, and ACH payment agreements posted online.
Students: Middle School, High School, and College Age
Student ministry is divided by age. Middle school (sixth through eighth grade) is led by Pastor Patrick Gomez; high school (ninth through twelfth grade) is led by High School Director Ethan Gover under the umbrella of Student Ministries Pastor Nick McNeill. The Wednesday night service at Olive Drive brings middle and high schoolers together for worship and teaching, while Sunday programming, retreats, and summer mission trips round out the year. The church runs an annual high school mission trip to San Salvador, El Salvador and other international locations, and a Guatemala trip built around Vacation Bible School.
College-age ministry, for ages 18 through 25, is treated as its own life stage. The midweek service meets Thursdays at 7:00 PM in Building 7 on the Olive Drive Campus, with doors opening at 6:30 PM for coffee, snacks, and hangout time. Sunday morning Life Groups for college-age young adults meet at 9:30 and 11:00 AM in the Communications Building at Fruitvale (Rooms C-207, C-208, C-209, C-210) and at 9:30 AM in Building 11, Room 5, at Olive Drive. The college ministry's Instagram account, @valleybaptistcam, carries updates and short-form video.
Young Adults ministry, led by Marco Weir, focuses on adults beyond the traditional college years and includes its own short-term mission trips (such as the October trip to San Pedro Sula, Honduras) and retreats.
Life Groups and Encouragement Groups
Life Groups are the backbone of Valley Baptist's small-group ministry. Adults meet in homes and on campuses throughout the week, with a particular emphasis on Sunday morning Life Groups that meet at 9:30 AM in connection with the worship services. The church operates an online Life Group finder that allows visitors to search by campus, life stage, language, and meeting day. Pastor Ben Krupla oversees the adult Life Groups ministry.
Encouragement Groups are a newer layer inside the Life Group system. Described by Pastor Matthew Spradlin as a way to be encouraged and to encourage others spiritually throughout the week, they sit inside existing Life Groups and give members an additional way to share prayer requests, Bible study, and personal ministry. The church also publishes stories from a wide range of Life Groups - couples without kids, young adults, multigenerational families, and others - to illustrate how groups form and grow.
Marriage Ministry: Pre-Marital, Marriage Mentoring, and Grace Marriage
Marriage ministry at Valley Baptist is structured around three distinct programs, all overseen by Marriage Ministry Director Jeff Evans.
Pre-Marital Mentoring equips engaged couples with communication tools and biblical principles for the foundation of a marriage. Marriage Mentoring is a ten-week mentorship for married couples who want to grow, commit to change, or work through a difficult season. Each spouse fills out an online request form, the couple submits a $50 materials fee, and the church pairs them with a trained mentor couple.
Grace Marriage is the church's quarterly marriage-coaching program, built around the curriculum developed by Brad and Marilyn Rhoads. Four times a year, married couples gather at round tables, watch a short video together, separate for private couple discussion, then return to the table to share as they choose. Sessions run about four and a half hours, with snacks and a meal break, and the usual annual cost is $239 per couple for all four sessions. The October sessions are free, and one of the four quarterly gatherings includes childcare for babies through fifth grade. Marriage Ministry events are open to any married couple, whether or not they are members of Valley Baptist.
Care Ministry, the Food Pantry, and Set Free
The Care Ministry, led by Care Pastors Richard Long and Josh Meléndez, is the church's compassionate-care arm and includes the food pantry, biblical lay counseling, and funeral coordination. Anyone in need of food can contact the Care Ministry, and the church runs regular food-box distributions open to the wider Bakersfield and Kern County community.
Food boxes are distributed three times a month on the Olive Drive Campus at 5500 Olive Drive: once a month on Tuesday, the second Monday of the month, and the fourth Saturday of the month. All distributions run from 10:00 to 11:30 AM, with arrivals encouraged by 9:00 AM. Food is offered on a first-come, first-served basis with numbered tickets; guests arriving after tickets run out are referred to 2-1-1 for additional resources. On days when the forecast is 100°F or higher, distribution moves an hour earlier to 9:00 AM. Guests who can are asked to bring their own box or bag. Current items of need are chicken and tuna (5 to 12-ounce cans), mayonnaise, and sturdy plastic bags. Food donations can be dropped off on Sunday mornings, at Wednesday night services, or at the church office during the week.
Anyone who needs someone to talk to can call or email the Biblical Guidance team to be paired with a Biblical Lay Counselor. The church also coordinates funeral services for members and attends, using its Fellowship Hall, Multipurpose Room, and Olive Drive Worship Center as venues. GriefShare meets Wednesday nights at Fruitvale; DivorceCare runs a thirteen-week, video-based support cycle, with a fall session from September 9 through December 16 meeting in Room W14. The cost for DivorceCare is $25 for a workbook.
Set Free is the church's Christ-centered recovery ministry, parallel to the broader Celebrate Recovery model, with a Spanish-language counterpart, Celebremos la Recuperación. The church also hosts Financial Peace University on Wednesday nights as part of its financial stewardship ministry.
Local Outreach in Bakersfield and Kern County
Valley Baptist frames its local outreach in the language of Acts 1:8, taking the gospel outward from Bakersfield. City Night Outreach meets on Tuesday nights at the Fruitvale Campus Fellowship Hall, with a free dinner at 5:00 PM, a brief evangelism tip and prayer at 5:30 PM, and then groups going out into the city from 5:45 to 7:30 PM to share the gospel on college campuses, in parks, door to door, and at the mall.
The Oildale Family Festival, held at Riverview Park in Oildale, draws volunteers from across the church to serve families with food, drinks, and the gospel; at the inaugural festival, volunteers handed out more than a thousand hotdogs, close to a thousand copies of the Gospel of John, and saw around sixty people indicate decisions to follow Christ.
Christmas Connection bundles several seasonal ministries: the Angel Tree, which delivers Christmas gifts and the gospel to children whose parents are incarcerated; the Bus Ministry, which serves kids who ride the church bus; Operation Christmas Child, including a major packing party (the church aims to pack 8,000 shoeboxes) and a Central Drop-Off Location for other churches; and the Orlies Shoe Drive, which puts new shoes on children in need throughout Kern County.
Other local work is carried out through the church's prayer ministry, Care Ministry, and a long-running bus ministry that picks up children and families across the city. Hannah Patterson serves as the church's local outreach coordinator.
Sending the Gospel to the Nations
Missions are organized around the threefold call to pray, give, and go. Jeremy Doyle is the church's Missions Pastor; Hannah Patterson coordinates trips and outreach. The church helps members pray through an annual Prayer Guide, supports long-term missionaries through prayer and monthly giving, and sends short-term teams to a rotating list of countries each year.
The 2026 calendar included trips to San Salvador, El Salvador (with Good News In Action and Vida Nueva Church); Rwanda, partnered with Under His Umbrella at two Christian schools; a medical mission to Samal in the Philippines; San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for young adults; and a Vacation Bible School trip to Guatemala City. Trips planned for 2027 include Bogotá, Colombia; Mexico City, Mexico; a women's trip to Bogotá; San José, Costa Rica; a high school and college trip to Guatemala City; a general Guatemala City VBS trip; and another San Salvador trip. Recent past trips have reached London (with the college ministry), South Korea, Managua, Nicaragua, Concepción, Chile, Kampala, Uganda, Morelia, Mexico, and a choir ministry trip to San Pedro Sula.
For those considering longer service, the church recommends two sending organizations: Ethnos 360 for mid-term and career missions among unreached people groups, and the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention for Great Commission service through SBC churches.
A tangible expression of this missions heart is the Missionary House, a home paid for and furnished by Valley Baptist members and used free of charge by missionaries when they return to the United States on furlough, complete with a van for their stay. Donations to maintain and stock the house can be made online or through an Amazon wish list.
The Missions Ministry also keeps alive the memory of Karen Watson, a woman sent out from Valley Baptist in 2003 to the Middle East who was martyred for her faith on March 15, 2004. Her handwritten letter to the senior pastors at the time, Pastor Roger and Pastor Phil, written to be opened only in the event of her death, is preserved and shared as a testimony of her faith and sacrifice.
Valley Baptist University: A Teaching Library in Audio and Print
Through a resource the church calls Valley Baptist University (VBU), the pastors have built an extensive library of audio teaching series that members can listen to on demand. The series include Fresh Start (a thirty-episode foundational study walking through basic Christian doctrine and the Christian life), A Defense of the Christian Faith (a fourteen-episode apologetics series covering the existence of God, the case for design, consciousness, the resurrection, the deity of Christ, Bart Ehrman, and the Bible as the Word of God), The Christian Workout (eleven episodes on Bible intake, meditation, prayer, worship, service, and time and money management), Mental Health and the Church, How to Understand Your Bible (a nine-episode hermeneutics course), How to Share Your Faith, Trials and Suffering, Christianity vs. The New Spirituality, Old Testament Survey, 20 Tips for Christian College Students, Keeping Teens on God's Team, and several single-episode studies on marriage, baptism, eternal security, and the Old Testament.
Right Now Media is offered to members free of charge as a Netflix-style streaming library of Bible studies, and the church maintains a Roger Spradlin Sermon Library archive for older messages.
What Valley Baptist Believes
Valley Baptist is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention while remaining an autonomous, self-governing local church. The church's doctrinal basis is the Baptist Faith & Message. Membership requires a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and believer's baptism by immersion.
Core convictions include the full truthfulness and divine inspiration of Scripture; one true and living God, existing eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the full deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, crucified and raised from the dead, now exalted at the right hand of God and coming again in glory; the full deity and ministry of the Holy Spirit, who inspired Scripture, regenerates believers, indwells the church, and bestows spiritual gifts; the creation of humanity in God's image, the entrance of sin into the human race, and salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. The church holds to believer's baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper as the two ordinances, the autonomy of the local church under the Lordship of Christ, the priesthood of all believers, the eternal security of the saved, the eternal distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, the importance of Scripture-saturated Christian education, generous and cheerful stewardship, religious liberty and the separation of church and state, the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, the sacredness of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and the Great Commission call to make disciples of every nation.
Giving, Membership, and Getting Involved
Members and friends can give in several ways. Online giving is available through the church's portal, with options for one-time and recurring gifts to the general fund or to the Advance Building Fund. Cash and checks can be placed in the offering basket during Sunday services or dropped in offering boxes at both main campuses, or mailed directly to the church office. Text-to-give is available by texting Give to 88988, and stock donations can be arranged through Stifel, the church's broker. All gifts are tax-deductible and support the same overall mission, which the church describes as making more fully devoted followers of Jesus.
Becoming a member at Valley Baptist involves a defined process, beginning with attending a Membership class taught by Membership Pastor Luke Neighbors. From there, members can take steps like being baptized, joining a Life Group, joining a volunteer team, or pursuing one-on-one discipleship (Discipulado Uno a Uno for the Spanish-speaking congregation).
The Join a Team page is the church's front door for service. Roles include rocking babies in the nursery, leading a Life Group, greeting at the door, singing or playing on the worship team, serving with the Awana club, helping on Wednesday nights, and supporting the food pantry and Care Ministry. A free Spiritual Gifts Assessment is available for anyone who wants help identifying where to serve.
For prayer needs, the church accepts prayer requests online and maintains a Prayer Guide to focus intercession throughout the year. For anyone who needs to talk to a pastor, the Talk to Someone page routes visitors to the Biblical Guidance team, and the Care Ministry can be reached by email at care@valleybaptist.org or by phone at 661-387-6305.
With three campuses, three senior pastors, a weekday preschool, an active food pantry, a robust marriage ministry, an English and Spanish footprint, and a steady drumbeat of short-term mission trips, Valley Baptist Church presents itself as a large, multi-generational Southern Baptist congregation whose identity is shaped by the conviction that every follower of Jesus is called to pray, give, and go.