Sovereign Grace Bible Church is one of the longest continuously meeting churches in the South Bay. The church was established in 1888 around the same time the City of Redondo Beach was being incorporated. The church began with a group of believers who met for prayer and Bible study together in 1884 and decided to plant the church. They wanted to keep the original emphasis on Preaching the Bible, Prayer, and the Gospel.
In the ’20s and ’30s the church became more involved with evangelism and missions. The church supported many global path-setting missions working in China, Korea, Philippines, South America, India, Africa, and Papua New Guinea. At the same time, the church was distributing Bibles to all the rooms in the local boarding houses and hotels lining the streets of this thriving port city.
After the war from the ’50s into the ’70s this church was one of the leading mission sending churches in the United States. The Lord enabled this small church to send incredible amounts of financial support, supplies, and workers to over 15 countries worldwide. Through God’s enabling, this church saw many churches planted, several Bibles translated into other languages, and many of our people called into full-time ministries and missions both here and abroad. The battle cry of our church in the ’70s was, “the sun never sets on the ministry of this church,” because of the supported work around the world, this was (and is again) a literal truth.
In the ’80s and ’90s the church maintained its call to send and support missions around the world. Seeing the church in America turning away from Biblical truth and authority, the pastor focused on preaching and teaching the Bible instead of following the trends towards self-help and psychology. His emphasis was on growing the church in Biblical literacy and understanding and this had a transformational effect on the body.
Today, SGBC is a church that desires to glorify God and build up His people through the expositional preaching of His Word. The Puritans spoke of the ‘interiority of the Christian life,’ which was the holiness of heart flowing out into a holiness of life. The focus is to live out the scriptures’ teachings from an authentic love for Christ. We see the fruit of this focus in the way the people love one another and are burdened for the lost. We are seeing a 2nd generation of missions building on the foundations laid! We are praying for another generation to be raised up and called to Christian ministry, missions, and service.
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