About

HISTORY

Abundant Life Community Church has been rooted in Grass Valley since 1981, when Pastor Samuel Floyd planted our non-denominational community church with a vision to share the love and grace of Jesus with our foothill community. In our early days, we rented space from the Nazarene church on Sunday afternoons for our worship services, before moving into a small building on Walsh Street that is now the Jewish Community Center. In 1992, we purchased our current facility on Alta Street and have enjoyed this location ever since.

One constant at Abundant Life for many years was Pastor Sam, a gifted shepherd who had a deep passion for sharing God’s grace with our community every chance he got. This passion for the gospel of grace remains at the core of who we are as a church today. Pastor Sam led our church faithfully for well over 30 years, until his retirement in 2014. He continued to serve and lead within our church family even after his retirement, until his passing in 2015.

In 2011, Pastor Gabe Barber and his family relocated to Nevada County to serve in an Associate Pastor role alongside Pastor Sam. The intention was for Gabe to slowly transition into the Lead Pastor role, but this timeline was moved up due to Pastor Sam’s health concerns. In November 2014, Gabe became Abundant Life’s second Lead Pastor and faithfully served our congregation for 13 years, lovingly fulfilling our mission of bringing people to wholeness through God’s grace. He remained in this role for 10 years until, in 2024, he decided to pursue a new career as a therapist in our community and passed the baton of leadership on to Pastor Chris Blair.

Pastor Chris Blair and his wife, Debbi, came to serve as our Lead Pastor in July 2024. Chris and Debbi came to us from Central Oregon. He and Debbi have two grown sons. Chris has a long history of serving as a senior pastor – over 30 years. He was a youth pastor before that; served on the Board of Directors for Boise Bible College for 10 years; teaches a course to help train pastors every two years at Hope of the Nations Bible College in Kigoma, Tanzania; and has authored four books on contemporary theology. Chris holds a Master of Arts in Ministry from Hope International University and a Bachelor of Science in Bible and Theology from William Jessup University.

Pastor Chris believes his strengths in ministry are his ability to communicate God’s word in a way that is understandable and applicable, his ability to shepherd people through difficult times, to set vision, and to help manage conflicts. He believes that having been in ministry since he was 20 has brought wisdom and experience to help face any situation that may arise within our congregation.

From the beginning, Abundant Life has been an elder led church. Our elder board serves alongside our pastoral staff, taking their role in leading our congregation very seriously.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

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