In early 1974, three men from South Central Alaska; Harry Bates of Peters Creek Chapel, Jim Brayton of Valdez Assembly of God, and Jim Strutz of Abbott Loop Community Church in Anchorage, Alaska moved to Juneau and established a small community church with Harry Bates as Pastor. We met in the Seventh Day Adventist building. A year later, in June of 1975, Jim Brayton’s son Pat, with his wife Grace, followed from Abbott Loop. That same year, both Jim Brayton and Jim Strutz moved away. In August 1976, Pastor Bates moved back to Peter’s Creek Chapel, leaving Pat Brayton as the unofficial Pastor. Pastor Brayton was officially ordained Pastor of Valley Chapel in February 1977 by the elders of Abbott Loop Community Church- Pastored by Dick Benjamin. Under Pastor Brayton, we began work on a new building at our current location, 9741 Mendenhall Loop Road. While the building was under construction, we met on Sunday afternoons at Glacier Valley Baptist church. We paid for our new building entirely out of pocket. After meeting at Glacier Valley Baptist for a year and a half, the new building was ready to move into. We began officially meeting in the basement of our building in 1982 before moving to the upstairs a year later.
In 2011 we finished a building expansion, which doubled the size of our sanctuary and increase fellowship and classroom areas. The project was completed without taking a loan.
More changes came during the summer of 2013 when Pastor Pat retired as senior pastor and he and his wife Grace moved to Anchorage to be closer to family. In the months that followed, the family of Valley Church stepped up to continue the work of the ministry. The elders and leadership team continued to trust God to bring in the right person to pastor the church, and in May of 2014, Valley Church ordained one of her own, Dani Cherian.
We are so excited with the direction the Lord is leading us in, and we expect God to move mightily in our midst. We continue to seek His will and His way in everything that we do.