Living Hope Church 
Services Sunday at 12:30pm

The History of Our Church

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Evangelical Free Church of America is a break-off of the Lutheran Church. Each church is independently run and governed by the local congregation. The churches are free because they wanted to be FREE of the government control over the churches. Our church in Garden Grove was founded in 1962 by Pastor Radman with 5 families. The church began in a dance hall on Main St. and Garden Grove Blvd. over a Bank of America which is currently a Bank of the West. In 1964, Pastor Buchanon broke ground on Yockey Street in Garden Grove where the church remained for 44 years until the building was sold in 2008 due to the demographic changes and the financial challenges our small congregation faced. The church has had several pastors throughout the years, Dave Greiner in served as Senior Pastor in 1977 for 7 years, Randy Wells served as Senior Pastor for over 17 years, R.C. Wilkinson served as an Interim Pastor for 2 years, and Scott Moffatt became the Senior Pas- tor in 2004. EVANGELICAL FREE CHURCH OF GARDEN GROVE grew from the original 5 families to over 200 people. It has a long-standing history of sending out long and short-term missionaries. Although our church never had much over 200 members, we have sent out more long and Short-term missionaries than many of the much larger churches. Many of the missionaries left everything they knew and loved behind to serve the Lord permanently abroad. In its early days, the church was often in the newspapers for the youth’s musical abilities, academic achievements and their abilities to memorize bible verses. In addition, the Church sent out many pastors and ministers over the years, but the hallmark has always been foreign missions. We have had our challenges over the years, mainly finances and a small congregation, not to mention a church-split years ago, but the Lord has always proven Himself faithful. Many, many times EFCGG should have had to close its doors, but God always did miracles to protect His church. Our most challenging trial came in 2011 when we almost lost our church but God in His incredible mercy and love performed miracle after miracle to protect His little church and we celebrated our 50 Year Anniversary in August of 2012. In 2018 we moved to Fountain Valley, CA to meet on a church grounds at 9779 Starfish Ave, which we are still located at today. We encourage you to come and help write our continuing history with us, as we explore the deep questions about life and faith, while having a lot of fun and adventure together.