The Vision of Praise Chapel
WIN – We win the lost by evangelism.
BUILD - We build those that are won to the Lord by discipleship. Through discipleship our focus is to help the individual develop a strong personal relationship with the Lord and help them develop the call of God in their lives. Our goal is to bring out the call of God in each individual.
SEND – Once the call of God is developed in an individual’s life, we release (send) them to be what God has called them to be, whether in the local church, through planting a church or even going to the mission fields and participating in short term or long term missions.
The Vision Unfolded
WIN – May 24, 1998. Ralph and Wendi walked into Praise Chapel Concord, where that night they answered the altar call and gave their lives to Jesus (earlier that week Pastor Randall “Razz” Taylor had preached to Ralph while working graveyard with him). The night they called on the name of Jesus, something real happened to them. They were both miraculously set free and delivered from a lifestyle that was surrounded by drugs, gang violence, and everything else that is involved in the street life.
BUILD - They both began to go to Praise Chapel regularly where they began to be discipled. After being saved for around 7 months, they got married on December 5, 1998. Months after being married they started holding a Bible study in their home where many were saved and discipled. Pastor Ralph believes that being a Bible study leader prepared him and Wendi to become Pastors more than anything else. Soon after becoming Bible study leaders, Pastor Razz allowed Ralph to preach in the Concord church. That’s the amazing thing about Praise Chapel Christian Fellowship – they believe in people that no one else would. After continuing in this manner in the Concord church for about 9 years, the Gonzales family was released to pioneer a church in Pittsburg, CA, the city that Ralph and Wendi had felt God’s calling to 7 years prior. It was at a conference in San Jose that Ralph heard the call from God to go to Pittsburg. People would always ask Ralph, “so when are you going to be sent out?” He would always answer them by saying, “in God’s perfect timing.” That perfect timing would began to be revealed to him. One day while in prayer God showed Ralph the plan of how to start the work in Pittsburg. He felt the Lord directing him to begin a Bible study on Saturday nights in Antioch at the Lopez’s family residence (members of the Concord Church who helped very much in the beginning). Pastor Razz gave the go-ahead to the idea.
SEND - March 2007. At the Huntington Park Harvesters, they announced Ralph and Wendi were going to be sent out to start a church in Pittsburg, CA. As God had shown Ralph they started the Saturday night Bible study once they got back from the Harvesters Conference. From the first Bible study people showed up! God gradually brought together a strong core of people with the Opp family, Suarez family, and Brother Scott. On July 15, 2007, Praise Chapel Pittsburg held its grand opening service in the Presbyterian church located at 200 East Leland—the building where Pastor Ralph would sit in the parking lot months before being sent out and claim it “In Jesus name” to be the building they would one day be able to pioneer a church in! One by one during the first year of the ministry God began to add new people who would later become the pillars on whom God would build this church. The second year was a year of reaping the Harvest. When Pastor Ralph got back from the 2008 World Bible Conference in Phoenix, AZ he felt the Lord showed him they were going to be entering into a season of reaping. Since that word came forth that word has shown itself to be truly from God. Just in months the church doubled and rapid growth has taken place since then. God took Ralph and Wendi, whom the world looked at as “nobody’s,” and made them into “somebody’s”! He took their mess and turned it into a message. This brings us to this moment in their lives; they have four beautiful boys together and have now been married for over ten years! With all these things in mind one can honestly say,
“LOOK WHAT THE LORD HAS DONE!”