Our Story
God writes long stories
Redemption Gilbert has been part of Gilbert’s story for 35 years. Our name has changed twice along the way, but our heart hasn’t: open the Bible, gather at the Lord’s Table every week, and keep growing in faithfulness together.
If you knew us as East Valley Bible Church, or as Redemption Church – Gilbert, you’re in the right place. Same church, same campus on Elliot Rd.
East Valley Bible Church (1991 to 2010)
In 1991, Tom Shrader and a small group of friends started East Valley Bible Church. That same year, Tom launched Priority Living, a Bible-teaching ministry for people in the business world. Tom later said that none of them knew the first thing about starting a church. God built it anyway.
From the beginning, the church committed to three things: teaching the Bible, taking communion every week, and growing in faithfulness. The church grew quickly, and in 1997 it opened its own campus on Elliot Rd.
Through those years, the church also opened its doors to the whole community through Hot Summer Nights, a public forum that brought civic leaders and candidates onto campus for honest questions and conversation.
Redemption Church Arizona (2011 to 2024)
In January 2011, East Valley Bible Church joined with Praxis Church in Tempe and Arcadia. Neither church was struggling. The question the leaders kept asking was simple: could we serve our cities better together than apart? Together they became Redemption Church, which grew to as many as ten congregations across Arizona, with a shared heart for starting and strengthening gospel-centered churches.
Much of who we are today took shape in those years: our convictions, our partnerships, and our love for planting new churches.
Tom Shrader went home to be with the Lord on January 13, 2019. His teaching still shapes us, and his sermons are archived at prioritylivingaz.org.
Redemption Gilbert (2024 to today)
In 2023, our elders and the leaders of the other congregations spent a season in prayer and discernment about the future. In 2024, each congregation became its own church, governed by its own elders. That’s when we became Redemption Gilbert.
We’re still family with our sister churches. Together we form The Redemption Network: we share one doctrinal statement, preach from the same passage of Scripture most Sundays, and invest together in new churches and overlooked communities.
On November 1, 2026, we celebrated 35 years, and we’re praying and planning for the next 35.
Watch: What will 2060 look like? (2 minutes)
What hasn’t changed
Thirty-five years and three names later, we still open the Bible every Sunday and work our way through it, book by book. We still come to the Lord’s Table every week. We still give away every dollar of our Advent Offering, about $3 million over the past 12 years. And we still believe what we believed on day one: God writes long stories, and we’d love to be part of yours.