Our Story
Palo Alto Vineyard Church is a “come as you are” no hype church in Silicon Valley that values experiencing God in community, worship, learning from the Bible, and prayer ministry. We are part of the Vineyard family of churches, and our core beliefs are expressed through the Statement of Faith of the Association of Vineyard Churches.
Our church was founded in 1986 by Mark and Gail Pettersen, who felt called by God to move from Kansas to start a church in the town where Gail had grown up, and where Mark had come to faith in Christ.
After many years as a pop-up church meeting at Cubberley Community Center and at JLS Middle School, we moved to our first church building on East Meadow Drive in the summer of 2025. There were growing pains as we renovated the building and reorganized our services to accommodate this new location, but we are blessed to be able to put down roots and more deeply connect with the surrounding community.
Our Mission
Our mission is to empower people from all backgrounds to have intimacy with God and influence for his Kingdom.
Our Values
1. Partner With The Holy Spirit
2. Experience and Worship God
3. Reconcile People With God and All Creation
4. Engage in Compassionate Ministry
5. Pursue Culturally Relevant Mission in The World
Our Community
A church is made up of its people, and we have a beautiful community here at Palo Alto Vineyard Church.
We love that in the Bay Area we are surrounded by people of so many different backgrounds. Our community reflects that diversity, with every individual’s experience enriching our community as a whole. Scripture reading in different languages, bilingual worship, workshops about the immigrant experience—these are just some of the ways that we have incorporated multicultural experiences into our church life. We welcome any ideas for how we can celebrate our different cultures while strengthening our relationships with God.
In the fall of 2025, the La Viña Ministry officially launched, meeting a few Sundays each month to worship and fellowship together entirely in Spanish. These services have been a wonderful addition to our church community, and we look forward to seeing how God will continue to grow how we serve the Spanish-speaking community.
We also have a range of generations at our church!
Our Kids Ministry is thriving, with quite a few young ones joining our church in recent years! We have a Nursing Room open during both services where the service is broadcast for those parents who want to remain in there with little ones. We offer Kids Church with classes for Toddlers through 5th Grade during our 9am service on Sundays. Children stay with their parents during the first part of the service to encourage intergenerational worship before being released to their classes.
Adults at Palo Alto Vineyard can connect during a variety of events or classes, such as Vineyard 101, Alpha, Extreme Parenting, and more, or through joining one of our Small Groups. Within our Adult Ministry, we have Women’s and Men’s Ministries, who both hold events throughout the year for women and men respectively to connect with one another and be encouraged and challenged to grow stronger in their relationship with Jesus Christ.
