(I’m sure this will get deleted, because that keeps mysteriously happening…)
I’ve been putting this review off for some time, mainly because there’s just not enough words to say how much this church hurts people.
We attended West Valley for 4 years, and truly loved our time there- for the most part. Of course, every church has sinners and therefore will have its flaws (myself included.) The further we get away from this church, the more bad fruit we can see so clearly.
I’ve heard this church brag about functioning “like a family” - that is TRUE, however, is a highly dysfunctional one that needs loads of therapy.
Hypocrisy abounds here. There are so many in leadership positions that live one way at church, and another at home. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We have a video of the pastor of this church dancing to a highly sexually explicit song, but he’ll get behind the pulpit and preach against that kind of behavior. I also have photos of myself and a youth leader at a (Christian) concert- which was so good by the way. She requested I not post it as she wanted people to think she lived “above reproach.” She got defensive when I said if “above reproach” was not attending said concert, she should just NOT attend. LOTS of stories like these.
Our most troubling issue, however, was the sexual misbehavior of the pastor. I have never seen a grown “man” with such an immature persona. There is NO impulse control on this “man.” He has air honked my boobs, tried to force hugs from me, told me his personal sex stories (and lied to the congregation about it btw- he did NOT do that in any type of counsel. He did it in the front of the sanctuary and told me all about how he listened to the post-fight press conference after a UFC event at our house while with being intimate with his wife.) but go ahead- believe him.
Our final straw was him forcing our daughter who was 5 at the time onto his lap when she clearly told him NO. He wanted a high five and she told him NO. what he should have done was grow up and deal with that “rejection.” What he did was grooming behavior and completely unacceptable. I have several other stories regarding this behavior, but reviews only allow so much. If you attend and want to hear our side, I’d encourage you to reach out. We have absolutely nothing to hide and even less to gain from this. We just hate to know we could have said something and didn’t protect others.
This church and its leadership had every opportunity to handle this correctly and failed spectacularly. When we called Pyle on his behavior he told us to take a break and decide if we still wanted to attend. The rest of the leadership said nothing.
We chose peace and the safety of our children. So grateful we did.
