Sacred Place United Church

A church that looks a little different.

Sacred Place is a small, progressive church plant in Rancho Cucamonga, California. We first gathered in June 2019 and have been showing up for each other—and our community—ever since. We are part of the United Church of Christ, a denomination rooted in the conviction that God is still speaking.

We are Open and Affirming. We are non-creedal. We take justice seriously, not as a slogan but as a practice. And we believe the church is at its best when it looks like the whole family of God.

What’s in our DNA?

Our Story

Sacred Place was born from a conviction that the Inland Empire needed a church where justice, inclusion, and family weren’t just slogans on a website—they were the reason we exist. Our mission is to create a just world where ALL are included in the family of God, one Sacred Place at a time. That’s not a tagline. It’s the thing we measure ourselves against every single week.

The launch team spent more than two years casting this vision before we ever held a single gathering. The first half of 2019 was spent listening—praying, discerning, and asking where this particular kind of church was most needed. The answer was Rancho Cucamonga. In June 2019, we gathered for the first time at Jasper Elementary in Alta Loma, and we’ve been showing up ever since.

We are a theologically progressive church, and we’re specific about what that means. We use gender-inclusive language for God—our God has both motherly and fatherly characteristics. Pastor Matthew applies more feminine language especially when talking about the Holy Spirit, because God does not have a gender, even if the English language doesn’t deal well with that reality. We read Scripture seriously and contextually, as literature written by people with stories to tell from their own time and place, not as a rulebook to be applied without thought. We don’t reduce the Bible with literalism, and we don’t reduce the way God is revealed to its pages alone.

We don’t discriminate based on gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or any other thing that might be used to call someone “other.” In fact, we work hard to break down those barriers. As an Open and Affirming church, we’ve made a formal, public commitment to the full inclusion and affirmation of LGBTQ+ people—not as an afterthought, but as a core part of who we are.

We are a small church. We have never pretended otherwise. We believe small churches can do real things—and that showing up consistently, faithfully, and honestly matters more than production value or attendance numbers. We gather every Sunday at 11 AM at our Mission Center in Rancho Cucamonga, and online at live.yoursacredplace.org.