Our Story

The story of Elevation Church starts at about five years ago. Pastor Kenny had been the youth pastor of Skyway Church in Glendale, Arizona since 1989 of an amazing and powerful youth ministry called Lifeblood. Skyway had sold the campus to a charter school in preparation to build their new campus on 25 acres they purchased in Goodyear. As the charter school began to work on the campus in Glendale, getting it ready for opening the school, they had to tear down what had been the youth chapel for all those years. This signified the end of an era for Pastor Kenny and he realized he needed to raise up new leadership for the future of LifeBlood Youth Ministry as he began to receive God’s call in his heart to plant a new church.

During the next few years Skyway built a beautiful new campus in Goodyear and God began to expand the congregation in a dramatic way. Skyway has since become one of the most amazing and influential churches in the West Valley. Pastor Kenny began to train and release the youth ministry to new leaders, watching it grow and expand as new people poured into Skyway. Elevation began as a ministry of Skyway for young adults. As God continued to inspire Kenny’s heart as well as other leaders that worked with the young adults, he began to have more and more conversations with Pastor Greg and the staff of Skyway about planting a church. It became clear that the group of young adults and leaders that came to Elevation were to be the genesis of a new church plant. They began praying, working and planning in the summer of ’06 and in January of ’07 Pastor Greg announced to the whole congregation at Skyway that the Lord had brought together an amazing group of people that would be planting a church from Skyway in the near future. God began to move very quickly in the hearts of the people at Elevation, and they developed the initial leadership they needed to go forward as a church and began to put people and programs in place. The people of Elevation grew in number and received the same call in their hearts that Pastor Kenny did to reach the people in the Buckeye area with the gospel of Christ. Excitement spread through them and things progressed quickly. Through the favor of God, a brand new school in Buckeye opened up to them to start having services when the school was completed in the fall of '07.

On April 1st, 2007, Pastor Greg Brown and the staff and people of Skyway officially launched Elevation Church as a local church with Senior Pastor Kenny Koger. Elevation continued to meet on Sunday nights in the Life Center at Skyway until the Stephen R. Jasinski Elementary School in Buckeye, Arizona opened up and Elevation had it's first service at the School on October 7th, 2007. God was there indeed and we had our first salvation on that very night!