Our Elders and Deacons provide leadership and consists of sincere believers young and old, from a variety of backgrounds.
We work together in love to serve the church and bring Christ into the lives of our community. If you have questions, feel free to reach out via church email or call or text via church phone number to speak with them. Remember to include the individual’s name you want to reach out to.
Dr. Kreighton Chan
Senior Pastor
Dr. Chan was converted to Christ the first time he heard the gospel preached in a Baptist church. He was 20 years old and a junior at USC. He was sickly as a child and from an early age he sensed a deep void in his heart. Like Augustine his heart was restless until he found rest in God through Christ His Savior.
Dr. Chan has been a practicing medical doctor for over 35 years but his main love is serving Christ as pastor of his local church. He believes in the serious Christianity described in the Bible, lived by our forefathers, old-time missionaries, and faithful preachers of yesteryear who saw the power of God. He works with his members and friends to become disciples and good soldiers of Jesus Christ. He emphasizes to all to do the work of an evangelist in soul winning. He preaches the gospel with passion so lost souls would come to know Christ as Savior. He patiently and lovingly counsels them for conversion. He feeds the flock of God to build up and edify the body of Christ. He believes in fervent prayer, power of united corporate prayer, the loving community of the local church, and holy living. Dr. Chan and his wife Winnie are the proud parents of three sons – Joseph a medical doctor, Timothy, an attorney, and Philip, a registered nurse. In addition to having an MD degree from UCLA Dr. Chan also has an MDiv and a MABS from Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been accepted into the DMin program at The Master’s Seminary.
Sergio Melo
Associate Pastor
Sergio Melo is the Associate Pastor of All of Grace Baptist Church, a growing multi-cultural and multi-racial church in the Atwater Park community of Los Angeles. Together with Senior Pastor Chan and leaders and members of All of Grace Baptist Church, he works tirelessly to reach out for Christ in and around Atwater Park and to equip the members of the All of Grace Baptist Church family to do so as well. In his capacity as Associate Pastor, he has had a significant, positive impact on the lives of the young people in the church. For several years, his unique leadership and mentoring skills have been used by God to strengthen and empower children, teen-agers and young adults to answer Christ’s call to make disciples. He is motivated by a strong desire to lead people to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and to equip them for the ministry.
Sergio was born in Mexico City and immigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 11. At a very early age he became independent and learned to fend for himself. Then, at the age of 21, he heard the Gospel preached in a Baptist church and became aware of his need to have his sins forgiven. After many months of mental and spiritual anguish, on August 13 of 2002, he had a radical encounter with the living Christ who forgave his sins and washed them away in His blood.
Sergio studied at Los Angeles City College and at the California State University at Los Angeles, graduating in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in International Business with a minor in Economics. He is now preparing to pursue advanced degrees in Theology and Religion.
Sergio and his wife Yazmin currently live in the city of Burbank. They have dedicated their lives to serving in their local church and to making disciples. Their great joy is to share the message of hope and faith that can only be found in Jesus. It is their shared vision that All of Grace Baptist Church will have an everlasting, biblical impact on the people of Los Angeles. Although Los Angeles is one of the great cities of the world, it can be a very lonely and even hopeless place for many young people. Sergio and Yazmin hope that, by their words, by their witness and in their very lives, people will be able to see the hope, the care and the love that only Jesus can offer.
Winston Song
Deacon
Winston Song was born in Beijing, China, a few years before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under the regime of Mao Zedong. He personally witnessed the terror of Mao’s red guards who worshipped him as deity. When he was told that “Mao’s Thoughts were the summit of truth,” he rejected that brand of man-centered ideology, because communists (and tyrants) all proved to be hypocrites who trampled on human lives. Upon high school graduation in China, Winston was sent to a farm a couple of years amidst the Down to the Countryside Movement. After the death of Mao, Winston attended the South China Normal University in Guangzhou, China, and graduated with a B. A. degree, then taught English there for a few years.
When Winston immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, God moved him to bring two Bibles out of China, somehow thinking the truth must be hidden in the pages of the Scriptures. Sure enough, while he was on the Cal State LA campus, he was invited to a Christian gathering and God opened his eyes to the biblical truth. He has been attending church services ever since. However, he struggled with the gospel initially, clinging hard to his own righteousness. But by the grace of God, the truth took hold in his heart and bore fruit – he trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior from his own sin. Ever since then, he has devoted his life to serving his Savior in local churches, focusing on bringing people in to hear the gospel preaching so that they may also obtain the blessed hope in our Savior Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin and for eternal life.
Deacon Song also holds a Computer Science degree from Cal State LA and is currently working as a primary IT support staff in the City of Los Angeles Fire Department. He and his wife have been married for 28 years. They have two adult children.
Deacon Song’s joy is to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of (his) life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple.”
He currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer.
Ben Griffith
Deacon
Benjamin K. Griffith is a charter member of All of Grace Baptist Church and one of the church’s original deacons. Many of you may know him as Deacon Griffith, the Deacon or simply as Ben.
Ben grew up in a small New Jersey suburb across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a non-Christian home. At a very early age, he renounced all religion and became an avowed atheist. This led to an intense existential and spiritual struggle that lasted for many years.
Eventually, Ben moved to Los Angeles California. Shortly after his arrival, on Sunday night, November 30, 1975, the Lord Jesus Christ graciously redeemed Ben’s soul. He has been faithfully serving God since then.
Deacon Griffith is a veteran of the United States Army and a graduate of the California State University of Los Angeles where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business. He and his wife live in the San Fernando Valley. They are the proud parents of a daughter who is an English professor.
Ben is very excited to have the opportunity to reach out to the Los Angeles community and serve with his Christian brothers and sisters in All of Grace Baptist Church.
James Roop
Deacon
James H. Roop is a charter member of All of Grace Baptist Church and one of the church’s original deacons.
He grew up in and just outside a small town in Indiana. He was raised in a nominal Christian home. At a very early age he realized that he could not love God with all his heart, soul and mind which is the first and great commandment. So, he tried to run from God but his conscience and God the Holy Spirit continually pursued him.
He moved to California. After a few years of living a meaningless and purposeless life in Los Angeles, God the Holy Spirit caught up with him, convicted him of his sin nature and he was turned to Jesus for forgiveness of his sins.
He was married to a wonderful godly Christian woman by the name of Eloise for 23 years before God called her to be with Him in Heaven.
James is a graduate of Louisiana Baptist University with a B.A. in Biblical Studies and worked as an Insurance Claims Examiner for many years.
James is greatly delighted to have been called by God to join the All of Grace Baptist Church to use his Spiritual gifts of helps and teaching to edify and build up the brothers and sisters in our beloved church.
He currently serves as the Church Secretary.
Timothy Chan
Deacon
Timothy Chan is one of the founding members and deacons of All of Grace Baptist Church.
Timothy was born and raised in Los Angeles. He was born to godly Christian parents and grew up in a church, but he lived a life of self and sin. Yet, he became keenly aware of the fleeting and destructive nature of sin and a life without God. His sin, angst, guilt, fears, and existential loneliness were answered when he encountered and was saved by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, Timothy’s passion is to follow hard after his Savior and to faithfully be His servant. He has an enduring desire to see others also experience a radical conversion and to be reconciled with their God.
Timothy is an attorney in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Lara, were married in 2016 and serve the members, friends and community around All of Grace Baptist Church.
Ponce Zabalaga
Deacon
Ponce Zabalaga grew up mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, and then lived for 5 years in Switzerland when he was young; that experience changed his life.
After 2 years of college in Washington state, he dropped out, not knowing what he was going to do with his life. Out of desperation he joined Job Corps and moved to the Los Angeles center.
While doing volunteer work at the Hollywood YMCA, he met a woman who invited him to a gospel preaching church in Los Angeles. He started attending that church in 1977. Ponce invited his friend Setsuko Sasaki from Japan to come to church, who later became his wife.
Ponce thought that he was already a Christian, he had gone to Christian groups like Young Life while in high school, and churches after that; but he was religious but lost. One day the pastor told Ponce that he was lost, not a Christian. that hit him really hard, he was in shock.
Over the following months he felt more and more aware of being hopeless, of despair, and more aware of the wretched sinfulness that was inside. Jesus seemed so close, yet so far away.
In 1987 on a Sunday afternoon after the service, when everyone else was gone, the associate pastor talked with him. Ponce came to Jesus by faith that afternoon; and saved him from his sins.
For Ponce, it was like having a massive debt that he could not pay; and now it was stamped “paid in full”, with the blood of Jesus.
Ponce was married to Setsuko in 1979 and has 3 grown children. Since becoming a member of All of Grace, Ponce has been given many opportunities to serve Jesus in ways that he did not have before.
He looks forward to greeting people who come to visit our church and help to make them feel welcome.
He currently serves as the interim Church Secretary.