Good News Baptist Church, Sioux City, Iowa, celebrated its 30th anniversary.
During the worship service July 20, speaker Brad Hoff, a Continental Baptist Missions church planter, related the importance of planting churches.
Brad was the first pastor of the church, serving until 2009. But Good News Baptist Church wouldn’t exist without the Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches—“a fellowship of churches who had a Biblical understanding of their responsibility to be planting other churches where they’re needed,” Brad said.
In 1988 several pastors from Des Moines area IARBC churches “visited Sioux City to investigate the possible need for a Regular Baptist church to be planted,” the church’s website states. “As a result of that investigation, they identified the west side of Sioux City as a potential church planting target area.”
After a few starts and stops over the next few years, the IARBC worked with Continental Baptist Missions to plant the church. With Brad Hoff serving as the church-planting pastor, the church met for midweek Bible studies in his home beginning in September 1994 and held its first public worship service in January 1995.
“It’s important for us to love our church and to celebrate what God has done,” Brad said. “But in addition to that, we need to have a vision for the next towns, the next places where churches are needed. And there need to be people who have committed themselves to say, ‘I’ll go someplace unfamiliar to me’ and, as scary as the prospect may be, ‘I’ll go, and with God’s help I’ll endeavor to lead a church plant.”
Good News Baptist Church is now led by John Woodford, pastor of the church since 2009. He was previously a pastoral intern alongside Brad Hoff beginning in 2007.
John said he is thankful for the connections God used to build Good News Baptist Church.
In the photo: Brad Hoff, a Continental Baptist Missions church planter, speaks during the worship service recognizing the 30th anniversary of Good News Baptist Church, Sioux City, Iowa.
