Anchor Baptist Church, Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated its new church building June 4. The church says the afternoon was “a time of celebrating what the Lord has done in providing our new property and facility and recognizing many of those who have been used by God along the way to make it possible for us to be here now.”
After selling its previous facility in the Grandview Park area of Des Moines, the church constructed a new church building on property it purchased in a different area of Des Moines.
And if the name Grandview Park sounds familiar, Anchor Baptist Church was called Grandview Park Baptist Church from its founding in 1932 until 2019. Paul Tassell, pastor of the church from 1973 to 1979, served as GARBC national representative from 1979 to 1994. In addition, another of its pastors, A. D. Mohr, later planted three more churches in Iowa: Ankeny Baptist Church (where David Strope was pastor prior to becoming GARBC interim national representative in early 2022), Slater Baptist Church, and Urbandale Baptist Church.
As Anchor Baptist Church sought a new location, the church family “realized that building in the Grandview Park area of Des Moines was unlikely,” says the Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches. “Despite the gratitude for all the GPBC name has meant for many within and beyond the church family, maintaining a geographically linked name while moving out of that area seemed unnecessary.”
David Strope speaks at the building dedication service of Anchor Baptist, Des Moines, Iowa.
Finding a different location and constructing a new facility was a six-year process. But “it is said that good things come to those who wait,” says David Strope, speaking at the church’s dedication service.
Waiting on God, he says, drew the church family “to faith, to trust, to growth in God’s grace.”
“Commonly, we wistfully remember the good old days—individually, as families, and a local church,” David says. Anchor Baptist Church has existed for nearly a century, and days in the distant past “may not be as good as might be remembered,” and days in the recent past “may not have been so good,” David says.
“Every church has its ups and downs, days of glory and days of trial. The odds, humanly, of Anchor Baptist’s survival seemed marginal at best—a historic church left only as a reminder of past glory. Yet God did and is doing at great work at Anchor Baptist as signified by this special building dedication day. Against all human conjecture, Anchor Baptist Church has been revitalized and is healthy, with the best days not those of a bygone age but those that are ahead.
“We would do well to follow the example of Paul, who, referring to the good, the bad, and the ugly, said, ‘Forgetting those things that are behind, I press toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’”
David encouraged the church to “look at the past days of ministry with rejoicing, thanking God for every victory, every person who came to Christ young and old, every profession of faith in the baptismal water, every marriage created and saved, every disciple that is even now being made.”
The dedication celebration was “a new day for a historic church,” David says. On behalf of the churches of the GARBC, he thanked Anchor Baptist and Pastor Danny Capon for their “tireless labor to restore your church to health. We are so glad that you remain a church in active fellowship and participation in the GARBC. . . .
“We will pray for your pastor and staff, your leadership and congregation, that the best days for Anchor Baptist Church are seen not in the rearview mirror but through the windshield in the days ahead.”
