Who We Are – Grace Baptist Community Church of Dresden

Who we are

As an English-speaking international church in a German community,
Grace Baptist Community Church offers a spiritual home especially for those who are not speaking German.
Coming from various backgrounds but united in faith we grow in our pursuit of God and worship together, spreading the gospel in Dresden, making disciples and sending equipped ambassadors for God’s glory into all the world.
(Our Mission Statement)

GBCCoD is an independent church but working on establishing a partnership with a German speaking church in Dresden (dresden-arche.de) and is in communication with the Leuchtturm Evangelische Freikirche, another German speaking church in Berlin, as well as elders of churches in Görlitz, Berlin and Detmold.

We believe in the all members ministry taught in Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 4 and most of our attenders help in one way or another.

Pastor Ronny is the elder of the church. He and his wife Katie have three young children. Both are German. Pastor Ronny first served as a deacon for several years before he was appointed an elder.

Our Core Values

God-honoring. We do everything with the aim to honor God (1Cor 10:31).
Christ-centered. Jesus is the gift of the Father to a lost world and the focus of the Holy Spirit’s witness and glorification. We preach Christ crucified, to the lost and to the saved, as all need to hear the gospel constantly. As a response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and through the help of the Holy Spirit we live and help others to live a life of love and devotion to God and that is according to Jesus commands and worthy of the gospel (Joh 3:16; Joh 15:26; Joh 16:14; Matt 22:37; Joh 14:21; Phil 1:27; 1Thess 2:12).
Bible-saturated. Through God’s word souls are fed and lives nourished (Ps 119). We place preaching as focal point of the worship service. We teach biblical truth consistently, preach it passionately, uphold it in face of opposition and live it out authentically.

Our Core Principles

Focusing on Essentials. We stay committed to 4 biblical essentials: Teaching, Fellowship, Breaking of Bread, Prayer (Act 2:42).
In essentials- unity, in non-essentials- liberty, in all things- charity. As individuals we may develop and hold to other doctrines which are not central to the gospel. On these matters, there must be room for acceptance, grace, listening, and yet loving, sensitive disagreement within the church family. Therefore we are committed to pursuing both the truth of God’s Word and unity among Christians (Rom 14).
Love, Care and Closeness. As part of a spiritual family we commit to maintaining strong relationships to one-another by loving, edifying and serving one-another (Joh 13:34).
Prayer. We acknowledge our dependency on the Lord by praying much – as a church and individually. (1Tim 2:1). We acknowledge that sometimes “you do not have because you do not ask” (Jm 4:2). We understand prayer as backbone of our ministries and believe that God calls us to pray as a means to accomplish His purposes, to align our will to His will and to grow in unity with one-another. We fight our battles on our knees!
Mentoring. We help one-another to grow in godliness/sanctification/Christlikeness through means like small groups and 1:1 discipleship, as one life is poured into another life (2Tim 2:2; Tit 2:3-5).
All Member Ministry. Every member is actively involved in the ministry by serving regularly in some capacity. All members aim for the well-being of the church (Eph 4:12.16).
Great Commission mindset. On Sunday we are the church gathered for worship to be strengthened, on Monday till Saturday we are the church sent out on mission to reach the lost.We want to actively reach out to the community by sharing the gospel individually and as a body of believers; as well as beyond our reach through supporting missions and through Christians who travel home again (Matt 28:19-20).