ABOUT BETHESDA COMMUNITY CHURCH INT'L INC.
C H U R C H H I S T O R Y :
To God be the glory for the great things He has done. After investing approximately 14 years of active ministering time in Independent Community Church in Richmond under the leadership of Pastor Tommie Bradford, the Lord blessed us to move to the city of Antioch in December 2001. While in Richmond, along with his other assignments within the church, the Lord used Pastor Johnson to start what is now known as Independent Prison Ministry. This is the group he led to establish church services and bible studies in San Quentin State prison, San Francisco city jail, San Bruno city jail and in Richmond city jail. These activities kept him busy until we moved to Antioch. The Lord had laid it on Pastor Johnson and his wife's heart to start a new work for the kingdom of God, but the accident that nearly took his wife and daughter's life the day after moving into their new home on December 9th, put the plan on hold for a while.
Note: The enemy may succeed in delaying your dream but he cannot delete it entirely. After a period of visiting a few churches to attend to our spiritual needs while we wait on God, and could not really find anything that satisfied our needs, the pastor and his family decided to start Sunday morning fellowship in his living room in July 2003. There we met Sunday after Sunday to worship the Lord. It gave the pastor an indescribable one on one opportunity to minister and teach his family for almost 2 years. Early in 2004, the pastor met the Director of Antioch Press a man by the name Mr. Allen Payton who gave the church a much needed publicity in his city wide news paper called "Antioch Press". This paper is distributed freely to 35,000 homes around the city.
We believe in the power of mass media. Through the publicities, a sister by the name Dorothy Archuletta visited the church one Sunday morning and continued to come with her team of two other sisters, Janice Parker and Cookie Calloway. In addition with the Sunday services, we started Friday evening prayers. In May 2004, the Lord enabled us to secure our 50(C) (3) the Federal tax exempt status. Later in 2004, The Igbinake family of eight visited and joined the church. Ever since then God has continued to add such as must be saved to the church. The sacrifices of brother Julius Esonwune for driving all the way from San Leandro twice a month to teach Sunday school is worthy of acknowledgement. Rev. Dr. Moses Ekpebe is one of regular monthly speakers who also drive twice a month from Richmond both to preach and to attend board meetings.
Around September 2004, the Lord assisted us move the worship service to this location. The presence of Rev. Dr. Humphrey Osagiede and James, his son; has been a true blessing to the stability of the church. This ministry could not have not been what it is today without the full support of Dr. Osagiede.