Pastor
Hildebrandt's
Ordination
by Ernest Reisinger
in 1988
"See how great a love
the Father has bestowed
upon us that we should
be called children of God; and such we are." 1 Jn. 3:1
Beyond our salvation, one of the greatest gifts that God gives to His people... are our fellow Christians, brother's and sisters in the faith. As we have a great love for God, we have a genuine love for one another!
Our church is our family.
Our Church is Our Family
When a church knows doctrine, they know Love!
When you understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he said that we are to be "devoted to one another in love" and that love is the first fruit of the Spirit and all that he said about love in 1 Cor. 13, that love is not just "feelings" or merely the absence of "offending" someone, that it is principled, active and even corrective... you begin to know Biblical love.
When you understand what John meant when he said that love shows our allegiance to God, our allegiance to His truth and our allegiance to His church... When you understand this doctrine... then you will begin to know what God really means when He says in His Word to love one another!
Because at GBC we study the doctrine of God, we strive to practice the Love of God! We know one another as family and we treat one another as family. There are no factions, no "clicks" no divisions... just sinners who are loved and saved by God, who then in turn love Him and love one another.
While in his early twenties, in the midst of a career in radio, never having been witnessed to or having attended an evangelical service of any kind, Pastor Hildebrandt was saved by the Grace of God through the reading of the New Testament. He has had the privilege of sitting under the ministries of Pastors Albert Martin and Ernest Reisinger. He attended the Trinity Ministerial Academy in Montville, New Jersey and Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Florida Baptist Theological College.
Pastor Hildebrandt had the privilege of being ordained to the pastoral ministry by Rev. Ernest Reisinger.
In the late seventies and early eighties, Pastor Hildebrandt was involved with itinerant preaching in inner city missions and churches in New York and New Jersey. In 1988 he was ordained to full time pastoral ministry in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida. Most recently, in 1994, he became the founding pastor of Grace Baptist Church of North Tampa Bay.
To return to message pages...
God's Grace Glory & Truth
The people of Grace Baptist Church are a loving people.
They love God, they love His Word, they love to see the lost saved...
and they love His people! We hold tenaciously to the Doctrines of Grace,
but we also love to express the grace of the doctrines!
Grace Baptist began several years ago with a handful of believers who were attending a local Baptist church, but were longing to be fed more than “milk” from God’s Word. They were tired of the petty non-Biblical problems that seemed to plague most churches today and were desirous to be part of more than a “religious social club.”
In 1994 the church was constituted and called Pastor Hildebrandt to be the founding pastor. From the beginning GBC centered on the exposition of scripture through the centrality of preaching. There are no committees, there are no divisions, there are no “clicks,” and we've never have bitter or nasty business meeting or anything of the kind.
There can be no disguising the fact that doctrinally centered and expositional preaching centered churches are not popular in our day. Yet God has been gracious and we have persevered, never wavering from the our stance for the Historic Christian Faith or our purpose of growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
A little GBC trivia... When founded in 1994 Grace Baptist Church was originally called: First Baptist Church of Bayonet Point.
However, we felt that this name did not accurately reflect the doctrinal stand of our church... so in 1996 we changed our name to: Grace Baptist Church of West Pasco.
The reason we used "West Pasco" was because that was the general region in which we were located, however, at that time we did not yet own property so we had no specific town to call our permanent home.
When God was pleased to provide us with property in the area we had been praying for, it was actually located in what is really "Central Pasco."
When we considered that only those people who live in this immediate area even know where or what "Pasco" is (whether west or central, Pasco is the county in which we are located, just north of both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties), we elected to change the name to one that would be recognized nation wide, and reflect the broader region of our location: Grace Baptist Church of North Tampa Bay.
