History of New Hope Baptist Church

Through countless days of praying, New Hope Baptist Church was founded by Deacons and lay members after several months of visiting other churches, and meeting together at homes as a small cell study group.

As time passed, a few families met to discuss the situation and decided to form a new church; a church that would “Dare to Be Different” from the traditional Baptist model. With much prayer, help, and support from Reverend Lucious Fulwood of Bellevue Baptist Church – New Hope Baptist Church was established.

The first formal service was conducted at Bolingbrook High School on December 28, 1986.

Pastor Fulwood preached at our first service and helped secure Reverend John Newsome to serve as the interim Pastor from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. After his graduation from Seminary, in the summer of 1987 – Reverend Newsome left New Hope to become the Assistant Pastor at a church in Detroit, Michigan. After having our interim Pastor tell us he was leaving the church, we were then told by the school board that we could no longer have our services at the school due to the school being closed for summer vacation. We now had to find a temporary place to have service and maintain the Church membership until we could get a more permanent place.

We were led to go to a school board meeting and ask if they would allow us to continue to have our service during the summer months but was told no. Once again, a  potential roadblock could have blocked God’s program, but God had other plans for us. An article was published in our local newspaper addressing the same issue we were facing. We had no place to worship due to the closing of the school for summer and within a week of this article being written, a member of the board from the Nazarene Church called asking if we would be interested in meeting with them to discuss sharing their building. After meeting with them we came to an agreement that worked for both churches to conduct services in their building. This relationship lasted for many years until the Nazarene church decided to sell the building and asked us if we were interested in purchasing the property. Well as they say, the rest is history.

In 1992, under the leadership of Rev. Charles O. Branch we moved from the west wing of the building into the main sanctuary where we continue to hold services.  TO GOD BE THE GLORY FOR THE THINGS HE HAS DONE!!!