Our Vision
We want to play a small part in a much larger dream of what God can do with the Northeast Corridor.
We envision neighborhood after neighborhood transformed by the presence of Grace-saturated households. Where the patterns of Christ’s Kingdom resonate as a joyous alternative to the noise of our cultural moment.
For our part: God has called us to pour into families of all shapes and sizes, ages and stages, to help them flourish in the Good News of Jesus.
helping families flourish in the Good News of Jesus
Our Strategy
Pathway Events
We have seen that belief follows belonging. And so, as a church family, we are committed to offering experiences of our community to our family and friends long before we share any deeper beliefs.
To this end, we regularly host social and cultural events for the sake of being a blessing to our community, and to communicate the character of our Father.
Worship
Worship is a unique moment, where we come together to bring our hopes, our praises, our fears, our dreams before God. We come with our first and our best gifts, not as an audition but as a celebration that everything we have comes from him, and nothing we need can’t be found in him. In worship we meet with the Father, through the Spirit, in the name of the Son.
But for all of the significance of this experience, we know that God cheerfully crouches down to meet us. This leads us to insist that worship is not just for the mature, or the prepared but for anyone who will come into God’s presence in a spirit of honesty.
Small Groups
Christianity is not meant to be an independent study, when we become Disciples of Jesus we begin to walk alongside other followers.At Good News, Small Groups are the central place of fellowship and formation around God’s word. We meet in 10-week long semesters.
Our Motivating Values
Our Marks of Maturity
Inner Practices
Confident in the Gospel
Christ invites us to build our life on him, and find our security in our relationship to him.
Balanced in Rest and Work
We want to be people who are able to rest in the finished work our Jesus, and then out of his provisions, work where God has placed us.
Deep in the Word
We want to be a people whose perspective is shaped by the stories of Scripture. We want to be people who can tell God’s story with as much clarity and passion that others might bring to sports, finance, or politics.
Steadfast in Prayer
We want to see prayer as the mortar which holds our lives together. We want to be people who cling to God in prayer the way that a toddler clings to his mother.
Outward Practices
Gracious in Community
We want to be people who know that we can be forgiven because of how much we have been forgiven.
Eager to Serve
We want to be people who intentionally create margin in our lives for the sake of being able to step in and help where we are needed.
Ready to share the Gospel
We want to be people who live the story of God’s love to such a degree that we reflexively are able to invite others to experience Jesus.
Known by Love
We want to be people that, beyond words and even actions, are seen as a lovely and loving community.
Our Beliefs
Our church joyfully and confidently affirms historic Christian beliefs as summarized by the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed. We follow a shared theological confession with the Presbyterian and Reformed world.
Leadership
Leadership in our church is focused on Spiritual health and encouragement. Our leadership model is guided by 1st Timothy Chapter three.
Elders
The Elders in our church are the servant leaders elected by the church to shepherd our shared church life. Elders currently serving include: Greg Bullock, Rich Hoeck, Gene New, Jeff Peel, and Kevin Pozsonyi (on Sabbatical)
Deacons
The Deacons are the lead servants at Good News. They steward our tangible resources as well as guide our service in the community.
Our Connections
We are a member church of the Presbyterian Church in America and are connected to Heritage Presbytery for organizational and theological accountability. As a local church we collaborate with various ministries and churches to advance Christ’s gospel both locally and globally.
Staff
Assistant Pastor
Charlie’s primary job is to support the Lead Pastor and the Session in their calling to make maturing disciples. Charlie and his wife Anna are transplants from the west coast. They live in the Sherwood Park neighborhood, with their two sons.
Charlie Davis
Lead Pastor
Sam’s primary calling is the teaching, vision, and shepherding of our local church. Before joining Good News, he was a pastor and church planter in New York and Pennsylvania. Sam is an avid reader and an amateur autodidact. Sam and his wife Joanna have four children and they live in the Morningside neighborhood.
Sam DeSocio
Administrative Director
Katie oversees communications and scheduling. She keeps the various ministries of the church connected and working in harmony. Katie and her husband Quinn live in the Greenville Area.
Katie Trautman
Our Beginning
In 1951 a small group of women began a backyard Bible club serving the growing suburban population around Kirkwood Highway. Within a few years, the Bible clubs had become a full-fledged church known as Berea Presbyterian.
A Season of Maturing
Like the suburbs of Wilmington in the 50s and 60s Berea grew and flourished. The Church first found a permanent home on Kirkwood Highway. But soon enough the church was outgrowing their building and began making plans for a new facility off of Rt 41.
We would move into our current facility in 1973, with later projects to take us to our current size.
A New Name and a Renewed Vision
In 2017 the leadership of Berea Church began a process of reevaluating ministry, and came to the conclusion that we needed to hear Jesus’s warning from Revelation: that we can’t give up our first love. We were spending too much time worrying about internal matters and not enough time caring for those around us.
This drove the church to a season of re-commitment to mission and led the church to change our name to Good News Church.
