Welcome!

I am glad that you chose to check out our Gashland Baptist Church website. My name is George McDowell and I began my ministry at GBC on September 25, 2009. I trusted Jesus Christ as Lord & Master of my life at the age of 8 and followed Him in baptism at First Baptist Church of Caney, KS. I married my beautiful bride, Sherri, on June 12, 1975. God blessed our marriage with 2 wonderful daughters. They have both married and given Sherri and me 5 adorable grandchildren. I surrendered to full-time ministry on June 24, 1984 and I feel so blessed to have served in some wonderful churches. Sherri and I have always viewed ministry as a partnership and God has blessed in many wonderful ways. It is a joy and privilege to serve as Pastor of GBC. The purpose of GBC is to “Touch people with the love of Jesus.” Currently we are running around 140 in Bible study each Sunday morning and around 210 in morning worship. We would love to have you come and join us as we try to reach our community for Christ.

My ministry verse is Matthew 5:16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” I try to live my life according to this verse. I believe that God has called me to preach His Word to help people see the relevance of the Scriptures in everyday life. Each of us has personal experiences that begin to shape us. Sometimes God needs to reach into our lives and make changes in us so that we might bring glory to His name. I try to preach sermon’s that are relevant for everyday living, but in a way that challenges each of us to walk more closely to His teachings.

Let me personally invite you to come and join us for worship this next Sunday. We have Bible study for all ages at 9:30 a.m. and then our morning worship is at 10:45 a.m. We also offer evening worship at 6:00 p.m. Many churches have discontinued their evening worship time; therefore we are trying to offer an evening worship for anyone who would like to attend. I hope to meet you soon and if you have questions, please do not hesitate to call me or e-mail. May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you in His tender care!

Love in Christ,

Pastor George

Hello! My name is Brady Hanssen. I began my ministry at GBC as the Associate Pastor of Youth and Children on September 17th, 2018. Raised in a Christian home, I learned about Jesus Christ from an early age. God saved me when I was seven years old and two years later, I followed Him in believer’s baptism at Kearney First Baptist Church in Kearney, MO. After graduating from high school, I went to Park University, where my faith grew immensely as I read through the entire Bible in a year for the first time and enjoyed great Christian community. Towards the end of my undergrad experience I became disillusioned with my major as God put a burning desire within me to go to seminary and pursue full-time ministry. After graduating college with a BA in English Writing in 2013, I did a year-long internship at Heartland Center doing camp and youth ministry, where I discovered my love of ministering to young people and teaching the Bible. I then pursued seminary education at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I met my wife Lauren. We were married on June 16th, 2017. That December I graduated with my Master of Divinity from MBTS. Before coming to Gashland I worked with youth as a pastoral intern at Calvary Baptist Church in Lenexa, KS for three years.

Even at the age of three, I already knew I loved music. My dad would play the piano and I’d sit underneath it pressed up against the piano to feel the vibration of the bass. My father was a pastor, so I grew up in the church, accepting Christ as my personal Lord and Savior at the age of six, and was baptized at 12.

My parents saw that I had a love for music, and inexplicably put me into violin lessons at just four years old. Violin was not my passion, and it showed in my four-year-old work ethic. I begged my parents for piano lessons, and at nine, they finally relented.

When I was 15, I started teaching myself acoustic guitar and bass. I would play along with the radio and all of my favorite Christian artists, like Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael Card, Steve Green, and Twila Paris. At 18, I joined Grace Christian Fellowship in Shawnee, KS, and started running the sound, which I did for two years. At that point someone found out I could play bass and I was quickly shuffled to the worship team, where I played bass for the next four years.

Grace also gave me my first taste of worship leading, when the youth group (a large ministry of 80-100 kids) needed an interim worship leader. At the end of the interim position, I auditioned for bass at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, where I played for the next four years. I enjoyed having such an immensely talented group of musicians around me in that megachurch, but I missed the connections and human scale of a smaller church family.

In 2007, I joined Olathe Life Fellowship, just two blocks from home, where I played bass and guitar, and where I met two of the people who influenced my vocal and piano style the most, Worship Pastor Brandon Hollis, and our guitarist, Donovan White. In 2010, Olathe Life moved to Prairie Village, KS and changed its name to Mercy Church. At that time, Brandon took a position at another church, and I became worship co-leader, where I served until I met Nicole and joined Gashland Baptist Church.

Throughout my life, whatever trials have come my way, whatever mistakes I’ve made, the one constant that has always held the power to bring me back to Christ has been worship. I firmly believe that worship is what softens our hearts so that we can be receptive to the Word of God, both through the Holy Spirit and through the teaching of our pastors and teachers. My goal is to worship joyfully with you, so that we can all enter into God’s presence together each week.

Psalm 100:1-5 says “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”