The IBC Story

The story of IBC Hamburg begins in the summer of 1984. Four women: Sue Peffer, Sharon Massey, Ester Lanning and Vira Staubert had a number of things in common: a language, a faith, a desire to learn, and a desire to fellowship. These four ladies met weekly, and later their families started meeting monthly on saturdays.

In the spring of 1985, the group began to meet weekly for church at the International School Hamburg. Later the Fellowship moved to Christuskirche in Holstenstrasse.

In late 1986 members felt there was the need for a full time pastor. The EBC worked with them to establish an International English speaking fellowship. Frank and Rachel Marks served as interims in May 1987, before the arrival of James and Sylvia Foster, who founded the IBC Hamburg in 1988. The Fosters were followed by Thomas and Audrey Welsh who were interims until J.R. and Kim Duncan came to IBC in 1994. J.R.Duncan led the church until December 2000.

By the grace of God IBC continued to grow between 2000 and 2001 without having a full time pastor. In June 2001 Craig and Wibke Rees began their ministry at IBC Hamburg. In 2003 we called Francis Ofori as our assistant pastor. In 2007 we called Christian Bach as a second assistant pastor.

The congregation outgrew the premises we were using, and in 2008 we moved our worship services to the spacious facilities of the FEG Holstenwall, situated at Michaelispassage in the city centre. At the same time we established our church office and resource centre in a building on Grossneumarkt, very close to the place where we meet on Sundays.

Pastor Criag Reece accepted a call to a church in the USA in 2008 and the church appointed Francis Ofori as the Interim Senior Pastor. When Francis was called to do mission work in his home country of Ghana in 2009, Christian Bach took over as Interim Senior Pastor. In 2010 we called Dave Stemmett, a pastor from South Africa to be our senior pastor.