History of Rock Valley Bible Church

The seeds of Rock Valley Bible Church were planted in the spring of 1997, when a family from Rockford began attending Kishwaukee Bible Church in DeKalb, Illinois. By the spring of 1998, the group commuting from Rockford to DeKalb for church had grown to four families.

Calling ourselves, "Rockford Bible Fellowship," we began a Bible study in the home of one of these families on July 2nd, 1998, led by our current pastor, Steve Brandon. We produced a brochure, which read in part, "The Rockford Bible Fellowship is an outreach ministry of Kishwaukee Bible Church. It is our desire to see God raise up a local church in Rockford to carry out the mission of the church." Our brochure described the two-fold work of the church in Rockford:

To be a body of disciples
To do the work of making disciples

For the next two years, we met in this home on Thursday evenings, and these families faithfully travelled to DeKalb to attend Kishwaukee Bible Church. On July 2nd, 2000, we began renting Valley Baptist Church in Rockford on Sunday evenings and changed our name to Rock Valley Bible Church. In the summer of 2001, Kishwaukee Bible Church sent Steve Brandon and his family to Rockford to be the first pastor of this young church. At that time, Kishwaukee Bible Church was supporting the work in Rockford through accountability to the elder board and through finances.

On March 3, 2002, we began to rent Rockford Christian High School for Sunday morning church services. By the beginning of 2003, we were financially independent of Kishwaukee Bible Church. On September 25, 2005, we installed a second elder, Gordy Bell, which allowed us to be completely independent of Kishwaukee Bible Church.

Through the years, the Lord has continued to be faithful to this assembly of believers. We look forward to seeing what He will do in our lives in the years to come.