Bethany Church

Bethany Church is a non-denominational evangelical church located in the south-west corner of Bloomington. Bethany began over sixty-five years ago in South Minneapolis with a small group of believers who had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit in their lives and heard the Lord’s call to respond to the Great Commission of Matthew 28 to take the Good News to every tribe, every tongue, and every nation. As a small church of sixteen members, God gave them a radical vision to train, send, and fully support 100 missionaries who would commit themselves to foreign missionary service. They embraced that radical vision and began making radical life choices to align themselves with that vision. Five of those families sold their homes and moved into one large house together so that they could pool their resources and invest them into this vision. Soon they purchased and moved to the current campus in Bloomington and started Bethany Missionary Training Center to provide the training for the men and women who would go to the mission field. They stared Bethany Fellowship Missions to send them, and several businesses to provide the financial resources for the entire operation. Among these businesses were Bethany pop-up campers (which was eventually sold) and Bethany House Publishers (which was recently sold to Baker Book House.) In the mid-1970’s, Bethany sent out its 100th missionary – fully supported for the work of world missions.

In recent years, God has given us bold vision once again. In March of 2003, the Lord began speaking to us about embracing His vision of seeing our own community of the Twin Cities transformed by the power of God for the glory of God. We believe that God wants to do such a powerful work of transformation here in the Twin Cities that the first thing that people, saved and unsaved, will think about when they think about the Twin Cities is the Lord and His powerful Church. It will be the kind of transformation that will be evident at every level of our community – affecting not only the church but government, education, business, the arts, the media, and social justice. We understand that this will require a different kind of church at Bethany and in the Twin Cities. But we believe that God has called us  to serve the entire Body of Christ in the Twin Cities to find a greater passion for the Lord and compassion for the lost, and a greater willingness to work together, so that the Twin Cities will be a city transformed by the power of God, for the glory of God.