PASTOR JIM HOFFMAN
I am Pastor Jim Hoffman of Beacon Bible Church. I was born and raised here in Phoenix, and spent most of my life around this very area. I was raised up in a family that didn't go to church. None of that. It was a good family and had good relationships. As I got older, I got into drugs, alcohol, and all the things that go along with it. Through my four years in the Marine Corps, I perfected the partying. Eventually, I got to a point where I was just having a lot of issues.
After a failed marriage and coming to the realization that something needed to change in my life, I tried a few different things. I even stopped drinking, doing drugs and went to Alcoholics Anonymous. But what I didn't find was hope. There was no real hope there, because what I needed was not a program but a Savior. One night as I was there at my house alone as hopeless as a person could get, I called out to God. I knew that He was real and knew that He cared about me. I simply poured my heart out and said to Him I want to know what is true. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said come to my Son, come to Jesus. I didn't know what that meant at the time but I did. I surrendered there that night. From that point on, I fell in love with someone. This man I call Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
Before long the Lord brought different Christians into my life. They were Christians that loved the Lord 24/7 and not just on Sunday mornings. I started going to church with the woman that is now my wife. When the preacher got up there and started talking about Jesus, my heart was touched because I knew that he was the one that I was looking for. He was the one that I found that night. I got this tremendous hunger to be in God's word because I knew somehow that is where I would get to know him. I started searching the scriptures. My wife bought me a study Bible. I read it and studied it and had this hunger to learn. The church where I was going offered several classes in discipleship, and I took everything I could. I wanted to know Jesus more.
We served and ministered and the Lord put it on my heart to go into the ministry or at least to go to Bible School. The Lord opened some doors, and we went to Albuquerque for a couple of years. We went through their School of Ministry and their Shepherd School. Then the Lord moved us to Yarnell where we founded and pastored a Calvary Chapel for a little over 5 years. After that the Lord brought us back to the valley where I was an associate pastor in a local biker ministry. We were involved in all kinds of different motorcycle ministries at that time and just reaching out to people.
One thing that I have found out over the years is that everybody no matter where they are from, what their background is, whether they were raised in church or never stepped inside the building, they have one thing in common. They need Jesus Christ. They need Him to be their Lord and their Savoir. They need to fall in love with Him. They need to follow Him and be with Him for the rest of their life. The lord through the years has ministered to us and through us in many ways. We have had opportunities to reach out from everybody from Hell's Angels to homeless people on the street and people in the Hospices. They all need Jesus.
The Lord has brought us here to Beacon Bible Church and given us the opportunity...given me the opportunity to be pastor here and my wife serves here too What a lovely place it is! It is a place we can come together. We are not a big mega church. You are not going to find all the greatest programs in the world. We are certainly not going to put on a show up here on the platform for you. What you will find is the love of the Lord taught through the expositional teaching of God's word. I believe in teaching the full council of God's word from Genesis through Revelation, and we do that here at Beacon. But more than that what you will find here is that you will see the love of Christ displayed. You will see that we truly are his disciples. Jesus said that they (meaning the world) will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. You may find bigger places with bigger programs and more of that. But you are not going to find a place that displays the love of Christ any more than the people here at Beacon Bible Church do. We may not have a big coffee shop but if you come we will buy you a cup of coffee. We will also put an arm around you and bring your before Jesus.
Come and fellowship with us! We don't have the biggest, most polished worship team with the big choir or anything like that. What we do have is a genuine heartfelt worship before the Lord and we place god's word as preeminent. That's God's word! That's his truth! That is where we find him, where we grow in him, and where we have our relationship. God didn't hide himself from us, but He shows Himself to us in His word. That is where we find His love, His heart for us, and how we should respond to Him.
