First Baptist Church of Dacula sits on Church Street in the small Gwinnett County town of Dacula, Georgia, a congregation whose steady refrain is "Growing First by Grace." The church's stated mission is to honor God by bringing lives into harmony with Him and with one another through God's inspired Word, pursued through preaching, evangelism, discipleship, and fellowship. Members describe themselves as a church family committed to biblically sound teaching, expository preaching, and the kind of warm, intergenerational fellowship that fills a fellowship hall at a quarterly potluck. A small but full weekly calendar, an unusually detailed doctrinal statement, and an elder-and-deacon leadership team shape the life of the church.
Sunday Mornings from 9:30 to Noon
The Sunday rhythm at First Baptist Church of Dacula has a clear shape for anyone walking through the doors. Adult Sunday School and the Kids' Sunday Schoolhouse both run from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., giving parents and children parallel tracks for an hour of teaching before the corporate gathering begins. The Family Service follows from 10:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and during the sermon, Children's Church gathers separately from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The structure lets families learn together at the start of the morning, split for age-appropriate instruction during the sermon, and rejoin afterward.
Sermons are preached from the pulpit of the Family Service, and each message is recorded and posted to the church's YouTube channel for those who cannot attend in person. The music ministry is led by Elder Dave Mooney, who has served in the role for more than thirty-five years and also teaches the adult Sunday School class. First-time visitors arriving for the 10:45 service can expect a preaching-centered gathering with congregational singing, prayer, Scripture reading, and an unhurried time around the Lord's table on the Sundays it is observed.
The Nine Articles of Belief
First Baptist Church of Dacula takes its doctrinal confession seriously and lays it out across nine distinct headings: Theology, Christology, Pneumatology, Bibliology, Ecclesiology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Angelology, and Eschatology. Together these pages sketch a thoroughly Protestant, evangelical, and Baptist understanding of the Christian faith.
On Theology, the church affirms one living and true God, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each equally worthy of worship and obedience. God the Father is described as the absolute sovereign ruler of the universe who orders and disposes all things according to His own purpose and grace. On Christology, the confession holds that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, possesses all the divine excellencies and is coequal and coeternal with the Father; that in the incarnation His divine nature united with His human nature in an indissoluble union so that He became the God-man; that He was virgin-born; that His death on the cross was voluntary, vicarious, substitutionary, and propitiatory; that He physically rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father; and that He will return personally to rapture the church and establish His millennial kingdom on earth.
The Pneumatology section describes the Holy Spirit as the divine third Person of the Trinity, coequal with the Father and the Son, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, who indwells every believer from the moment of salvation, sovereignly bestows spiritual gifts for the edification of the church, and empowers believers to produce the fruit described in Galatians 5. The article holds that the temporary sign gifts, including speaking in tongues, gradually ceased as the New Testament scriptures were completed and the church was established.
Bibliology treats the sixty-six books of the Bible as the plenary, verbally inspired, inerrant, and infallible written revelation of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. Interpretation, the statement adds, follows the grammatical-historical method, with the conviction that while a passage may have several applications, it has only one true interpretation.
Ecclesiology sets out the church's understanding of itself: a unique spiritual organism made up of all born-again believers in this present age, distinct from Israel, of whom Christ is the head and who is His espoused bride. Local churches are organized bodies of baptized believers who associate together in a particular place, led by elders (also called pastors or bishops) and assisted by deacons chosen from the congregation. The article affirms the autonomy of the local church, free from external authority or hierarchy, and the right of each congregation to decide its measure of cooperation with other bodies. Two ordinances are committed to the local church: baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper.
Anthropology teaches that man was directly and immediately created by God in His image, free of sin, but that through Adam's disobedience all humanity fell and is now inherently corrupt, utterly incapable of choosing or doing what is acceptable to God apart from grace. Soteriology anchors salvation wholly in the grace of God through the redemption of Jesus Christ, with regeneration, election, justification, sanctification, and the eternal security of the believer treated as distinct doctrines in turn.
Angelology distinguishes between holy angels, created beings who serve and worship God, and fallen angels led by Satan, the author of sin and the declared enemy of God and man who was defeated through the death and resurrection of Christ. Eschatology holds to a strongly confessional premillennial view: a personal, bodily return of Christ, the rapture of the church, a tribulation period, the thousand-year reign of Christ on the throne of David with believing Israel at its center, the release and final defeat of Satan, the Great White Throne judgment of the unsaved, and the eternal state with a new heaven and a new earth.
Two practical notes in the doctrinal statement shape how the church receives members. The confession holds marriage to be a heterosexual covenant between one man and one woman, broken only by death, and treats any sexual activity outside that covenant as sinful. Persons whose lives have been marked by divorce, remarriage, or marriage to a divorced person may be considered for service in the ministries of the church except in the positions of pastor and deacon, with each person's qualifications evaluated individually by the pastor and deacons.
Elders, Deacons, and a Pastoral Transition
First Baptist Church of Dacula is led by a team of elders and assisted by deacons, all chosen according to the qualifications given in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. The church publicly welcomed Reyshawn Bobo as its new senior pastor in early 2026, calling him as both an elder and the pulpit preacher. Bobo came to faith in Christ in 2007, served as a ministry leader to college students, and entered church leadership in 2014. He and his wife Michele were married in 2015, and they are the parents of three sons, Titus, Malachi, and Elijah. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Montana State University and a Master of Public Administration from California Baptist University, and is pursuing a Master of Divinity at The Master's Seminary while continuing to serve. In his own description of himself, he is first a sinner saved by the grace of God in Christ, seeking to proclaim that grace to all who will listen.
Mark Chandler, who had served as the church's pastor and lead elder for over thirty-seven years and was ordained in the gospel ministry in 1975 in Greenville, Ohio, transitioned out of the senior role after nearly four decades of ministry at Dacula. He and his wife Patti, his high school sweetheart, have been married for fifty-nine years.
Joining Bobo on the leadership team are Elder and Music Minister Dave Mooney, who has been active in ministry for over thirty-five years and currently serves as an adult Sunday School teacher, music minister, treasurer, and elder; and Elder Joel Willoughby, who became an elder in 2022 after years of youth, teaching, and preaching ministry. Three deacons round out the team: Randy Nash, who has served as a deacon for nearly twenty years and helps manage the buildings and grounds team; John Bendinsky, a five-year deacon who co-manages the buildings and grounds; and David Hernandez, who began serving as a deacon in 2023 after years of Sunday School teaching.
Around the Table and Around the Fire
Fellowship is woven into the life of the church through a small set of recurring gatherings. The whole church shares a potluck each quarter, and the church describes its cooks with affection. The men of the church have two regular touch points: a Men's Breakfast that combines food, conversation, and biblical teaching, and "Refined," a meeting on the last Sunday of each month that gathers the men around a fire and around the Word of God.
The women of the church meet monthly in two distinct groups. "Refreshed" gathers women once a month to be refreshed by God's Word and the encouragement of one another. "Women of Impact" gathers the ladies for hands-on projects and shared work, with the cheerful recognition that doing things together is simply better. Children learn alongside their parents at the Kids' Sunday Schoolhouse each Sunday morning before joining the Family Service, then move to Children's Church during the sermon.
Pantry Work for the Neighborhood
Outreach to the immediate community runs through the church's Food Pantry. The congregation collects non-perishable food and household items throughout the months and distributes them to neighbors who need them. The pantry is one of the clearest expressions of the church's commitment to its setting in Dacula.
Sermons on YouTube and Giving Through ChurchTrac
For those who cannot attend in person, each week's sermon is recorded and posted to the church's YouTube channel, building an archive of past messages that anyone can search through.
Members can give online, read missionary letters, and access other member resources through the FBCD Member Portal, which runs on ChurchTrac. The church office can be reached at 770-963-6600 or by email.
Anyone interested in becoming a member is encouraged to talk with the pastor, an elder, or a deacon. The church's stated conviction is that every believer should be actively involved in the work of the ministry, discovering and using the spiritual gift or gifts given at the new birth for the building up of the body of Christ.