Iron Gate, VA (Oct. 30, 2025)— After two long years of vacancy, New Beginnings Church — formerly Iron Gate Advent Christian Church — has opened its doors to the community with Pastor Eric Gutierrez behind the pulpit. The Journal caught up with Pastor Eric late Thursday afternoon for a brief conversation inside the freshly-cleaned church, to talk about his family, faith, and fellowship inside the new church.
Gutierrez brings with him a wife of 23 years, Jennifer Gutierrez, and their five offspring aged 19, 17, 14, 13, and 11. "The funny thing is, it's probably been about 20-some years ago, I actually spoke in this church as a college student," Gutierrez said. "And so, just once or twice." Ironically, the former Liberty University student also met his wife in college.
When discussing the name of the church, the bubbly pastor pointed to the Bible. "They have done a good job of coming in and cleaning out just a lot of the things that were no longer in use just to try to get a fresh start. And I think that's kind of almost in the sense of the whole idea of the name of the church, New Beginnings. We see a lot of referneces to that in the Bible: being a new creation, 'behold I'm doing a new thing here in Isaiah.' And so, you know, a lot of times as we start off in life, we're jut looking for a new start and we know that Jesus definitely does give us a new start with all that we do."
Currently, the church only has Wednesday night services available for bible study and prayer beginning at 6:30 p.m. and concluding around 7:45 p.m. Pastor Eric currently lives with his family in Roanoke making the weekly commute to the church and is waiting to see how God lays everything out at the end of the current school year, given that one of his sons will be graduating.
Gutierrez stated that there are plans to begin Sunday services sometime next year, but notes the time it can sometimes take to grow a church, build a nursery, youth room, find music ministers, etc. However, the church does have plans for a meet-and-greet with Pastor Eric on November 8th from 11:00 a.m.—2:00 p.m. as well as a Christmas celebration and musical. According to Pastor Eric, around 125 people attended the event last year. The Journal hopes to have more information on that event in the near future. |  | New Beginnings Church is located at 901 Market Avenue in Iron Gate.
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