Baptist Heritage Award

The Florida Baptist Historical Society, for the past 29 years, has recognized an individual for their effective preservation and promotion of Florida Baptist history. The Society’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce that their selection as the recipient of the 2025 Baptist Heritage Award is Joel Breidenbaugh, Florida.

The Baptist Heritage Award seeks to recognize and honor those Florida Baptists who have exhibited rare and unusual dedication to the cause of Florida Southern Baptist history by having made a significant impact through such means as researching and writing Baptist history, teaching Baptist history, preserving Baptist history, and/or promoting the importance of Florida Southern Baptist history.
Dr. Joel R. Breidenbaugh of Apopka, Florida, has served as pastor of the Gospel Centered Church since August 2017 to the present. During the past eight years he has led this congregation from a mission start to a fully functioning church with over 100 persons in attendance each week. Currently the church is involved in a building fund drive to underwrite the construction of the church’s first permanent facility. He previously served as senior pastor of the First Baptist Church Sweetwater in Longwood, from 2008 to 2017. He served a variety of church staff positions between 1996 and 2008. Dr. Breidenbaugh has earned three degrees, including the B.A. from the Florida Baptist Theological College (now known as the Baptist University of Florida). Subsequently, he attended and graduated with a MDiv (dual major in preaching and church history) and the PhD degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Concurrent in addition to his local church leadership, Dr. Breidenbaugh has been a teaching scholar, since 2002, having served as a parttime classroom teacher and as an on-line professor. Those schools have included Liberty University’s School of Divinity, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Baptist College of Florida and Oklahoma Baptist University. His subject matter expertise has included a range of disciplines: Baptist history, church history, New Testament, theology, preaching, church ministry, personal evangelism, among other topics. As a writer, Dr. Breidenbaugh has used sound academic research to prepare numerous articles for scholarly publications, including a regular series of articles for The Church Revitalizer E-Magazine. He has written over a dozen topical articles for the Journal of Florida Baptist Heritage. And he also wrote six articles, including biographical profiles on three historically significant Southern Baptists, that were included in the five-volume compendium, Encyclopedia of Christianity. Joel Breidenbaugh, born in 1975, is a native of Indiana, and has served as chair of the Florida Baptist Historical Society’s Board of Directors from 2020 to the present. He and his wife, Annthea Rhea West, have five children, including one by adoption.