Greer Baptist Association will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Sept. 27 in a 6 p.m. commemorative service at Fairview Baptist Church.
Featured guests include Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, and Richard Blackaby, president of Blackaby Ministries International, which aims at helping people experience God around the world. Blackaby will bring the closing message.
The celebration also will feature the music of a 200-voice choir made up of singers from the association’s congregations.
On May 15, 1959, a group of 76 members from 19 churches met at First Baptist Church, Greer, and voted to form a new association from the four existing associations that converged in the Greer area. The association was officially organized on July 24 at Duncan First Baptist Church. Its first annual meeting was held at Victor Baptist Church on Oct. 27.
Greer Association has grown from 22 charter members to 40 churches, all of them within a 15-minute drive-time from downtown Greer, where the association’s office is located on Poinsett Street.
“The motives that brought the churches together initially,” said Cleatus Blackmon, director of missions for Greer Baptists, “continue to bind the member churches today – connecting for Christ’s mission, beginning in our growing, vibrant community and reaching around the world.”