Dan Graves, pastor of Southside Baptist Church, Columbia, refrains from using words like “programs” and “projects,” preferring to label this growing, smaller-membership church’s activity as “experiments.”
“I encourage our members to have ideas for ministry, and then we try them,” Graves said. “We pay attention to what people attend, and then we repeat what people accept. We discontinue what they don’t accept. Everything is experimental, and God has been so very good to us.”
To fully understand this intentional approach to ministry, it’s important to understand Southside Baptist Church. In March 2001, Graves came to the church as its full-time pastor. Attendance, largely senior adult, had dwindled to 35 or 40 on Sunday mornings. “What I’ve tried to convey in my eight years is that God is not giving up on smaller-membership churches,” Graves said. “We just had to change our church culture – how we think and approach ministry.”
Graves said he first suggested that the church pray for workers. “We created a lot of future jobs and prayed for workers. That’s different than praying for ministries.”
In late 2002, Southside began working with Christian professors at the University of South Carolina, opening its gymnasium for Tuesday meetings of international students. Christian professors spoke at the meetings, and Southside provided free meals to the 45 students, mostly Chinese, who attended.
“We have a full-size gymnasium,” Graves said, “so we used it as a way to connect with the international students. We were trying to reach American students, and God kept sending the international students. God also began to send us workers to help with the meetings.
“From those student meetings, we latched onto some of the 40-and 50-something workers and asked them, ‘What do you want from church?’ We have found that not everyone is looking for contemporary worship or a larger-membership church. We just do what this church has been doing for a hundred years.”
The church’s international student ministry prompted Graves to take a mission trip to China, where he focused on connecting with the relatives of some of the Chinese students.
“That trip provided our church with contacts to go back and teach English,” Graves said. Locally, the church works with other Christian organizations to serve Chinese students. In 2007, Southside prepared 1,000 hot dog meals for International Zoo Night at Riverbanks Zoo. It has also helped with international night at the State Fair.
The church also sent a mission team to Alaska in 2008 and 2009 to help a church there. This summer, 15 people helped the Alaskan church with its Vacation Bible School.
Worship attendance at Southside has grown to about 80, and the church is praying for 195. “When we get to 195, we are going to send out 10 workers each week to help another church,” Graves said. “We will work through the Columbia Metro Association to find a church with a vision but few workers. We are excited about what God has in store.”
Graves said Southside is a fun place and “we are having a great time. Other smaller-membership churches can do the same thing. What is happening here is all because of the power of God.”
Bill Dieckmann, director of missions for Columbia Metro Association, said, “Southside is an amazing story of how God can take a city mill-village church and make a church with international influence. It is a God-sized vision to reach people.” – SCBC