A new day has come to the congregations of Glenwood Baptist Church and Iglesia Bautista Hispana La Roca in Easley.
At a partnership service on Feb 14, Piedmont Baptist Association made a special presentation to pastors Dale McCoig (left) and Gary Morrison – a rope encased in glass with words from Ecclesiastes 4:12: “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”After months of prayer and preparing the hearts of the people, the congregation of Glenwood Baptist Church opened wide its doors and its arms and began sharing its facilities with the members of Iglesia Bautista Hispana La Roca.
The journey to the churches’ partnership was brought on in part by the economic crisis. For the past five years, Gary Morrison and his wife had prayed their way into a full-time mission pastorate at La Roca Baptist Church. However, once the recession hit, things started to change.
“The Hispanic population is unstable sometimes when there is no work,” Morrison said. “They go back to their country or move out of Pickens County. We realized we couldn’t continue to keep up a building with insurance and all the expenses.”
Morrison had been hoping a bigger church might take his small church under its wing. He soon had an encounter with a very excited pastor, Dale McCoig of Glenwood Baptist Church. “It was during this meeting that we realized we shared the same vision, one desire to reach the nations,” Morrison said.
At a Sunday morning service in November, the Hispanic congregation voted unanimously to go forward with the move to Glenwood Baptist Church. That evening, the congregation of Glenwood voted unanimously for the same.
“If you can get two Baptist churches to be unanimous on the same day, you know God’s in the midst of it,” McCoig said. “God had prepared the people of La Roca, Gary and the people of Glenwood.”
Broadus Moody, director of missions for Piedmont Baptist Association, worked closely with Morrison and McCoig during the transition. “We must learn how to minister together” in a multicultural world, Moody said. “Glenwood and La Roca have heard that call and answered.”
If you ask the two pastors about the biggest differences in the two congregations, they would say the cultures and the languages, but it may not be that way for long. Although the churches have separate worship services, they are planning for some joint worship services throughout the year and to go on missions together.