Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, will preach the anniversary message when Roebuck Baptist Church near Spartanburg celebrates 100 years of ministry on Jan. 29.
Roebuck Baptist ChurchDenominational leaders in South Carolina are among more than 50 guests – which includes former staff members – who have been invited for the centennial service to be capped off by a catered lunch.
Preparation for the centennial has prompted 100 e-mail “blasts” to church members with snippets of history and challenges for the future. In one of those e-mails, music minister David Satterwhite said that “God has held together a people of like faith in this community” and that Roebuck Baptist Church “has become a place of refuge and strength.”
The 100-year-old congregation is a child of Bethlehem Baptist Church, which was established in 1800 as the first house of worship in the Roebuck community. Desiring a church closer to the center of town, Roebuck established its congregation Dec. 30, 1911, on land provided by the Foster family and built its first sanctuary, which served the church from 1911 to 1985 when the current sanctuary was erected.
H.M. Fallaw, who traveled by train from Woodruff to Roebuck to preach on the second and fourth Sundays, was the first pastor. Roebuck called its first full-time pastor, Ralph Hammett, in 1944. Tim Williams has been pastor since 1995.
By the end of 2003, Roebuck had contributed $1 million through the Cooperative Program. “And in just the past eight years,” said Williams in an e-mail, “we are closing in on giving another $1 million to missions.”
For Williams, the recall of (and gratitude for) the congregation’s history is most beneficial when it is viewed as the prologue for Roebuck’s continued ministry in the years to come. “Those first members were not thinking of the past,” he pointed out, “but looking to the future. The Lord blessed their vision and their faith, and many have benefited from their labors.”
He concluded, “If Roebuck Baptist Church is to celebrate a 200th anniversary, we must continue to build upon the solid foundation that has been laid here, and trust that by God’s grace he will lead us to new heights in mission and ministry.”