On the first of July, members of South Main Street Baptist Church in Greenwood experienced a few other firsts in the grassy field behind the church building. Never before had there been a service designed specifically for the people living in the low-income, drug-filled neighborhoods within walking distance. Never before had they crossed racial and denominational lines to work with other churches on a project of this scale. And never had there been a professional fireworks show allowed within the city limits.
A concert by The Reggie Sadler Family kicked off the community event. Sadler, seen here getting some vocal help from the crowd, has performed with Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and the Drifters, and worked with the Walt Disney Corporation for 10 years. Sadler is now in full-time ministry with his family.South Main Street Church hosted a God and Country celebration with members of the nearby New Faith Tabernacle for an estimated crowd of 400 people. The Reggie Sadler Family began the outdoor service with a concert that included praise music and an inspirational sermon by New Faith Tabernacle’s Rev. Bernard Morman and culminated with a fireworks display unlike any Greenwood had ever seen.
South Main Street pastor Alan Quigley said the service represents the 101-year-old church’s expanded Acts 1:8 mission objective, which includes taking the gospel to the people closest to them. “We are in a transitioned neighborhood that doesn’t look anything like our congregation. We have started a lot of churches in Greenwood over the years, but each time our church has chosen to stay in the neighborhood where it was planted. We are trying to ‘love loud’ in our community,” he said.
Vacation Bible School has been a strong avenue into the community for South Main Street Church, mainly because there aren’t any other summer activity options for local children. Quigley said they began discovering needs in the neighborhood when the church began picking up children to bring them to VBS about three years ago. “Children were waiting for up to an hour to ride the buses to VBS. One mom told me ours was the only church that would take these kids anywhere in the summer, so we expanded our work with kids in the neighborhood,” Quigley said.
South Main Street Baptist Church volunteers make snow cones for children at the God and Country community celebration July 1.Since then, the church started a summer sports camp and sponsored 30 children in its Upward basketball and cheer program. It has also started Gage Street Kids Club, which reaches 35 children through a former storefront given to the church rent-free by its owner, and two months ago began a Preaching Point service in the same storefront on Sunday mornings which, Quigley reports, has had its first convert.
A few streets over, the missions-minded New Faith Tabernacle is also reaching out into the South Greenwood community. Morman and 12 founding members began the church last year, and hold services in a former church building leased from Lakelands Association. Their congregation now has 168 members. “Our goal is to get people into the church, plant the seed, and let the Lord do the watering from there,” Morman said.
When Quigley approached Morman with the idea for a community service several weeks ago, he quickly agreed to the collaboration with another church. “We are looking for the Lord to bless this community. We serve one Lord, one faith, and one baptism,” he said.
The God and Country celebration plans included free snow cones and bottled water, a medical and prayer tent, music that would appeal to large crowds, and a very memorable ending. “We were looking for things South Greenwood children wouldn’t get to see, so we decided to bring fireworks downtown to them,” Quigley said. The church sought special approval from the city of Greenwood, which required the fireworks display to be run by a professional pyrotechnic company. Partnership fund assistance from the South Carolina Baptist Convention helped South Main Street Church to sponsor the celebration’s grand finale. Quigley approached Alvin Deal, director of the local Gospel AM radio station, Faith 1090, to help get the word out to a larger listening audience a few weeks before the celebration.
On the day of the event, members of South Main Street and New Life Tabernacle streamed onto the field with their lawn chairs and blankets and sat among other members of the south Greenwood community. Angelica, a young Hispanic mother, takes English-as-a-Second-Language classes at South Main Street Church and came to the celebration with her husband and two children for one reason: “I have never seen fireworks,” she said. Renee lives a few minutes from the church and walked over with her two children and some friends because she was invited by a South Main Street member a few days before at a soup kitchen. “I came to hear the band and have some good, clean fun,” she said.
Bernard Morman, Alvin Deal, and Alan Quigley worked together to plan the South Greenwood community event held July 1 at South Main Street Baptist Church. The men met to pray together before the event began.South Main Street Church members, like Kevin Rust, don’t mind the reasons people came – they are just glad they did. “Tonight is a culmination of many years of prayer, asking God to move in our community. We know the Lord can change lives,” said Rust. “I’d love to see real revival here, to see God do something really crazy.”
Randy Culbertson, a deacon at South Main Street, described the evening as a special occasion. “It’s an answer to prayer to see churches come together and know the potential of what God can do through us working together,” Culbertson said.
Quigley agrees. The pastor has personally been to every door in a two-mile radius of South Main Street Church and has prayed for God to provide partners from the African-American and Hispanic communities who can help to reach deeper into the surrounding neighborhood.
“We have been praying that God would transform our neighborhood. We are now seeing that what we couldn’t possibly make happen, God is bringing together. He has brought pastors to us to partner with, and now we are forming a group interested in praying for and working toward community transformation,” Quigley said.
To view a photo essay of the event, visit www.scbaptist.org/link/GodandCountryCelebrationphotos.htm. – SCBC