Oak Crest Baptist Church, Greenville, has applied the My Hope America Billy Graham crusade strategy in a unique way by holding a service one Sunday a month at a local golf course.
For the past six months, pastor Kyle Turner and some members from his church have been serving breakfast and holding a service for “people who play golf on Sundays but don’t go to church.” “We have about 20 to 25 golfers attending,” he said, “along with some people from the community.”
Turner, an amateur golfer with near-professional skills, got the idea one day after realizing that “most of my friends are golfers.”
“When I called the owner of the golf course and told him what we wanted to do, there was silence,” Turner said. “Then he told me he had been praying for 15 years for a pastor to call him about doing something like this.”
On Nov. 9, the church will sponsor a My Hope America golf tournament at Summersett Golf Course in Greenville. The idea behind the event is for Christians to invite unchurched friends to play on a four-man team. A meal will be served, and the Billy Graham video, “The Cross,” will be shown following the tournament.
The entry fee for the tournament is $35 per player. For more information, contact Oak Crest Baptist Church at 864-269-0371.