A body of water stays fresh when there’s both an inlet of water going in and an outlet of water going out. If there’s only water flowing in without any outlet, the water stagnates, said a wise faithful member of Tigerville Baptist Church.
“And so the same thing is with the church,” he concluded.
Tigerville Baptist Church is located a stone’s throw from North Greenville University in Tigerville. Today, its roll includes only 12 members, but these remaining members decided to pursue revitalization, and Joshua Gilmore, who was interim pastor for four months, felt called to become their new pastor.
Gilmore spoke of his hope and prayer of the pastor installation.
“It really has nothing to do with me, and I mean it,” he said. “I just want this community to know there is a God in Tigerville. There is a church in Tigerville deeply committed to studying God’s Word, preaching God’s Word, [and] deploying Christians into the community to be about the kingdom.”
“I just want Tigerville [Baptist Church] to be a church growing in submission to the Great Commission,” he said.
The last few pastors haven’t lived in the area, said the wise faithful member. “We’re looking forward to Josh.”
Gilmore said he’s so local that he drives a golf cart both to work (North Greenville University) and to church.
But his first visit to Tigerville Baptist wasn’t as a pastor in church revitalization, but as a student at NGU, starting in 2001. Though Gilmore didn’t regularly attend, he said he’d set up his drums to play in the church building. When thinking back on the church, he said it wasn’t much different back then than it is now. “It was a small assembly, inside a very big sanctuary,” Gilmore said.
Gilmore left NGU in 2005 after graduation but said he came back in 2018 as a staff member. “I come on staff at North Greenville and my first question is, ‘What’s going on at Tigerville [Baptist]?’” he said.
He was told it was the same as when he was a student. But Gilmore said he prayed for the church.
Fast forward several years to 2022, and the church decided to reach out for help. According to Bryce Staggs, recommission strategist and pastor at Woodside Baptist Church, “Tigerville first reached out to the South Carolina Baptist Convention to explore revitalization in 2022. The SCBC helped them find a partner church to walk through revitalization that began in the summer of 2022.”
The partner church was Rocky Creek Baptist Church, whose pastor is Travis Agnew.
Staggs said, “Pastor Travis had been praying for a mighty work to take place at Tigerville since he was a student at North Greenville. When the opportunity to serve them arose, Travis, along with those in the Recommission Network, were overjoyed to help out.”
Recommissioning an Old Church
The Recommission Network is a ministry of Rocky Creek Baptist that aids struggling churches.
“The Recommission Network desires to help churches get back to the Great Commission,” Staggs said. “We do this by coming alongside churches and offering resources to help them complete that mission. It started in 2020 with a passion to see healthy churches in the Upstate and beyond.” (Check out their website at recommission.network.)
Staggs said the greatest work they’ve seen God do is there being over five baptisms since the partnership. Since signing the covenant, they’ve also had three interim pastors. The third — and, Lord willing, final — interim is Gilmore, and his journey to Tigerville as pastor was sparked by a mission trip to Panama.
Gilmore, a former member of Rocky Creek, went on a mission trip to Panama in May 2024. One morning, Gilmore and his pastor, Travis Agnew, woke up early, so they went down to the hotel lobby and talked.
Agnew asked Gilmore, “Hey, Joshua, what do you want to do? How do you want to help Rocky Creek Baptist Church?” Gilmore said if given the opportunity, he’d love to help Tigerville Baptist. When recalling the story, Gilmore laughed and said that “once those words come out of your mouth, you can’t take them back.”
Agnew liked the idea and told Gilmore that the current interim wasn’t planning on staying and that he should try it out for four months. He did, serving as interim from September through December 2024.
Gilmore said the next big question was whether he’d drop the interim and become pastor. He said he wasn’t sure if he could be the pastor while also working full-time at NGU as senior director of church and community relations. He prayed and sought counsel from two mentors and his wife, and all encouraged him to take the role while keeping his job at NGU. And he did. A unanimous vote from the 12 members ushered him in. He returned in January 2025 as pastor.
His first Sunday back was the lowest attendance in the revitalization journey, but God has always been there since the beginning.
TBC History
According to NGU’s archives (Tigerville Baptist Church: A History), Tigerville Baptist began when Hugh L. Brock, the first principal of North Greenville Baptist Academy (now North Greenville University), led prayer meetings for the men at school.
Students congregated on campus for prayer meetings and Sunday School without being an official church. But soon, a church was established. North Greenville Baptist Church was instituted in 1918, led by Luther B. White. The church was comprised of 35 members meeting in the college auditorium of North Greenville Baptist Academy.
Several years and pastors later, the church started a building fund. And in 1948, the church building was complete, and North Greenville Baptist Church was renamed Tigerville Baptist Church.
According to NGU’s archives: “Once the church moved into their own building, membership began to rise as more community members felt comfortable joining. It was at this time that the name of the church was changed from North Greenville Baptist Church to Tigerville Baptist Church to help distinguish it as its own separate entity from the school.”
On Nov. 21, 1948, E.B. Crain became pastor. During Crain’s leadership, the building debt was paid off, a parsonage was built, a church library was created, improvements to the church entrance were made, and a steeple was installed, according to NGU’s archives. Pralo Wood gifted the church land for a cemetery.
But the building improvements didn’t last long.
Crain retired in the summer of 1960 and in December 1960, the day after Christmas, the church building burned down. But the church isn’t the building.
The wise faithful member said that God refers to us as His building. He chuckled, then said, “The Christians are the building that just go to a place, a structure to meet.” Chuckling again, he said, “But it’s awfully easy to get your eyes on the building.”
By 1963, they had a new structure. Membership fluctuated and reached 195 in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After a decline in membership in the ’80s, it peaked to 241 in the late 1990s under the leadership of Cooper Patrick, who died in 1998. The church had one more pastor in 1999 and then came the interims. It wasn’t until 2008 that the congregation had its own pastor again.
There have been at least 26 pastors (including interims) who’ve come and gone. But some members stayed faithful, despite the turbulence. One of them was Leland Browter, 85, that wise faithful member.
“I just love him. Leland is very precious to that church and their history,” Gilmore said.
But not even Browter was there during every pastor’s tenure. Only One remained who kept His church alive — the Chief Shepherd. Before Gilmore told his story about coming to Tigerville Baptist, and just as the journalist pressed play on the recording, Gilmore expressed his heart behind sharing this story.
“I think God will use this article to help get people routinely praying for church revitalization at Tigerville Baptist,” he said. “A lot of people know this church because of its proximity to North Greenville.”
Gilmore said he desires 100 people to commit to pray for Tigerville Baptist Church. Will you be one of those 100?