When Furman Gatewood Sr. accepted the task of building a congregation from the ground up at the Community Mission Church 20 years ago, he knew his efforts would be blessed. He also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Furman GatewoodAmong the most memorable of the discouraging moments was the Sunday that he ran the bus route, picking up children in the Taylors area, only to find the main sanctuary empty when he returned.
“The low point was the Sunday we ran the bus route and there was nobody but children,” Gatewood recalls. “The only people there for the main service were my wife, my son, and me.”
At that point, Gatewood wasn’t sure what he should do for the next hour. Wife Earline settled that matter when she announced that she “came to hear some preaching.”
Gatewood, 60, has been preaching every Sunday since, and never to such a small audience. The mission has enjoyed methodical growth over the past 20 years, with Gatewood getting plenty of encouragement from his wife.
The congregation moved from a rented storefront to a new property on Boling Road Extension in 1995. And in recent months, the little church that was itself a mission outreach took on the role of starting another new mission church of its own – Disciples Fellowship, which joined the Greenville Baptist Association as a new member this year.
“God has been really, really good to us,” says Gatewood, whose congregation built its church entirely with volunteer labor in 1995. “I’ve seen miracle after miracle take place in this little congregation.”
Community Mission began as an outreach of the Edwards Road Baptist Church, with the goal to “teach the Bible to underprivileged children” in a then-rural area of Taylors.
Former Edwards Road pastor Earl Crumpler approached Gatewood in late 1985, asking him to consider the job of pastoring the mission. Gatewood, a Greenville County native, was serving as pastor of a small Belton church at the time.
Gatewood was serving as Sunday school superintendent at Mount Pleasant Baptist on White Horse Road in 1976 when he felt the call to preach. He stepped in as the pastor at Belton in March 1977, and earned a Southern Baptist Seminary Extension degree at North Greenville College along way.
“At the time, there was nothing but children. It was a little difficult at first, but we felt that God had placed us there,” says Gatewood.
Throughout his ministry, Gatewood has been bivocational. He’s manager of the Mount Pleasant Community Center, which Gatewood views as “more of a ministry than a job.”
By helping start another church, Gatewood figures to lose about 50 members, but remains enthused by the project. Congregation numbers, he says, have never been the focus.
“If God sees it, we might have 1,000 members some day, but that’s not what it’s about,” says Gatewood. “It’s about witnessing, ministering, and seeing people grow spiritually. That’s been the highlight of my ministry.”
There have been occasions, Gatewood admits, that through personal connections there might have been opportunities at larger churches had he applied.
“But the Lord never told me to try for it,” Gatewood says. “I’ve always believed this is the work he had for me. And the new Disciples Fellowship makes me more certain of it than ever.”
(Reprinted by permission)