Sam Lawrence is the pastor at Poe Baptist Church in Greenville. In a sense, he has come home; he was baptized there some 30 years ago. Lawrence says the watchword these days for Poe Baptist is one familiar to Southern Baptists: cooperation.
Children from the community around Poe Baptist Church enjoyed face-painting and inflatable rides at a block party.The church, located in a once-robust textile mill community, has changed a lot since 1977, when an average Sunday would see 250-275 in attendance. People moved away or passed away, and the church dwindled to less than three dozen members and began selling off assets to cover chronic operating losses. Church members who stayed at Poe remained faithful and wanted their church to grow to be what it once was. They pressed on, doing what they thought God wanted them to do.
The community around the church also changed. Thirty years ago, most of the people living in the small, synonymous frame houses raised families and worked in the nearby mill, and a good number were faithful church members. Today, the mill is long closed, and many who live in the area are transients. Drug and alcohol usage is far too common.
Against that backdrop, last December, the church asked Lawrence, 48, to serve as interim pastor at Poe Baptist. Six weeks later the church asked him to drop the word “interim” from his job description and become their pastor. Lawrence, a bivocational minister and a CAD designer for Sargent & Lundy, at Oconee Nuclear Station, agreed.
One of the first things he did, after a frank discussion with members about the church’s bleak prognosis if nothing changed, was to engage them in adopting an outreach initiative that focused squarely on their diminished neighborhood. “The Bible is clear,” Lawrence said. “We had to reach out with the love of Jesus to the surrounding community. First, we needed to pray like it all depended on God – because it does – and then we had to be visible to the community and show tangible ways that Poe Baptist Church cares about people more than empty buildings, more than 103 years of church tradition. In short, we needed to share the gospel.”
The vision for what Poe Baptist Church might yet become is still being formed, but God is giving the folks at Poe a glimpse of what he can do and what he wants them to accomplish.
In the spring the church invited a local Christian bluegrass band to give a concert on Sunday night for the community. Two inflatable rides were rented and snacks and hot dogs were provided, and the children in the area quickly discovered that they?could have fun at Poe Baptist.
Sam Lawrence, right, pastor of Poe Baptist Church, is leading his church to reach out to its local community. Also pictured are Lawrence’s son, Ian, and Dustin Gillespie, pastor of Poston Baptist Church in Wallace, N.C.On that Sunday evening no one knew what to expect. About 125 people attended.?(One?member suggested that they could have had more in attendance if they had held the concert on Saturday, which would have allowed other Christians from surrounding churches to attend. Lawrence responded that the people they needed to reach were those who weren’t involved in any church.)
Six months have passed in Lawrence’s new pastorate. In that time seven people have accepted Christ and five are awaiting baptism. In a church that many would say was all but ready to close, God is breathing in new life.
A sister church, Legacy Church of Greenville, donated and installed a new custom sign to replace Poe’s old, rotting church sign. The new sign includes the church’s Web site address and the phrase, “Everyone Welcome.” (Lawrence says this is the “nonnegotiable” part of his agreement to serve as pastor. “It is unchristian not to accept a person for any reason, especially skin pigmentation,” he said. “We are all descended from the same race: Adam’s.”)
On June 23 Poe Baptist hosted a block party to locate new prospects in their community. There was a giant inflatable waterslide, games, food, a clown ministry from the Columbia area and more. Another area church, Clearview Baptist in Travelers Rest, donated the use of a snow cone machine and a popcorn machine. The result: one salvation and about two dozen unchurched children registered for an upcoming VBS-style outreach.
In the week leading up to the block party a mission team from Wallace, N.C., came in to help update the church’s educational facilities. In the evenings the group canvassed the area and passed out flyers for the block party. Easley First Baptist Church donated the use of its gymnasium for sleeping, showering, cooking and recreation.
The following week,? a group from an organization called Child Evangelism Fellowship conducted a five-day, VBS-type event. Legacy Church provided refreshments and materials for crafts and helped children with crafts. Senior adults from Poe Baptist drove the bus to pick up and drop off children and helped oversee work done by the volunteers. During the week, 20 different children attended. Average attendance was 14, and there was one salvation.
A visiting mission team from Poston Baptist Church, Wallace, N.C., poses in front of Poe Baptist Church’s new sign. The team helped paint and update Poe’s educational building and publicized a block party.Lawrence said he has adapted the resource-sharing blueprint of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program to make it work on a smaller scale for Poe Baptist Church. “At Poe, we welcome and invite mission-minded churches to help us reach these people,” he said.?
So, in a place where the median age of the congregation is about 75 and only about 24 members attend worship on a given Sunday, eight people now have been saved, and God – through cooperating churches – has supplied the necessary resources to locate new prospects and improve the church’s facilities. God also recently sent a North Greenville University student, Kris Crippin, to serve as Poe Baptist Church’s associate pastor for outreach and youth.
When asked what he would like to share with other bivocational pastors, Lawrence said, “Pray like you have never prayed before. That’s the big ticket. Pray and wait on God and see what he does”.
That’s good advice from?a fellow pastor who is experiencing God’s power in an awesome way.
By the way, two of the new believers who accepted Christ are Lawrence’s sons. He baptized them in the same pool in which he was immersed more than 30 years ago.
(Want to learn more about Poe Baptist’s revitalization and see photos from outreach events? Visit the church’s Web site at www.poebaptist.org.)
Dave Rogers is director of learning development for the South Carolina Baptist Convention.