Posts Tagged ‘ Christianity ’

First Presbyterian Church, Rock Hill, SC – Visited on 4/1/12

The architecture of York County tends towards the unimpressive.  Clover, South Carolina, for instance, has no readily visible buildings taller than two stories.  Those with a second story are usually the brick blockhouses of main street, brightened here and there by a festive awning or hanging sign.

The area’s younger churches are usually rented spaces, former shops or warehouses or manufactories converted by their new congregations into places of worship.  These buildings’ serve their groups spiritual needs, but they do little to hearken back to older traditions of religious structures that whose architecture, especially their use of light and space, accompanied and magnified the spiritual pursuits engaged within their walls.

Today, Churchspotting visits a place of worship in the old style.  The First Presbyterian Church of Rock Hill, SC is a massive structure by local standards.  Faced in red brick, its tower looms above the two- and three-story bank buildings and art galleries of downtown Rock Hill.  Its sanctuary is a hemisphere of whitewashed, paneled wood, its arches vaulting skyward, its dome pierced by circular stained glass windows that allow morning sunlight too pour down into the chamber.

One side of the sanctuary is lined by the massive form of the church’s classical pipe organ, framed by seating for the church choir and the pastor’s podium.  Pews spread in long rows before the altar, hard wooden backs set with plush red cushions.

First Presbyterian presents a highly traditional service by York County standards.  The congregation, primarily a gray-haired gathering, with a sprinkling of younger parents and their children, arrives in its Sunday best.  Younger men of the congregation take positions by the door, greeting visitors and handing out the day’s church bulletin.  The choir sits in rows before the organ in full robes.

April 1 was a special occasion on the Christian calendar this year.  It marked Palm Sunday, an event from the New Testament where the Christian messiah, Jesus, entered into the ancient, holy city of Jerusalem mounted on a colt, as followers and well-wishers laid palm fronds before and behind his mount.  In memory of that event, the church’s choir entered carrying palm fronds, while the congregation pinned to their clothing blades from like fronds entwined into the shape of a cross.

The service began at 11 am, and ended by noon.  The days devotional regimen was heavy with music from the choir and organ, sometimes accompanied by the congregation on their hymnals.  The church’s choir proved both well-trained and passionate in their music, but their voices easily eclipsed the more muted tones of the congregation itself.  After song, prayer and a moment with the congregation’s children, the church’s pastor took the podium and began his sermon, entitled “The Mind of Christ.”

Titled the church’s ‘interim’ senior pastor, Rev. John Todd is a lean, older man whose hair went white with the years.  His premise for the morning was that the congregation should emulate Christ with their minds as well as their deeds.  Through parables he said that American culture’s focus on worldly success does not necessarily lead to happiness, and that Jesus, whose arrival at Jerusalem the church celebrated that day, spent his life giving rather than struggling to possess more.

In our next article Churchspotting sits down with Rev. Todd to discuss the First Presbyterian Church, its history, and its message, in greater depth.

2012
04/01
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Relevant Reprised: Return to relevant (sic) Church, Part I – Visited on 3/18/12

Since the early weeks of Churchspotting one article in particular has attracted long-term, continuous interest.  At least once a week someone arrives at the blog looking for information on relevant Church, a group visited in Churchspotting’s fourth ever article (available here).  Our last encounter with relevant was all the way back in August of 2011.  This week, more than six months later, we return to see what’s changed.

When Churchspotting first visited relevant Church, the group hadn’t yet been an independent congregation for a full month.    Its senior pastor, Matt McGarity, had only recently separated his operation from River Hills Community Church (visited here).  Mcgarity, still relatively fresh from seminary, worked at the RHCC as a youth pastor and outreach minister; relevant began as an auxiliary program to the RHCC, a deliberately ‘contemporary’ service intended to draw in worshippers turned off by more traditional religious services.

It’s been over six months since McGarity replanted his program as an independent church, renting space each week at Oakridge Middle School.  During our first visit relevant held a single worship service at 10:30 AM each Sunday–the same time slot as its former host, the RHCC.  Now relevant has two services, an early one at 9:15 and a late one at 10:45.  In August the church had between 150 and 200 active congregants; between the roughly 100 attendees at the early service and the 190 at the later service, the church now seems to host between 250 and 300 worshippers—about the same number Rev. McGarity claimed the program drew each week as an auxiliary of the far older RHCC.

The relevant Church volunteer staff seems less prominent six months on.  Gone are the neon ‘event staff’ t-shirts; now they wear black tees emblazoned with the church’s logo across the chest, or simply their street clothes with blue ‘event sticker’ nametags on cords about their necks.

At relevant there are no strict rules of dress; some worshippers arrived today in shorts and sandals, some in collared shirts and khakis.  Its primary attendees still appear to be middle class families from the Lake Wylie area, though some new arrivals did come from the other direction, where lies far less affluent Clover.

The church’s tradition of live, contemporary music remains strong.  The house band’s equipment filled the stage that lines one end of the Oakridge Middle School’s combination cafeteria-auditorium, and its musicians played three sets over the course of the day’s second worship service.  A projector screen hung above and behind them, displaying lyrics to their songs during performances.

For other sections of the worship service the screen served to display biblical quotations, graphics to accompany the sermon, and advertisements for church programs—early in the service it displayed a brief film clip promoting a relevant Church association called ‘life groups.’

Another visual presentation preceded Rev. McGarity’s sermon, the latest in a series called ‘Simple.’  McGarity, called Pastor Matt by the congregation, read the opening verses of the second chapter of the New Testament book of James, in which the author warned early Christians against privileging wealthy members of their churches over the poor and needy.  It rebuked them for showing deference to the wealthy, saying

“ 1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?”

McGarity’s sermon focused on the first half of this passage.  As was the case in August he delivered his sermon as a series of anecdotes combined with biblical references.  In particular he told stories of times he’d judged others on the basis of clothing, hairstyle or piercings, and warned his flock against the error and danger in doing the same.

Though its congregation’s size has grown over the last six months, the general program at relevant appears unchanged. The church still specializes in creating a nontraditional atmosphere, supported by contemporary music and an informal, casual approach to religious worship.  Later this week Churchspotting will sit down again with Mr. McGarity, to interview him on less immediately visible changes at relevant since our last visit.

2012
03/18
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Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ, Part II – Visited on 2/21/11

Rev. Mark Reynolds is the pastor of the Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ.  At forty-one years old he is a perpetually jovial, slightly heavy-set man, dark-haired with streaks of gray cropping up at the edges of his short goatee.  Born in 1971, he spent much of his life in Muncie, Indiana.  He married his current spouse at 20, not long before he entered ministry.  The son of a Churches of Christ minister, he originally aspired to a position in the finance industry but found that work unsatisfying.  He became a youth minister in his father’s church, and at 22 he’d preached six lessons when he heard another Church of Christ in town needed a pastor.

Though he’d never attended a seminary and his preaching experience was limited, he sent in a resume at his wife’s encouragement.  He was invited to preach two sermons there, and met with the church elders.  After another two sermons, the elders offered Reynolds the ministry as a full-time position, a role he’s filled in one church or another to this day.

In the years since he gained his first ministry Reynolds earned a two-year degree from the Memphis School of Preaching, a Churches of Christ seminary.  He spent 15 years preaching at the same church in Indiana, but in the late ‘00s found his energies divided between that position, farming with his father-in-law, and coaching at the local high school.

Seven years ago Rev. Reynolds was looking for a way to focus his life towards ministry when he learned of a potential opening at the Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ.  After turning down the congregation’s first request, Reynolds visited the church and decided to up stakes from Muncie, Indiana to Rock Hill, SC.  Today Reynolds focuses on his position as minister at Charlotte Ave., while Mrs. Reynolds homeschools their daughters.

The Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ had a long history before Rev. Reynolds joined.  The congregation that now occupies the Charlotte Ave. site began when a Churches of Christ family from Tennessee settled in Rock Hill in 1943 and found that no other members of their group lived in the area.  They began holding religious meetings in their own home, but as Rock Hill’s Church of Christ population grew they established a building on Spruce Street.

The group grew to approximately thirty members by 1960, when it moved to its current location.  In 1973 Charlotte Ave. expanded into its modern footprint, a church that currently houses upwards of 200 members regularly.  This substantial congregation is involved in providing aid to Haiti, especially in the wake of last year’s earthquake there.  A member of the congregation hails from Kenya, and his presence prompted Charlotte Ave. to support missionary projects in that country.  Locally the church supports the Pilgrim’s Inn project with annual food drives, and the congregation sends relief to sites of natural disasters as they occur.

Charlotte Ave. is an autonomous religious body.  According to Rev. Reynolds every Church of Christ is essentially autonomous, with major decisions made by each congregation’s body of deacons and elders.  There is no central authority or ecclesiastic hierarchy in the Churches of Christ.

Charlotte Ave’s leadership comprises eight deacons and four elders, with the latter group including Rev. Reynolds’ predecessor, David Pharr, who spent more than thirty years as Charlotte Ave’s pastor.  Despite a total of twelve positions, all office-holders at Charlotte Ave. are male.  Though he emphasized that due to their autonomy the practices of individual Churches of Christ may vary, he explained that they all try to avoid “letting the culture change us,” and that in accordance with the Bible the Churches of Christ do not allow women to teach “in a public way, from the pulpit,” to avoid “usurping the authority of the man.”  Rev. Reynolds directed me to the Bible, 1 Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 11 and 12 of which read:

[11]A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. [12]I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

 Women are allowed to teach other women and children at Charlotte Ave., and to plan and work in church events, but are barred from any position that might give them authority over male members of the church.

When it comes to relationships with other Christian groups, the Churches of Christ believe that any groups that follow “man-made creeds” have diverged from the true faith.  Rev. Reynolds named the Mormon church as such a group.  The Churches of Christ as a body count themselves as separate from the Catholic and Protestant strains of Christianity.

One of the rare exceptions to this rule is Charlotte Ave.’s willingness to join with other Christian groups in opposition to any initiative to change South Carolina’s ‘Blue Laws,’ statutes that, among other things, prohibit the sale of alcohol on Sundays in the state.  The congregation is also willing to work with other groups in support of drives against laws that permit abortion in South Carolina.

Though song makes up a major portion of any Churches of Christ worship service, musical instruments are banned and all hymns are performed a capella.  The Churches of Christ also prohibit divorce under any grounds besides ‘fornication’, which Rev. Reynolds defined as “sexual immorality with someone outside of your marriage.”

These divergences of doctrine and practice in the Churches of Christ all stem from the group’s desire to become more like the original Christians of the 1st Century AD.  In this pursuit they attempt to base all the practices of their churches along strictly biblical lines, and believe any divergence from practices found in the bible constitute the “man-made creeds” the group reviles in other sects.

When asked about the proper relationship between Church & State, Rev. Reynolds voiced the following:

“I believe that religion is the foundation of this country.”  “All good people that strive to let God show in their lives are the foundation of what makes this country great.”

He believes that the government has no right to dictate religious practice, but that religion should play a leading role in the practice of government.  He added that there is a role in government for non-Christians, and that many major figures in American history fall into that category.

2012
02/26
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Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ, Part I – Visited on 2/19/11

The Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ stands at the corner of Charlotte Avenue and Lucas Street, just a block from the campus of Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC.  The church is a wide, stout, humble structure of brown brick built into the side of a low hill.  Its dark tiled roofs rise at staid 90 degree angles.  The church has no steeple, though signs at the roadside announce its name and presence.

By 10:30 AM the church’s parking lot is densely packed.  Charlotte Ave.’s Sunday service averages over 200 worshippers each week and this congregation, substantial for the region, fills the pews of its sanctuary.  The people of the Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ arrive in their Sunday best.  Formal dress was very nearly universal in the congregation on the morning of the 19th.  The congregation spanned a wide spectrum of ages, with children featuring prominently in the pews.  There is no separate Children’s Church at Charlotte Ave., and even the youngest children spend the roughly hour-long worship service in the pews with their parents.

The church’s three main rows of pews fill a long and airy sanctuary.  The ceiling is paneled wood, supported by pairs of massive wooden arches that leave the space eerily reminiscent of the belly of some vast leviathan of the deeps.  Light comes from heavy electric lamps hung from the ceiling by long chains.

The outside wall is a checkerboard of panes of frosted glass panes braced by thick wooden slats, similar in function and appearance to Japanese paper windows.  The opposite wall is whitewashed, with half its length cleared away to make room for a second, smaller hall filled with pews that opens onto the main sanctuary.

The church has no choir loft, and there are no instruments or musicians involved in its worship service.  Rather, a huge projector screen hangs upon the far wall behind the pulpit.  Every period of prayer, preaching, ritual or announcements is bracketed by song.  The congregation sings from their hymnals or from the lyrics and sheet music displayed on the projector screen, without the accompaniment of any instrument or formal choir.  A member of the congregation designated as a music conductor takes the pulpit during hymns, and guides the congregation through its communal songs.

Every Sunday service at the Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ features a distribution of the “Lord’s Supper.”  During the ritual, also called “Communion” in other Christian groups, the elders and deacons of the church distribute wafers of unleavened bread and thimblefuls of wine to the congregation, in recognition of the Last Supper of Christian doctrine.

Though most Christian denominations perform a variation of this tradition (and Churchspotting recorded one such instance, see http://wp.me/p1JM4Z-4P), not many perform it on a weekly basis.  This difference in doctrine was mentioned by the church’s minister, Mark Reynolds, who presided over most of the service.  According to Rev. Reynolds other denominations prefer not to perform the ritual too often out of fear of “overdoing it,” but at Charlotte Ave. it forms a standard part of the regular worship service.

That morning’s sermon, as presented by Rev. Reynolds, concerned itself chiefly with urging the congregation to perform the necessities of spiritual salvation “before the silver cord is cut,”—i.e., before one dies.  Rev. Reynolds claimed that among other criteria necessary for salvation, being a part of the “one true Church” was absolutely necessary.

Reynolds said that the Christian community was divided into thousands of divergent groups preaching wildly divergent doctrine.  He described a billboard he saw on the road that read,

“Love Jesus and hate church?  Then we’re the church for you.”

He remarked that the above statement was “blasphemy,” and continued by citing scriptural references to Jesus entrusting “his Church,” singular, to his apostles.  He said that he was proud to be a part of that “one true Church.”

Rev. Reynolds listed two more prerequisites for salvation.  First, he said it was necessary to accept that “God is always, always right,” and so live life by God’s laws—i.e., according to scripture.  Second, the worshipper must accept and believe that Jesus Christ was not merely a teacher or prophet, but the son of God.  Rev. Reynolds told his congregation that their only means of salvation lay in this right belief and practice, combined with membership in the one true Church.

The Charlotte Ave. is a member of the wider Churches of Christ, a denomination that traces its roots to the Reformation Movement, an American religious movement of the 19th Century in which Christian worshippers, dissatisfied with their current denominations, sought to form new religious associations more directly modeled on the original churches of the 1st Century.

Members of the group prefer to describe themselves simply as “Christians,” and do not consider themselves a Protestant denomination.  The Churches of Christ have approximately five million members worldwide, with 1.9 million of those in the United States.

2012
02/19
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New Life Baptist Church, Part II – Visited on 2/10/2012

The office of Rev. Dean Reynolds at New Life Baptist Church is a small, cluttered workspace: stacks of books and papers, teaching materials and devotional texts, family photos.  He keeps the door closed—it is a cold morning, and the church is expensive to heat.

New Life Baptist occupies a building that was once the machine shop of a firm that made spiral staircases.  The great collapse of America’s real estate market in 2008 demolished the company and left its cavernous workspace vacant.  Very little of the building’s former occupants remain now.  Its interior was reshaped by the diligent hands of New Life’s congregation, partitioned into sanctuary, offices, classrooms.  Only in the sanctuary, in the glow of industrial halogen lamps, with the metal serpent of the room’s ventilation coiling along the ceiling, does its former identity peek through.

In that cluttered office Rev. Reynolds told me his life story.  He was raised in Rock Hill, SC, in the congregation of Eastside Baptist Church.  He said that his decision to become a minister came at an early age.  Reynolds was sixteen when, as he requested prayers for his then-fiancé’s alcoholic father, his pastor asked “When are you gonna give up and do what God’s called you to do?”  Dean’s response, which surprised him at least as much as the rest of the congregation, was to call out “I will preach God.”

At sixteen, Dean Reynolds did not become a man of the cloth immediately.  He finished high school and spent a year afterward working to pay off his car.  He then attended Charleston Southern University, and for three years immersed himself deeper and deeper in the youth revival movement of the late 1970s.

Reynolds became a singer and a preacher.  After three years at CSU he dropped out of college to form a gospel quartet.  The group spent a year touring the Carolinas, singing to faithful Baptists.  He married during that time, and after a brief post-quartet career selling insurance he became a youth minister.

All this was decades ago.  It was not till 2008, the year of the great economic collapse, that Reynolds came to New Life Baptist.  By that time he was a veteran minister with a degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, having risen from youth ministry to the head of his own congregations.  When he arrived, New Life was renting space each week at Lake Pointe Academy, a facility of New River Community Church in Lake Wylie, SC.

Not long after he joined New Life as its pastor, Reynolds led the church to its new site in Clover.  With help from a crew hired by the landlord, the congregation of New Life reshaped the defunct industrial space into a place of worship.  Three years later, the church has sunk firm roots into its new home.

New Life Baptist works with other groups in the Clover area to provide charitable aid through programs that include God’s Kitchen (mentioned here: http://wp.me/p1JM4Z-64) and the Palmetto Pregnancy Center (mentioned here: http://wp.me/p1JM4Z-68).  The church also supports Baptist missionary work overseas.  It has no relations or partnerships with the institutions of York County’s sizeable Catholic minority.

From his post at New Life, Rev. Reynolds teaches a very specific doctrine.  He believes that we can learn, with certainty, where are souls are bound for after death.  He believes this rests entirely upon one condition: whether or not one “accepts Jesus Christ as their personal savior.”  From that, according to Reynolds’ description, all else follows.

He does not believe in sex outside of marriage, or in the use of contraceptives outside of monogamous married relationships.  Based on his reading of the Book of Revelation and his interpretation of current events he believes that the “Rapture,” the apocalyptic end of this age of the world, is near at hand.

Regarding the relationship between Church and State, he believes that the two should be separate.  He is against government attempting to “regulate or in any way impose the church from doing the work it’s called by God to do.”  He particularly fears that new legislation may force religious groups to provide contraceptive care.  According to him Christians need to be involved in the processes of government, but he feels that political activism lies outside his own calling.

2012
02/14
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New Life Baptist Church Part I, Visited on 2/5/2012

New Life Baptist Church is somewhat difficult to reach.  The church does not have its own free-standing building.  It does not occupy a shop front or a school.  A banner on the side of Hwy 321, in the middle of Clover, SC, directs the seeker down the gravel parking lot of a local business headquarters.  Behind the main office, in the rooms of a repurposed warehouse building, lies New Life Baptist.

It turns out a repurposed warehouse is a fairly practical space for a small church.  With minimal retrofitting the structure’s business offices became church offices and classrooms, while the warehouse proper held the church’s sanctuary.

Two wide columns of cushioned seats filled most of the sanctuary’s floor space.  A stage rose before them with room enough for a full drum set, a palisade of microphone and instrument stands, a keyboard in one corner and a pulpit of transparent plastic.  A huge screen for an overhead projector hung above the drum set.  Two pastel banners, one painted with the word ‘peace,’ the other with ‘love,’ hung from one wall.  At stage left stood an American flag; at stage right stood a Christian flag of identical proportions.

The congregation of New Life Baptist was a more evenly distributed mix of age groups than Churchspotting normally sees.  Certainly there were many older worshippers in evidence, but at least three generations of families were present.  Dress seemed to be a matter of personal preference.  No one in the congregation arrived in anything more formal than a collared shirt and khaki pants, but many came to worship in t-shirts and jeans.  Older members of New Life Baptist favored more reserved clothing, but the teenagers came dressed for a day at school.  The full congregation, including young children who spent much of the service in a separate Children’s Church, came to around seventy worshippers.

New Life Baptist’s music was all produced by the congregation.  Members of the group manned the microphones and played the instruments on stage.  The screen above the drums displayed each hymn’s lyrics to the crowd.  The church’s sound engineering was very professional, but it had the side effect of drowning the congregation’s own singing beneath the amplified voices of those onstage and the thrum of instruments.

The day’s sermon was delivered by Rev. Dean Reynolds, pastor of New Life Baptist, a tall, mustachioed man of 54. When the passion took him Reynolds spoke with the blistering cadence of an auctioneer rattling off his Hosannas and scriptural references at breakneck speed.  At rest, he joked and kidded with longtime members of the congregation, some of whom seemed to have followed New Life Baptist from its original site at Lakepoint.

Throughout his sermon, Reynolds emphasized that his congregation could know, “for sure,” whether they were bound for Heaven or Hell after death.  He called on them to embrace Jesus as their savior, and to allow him to change them “from the inside out.”  He told his congregants that God had a plan for them, if they chose to listen.

Rev. Reynolds also mentioned supernatural experiences in his childhood.  He claimed that as a boy he woke to find a shadowy figure clawing at his feet from the foot of his bed, an episode he said was “as real as I am.”  He said that not long after that he received a visitation from Jesus himself, who whispered to him “I am here.”  He also claimed that not long after that visitation he received a vision of God the Father in brilliant white light, which he shared with his grandfather.  He described how after telling his story he and his grandfather knelt and prayed at the foot of their home’ stairs, and how that Sunday they knelt by the altar of their church and prayed in the midst of the service.

The finale of a worship service at New Life Baptist is the Song of Invitation.  On February 5 that was a performance by the church choir, made up of a dozen or so older members of the church.  Members of the congregation were ‘invited’ at that time to come forward and kneel before the plastic pulpit while the choir sang “By the blood of the lamb we will conquer.”  After the choir finished the congregation’s musicians took the stage, and played New Life Baptist out as its members started to trickle out through the warehouse doors.

2012
02/05
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Trinity Bible Church, Part II – Visited on 1/23/12

On the weekend of January 15, Churchspotting visited Trinity Bible Church in Rock Hill, SC (http://wp.me/p1JM4Z-62).  Though that journey did allow us to view Trinity Bible Church in action, and exposed Churchspotting readers to a representative of the Digging Deep ministry, it did not include an interview with that church’s pastor.  In this article, Churchspotting offers an in-depth interview with Matthew James, senior pastor at Trinity Bible Church.

 

James is relatively young for a senior pastor, somewhere in the opening years of middle age.  He is a lean, groomed man, with the look of an earnest local politician.  Pastor James and his ministry were first encountered by Churchspottingat a showing of the film “One Nation Under God,” at Filbert Presbyterian, documented here (http://wp.me/p1JM4Z-5Y) on January 7.  James is a member of the prayer group that put on the event, and spoke to the audience during the film’s intermission.

 

James is a longtime resident of South Carolina.  He attended Bob Jones University in Columbia, SC, where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Bible and a Master’s in Pastoral Studies.  His affiliation with Trinity Bible Church dates to 1996, when he started his long career as an Associate Pastor there.  In 2001 he succeeded to the rank of senior pastor, and serves in that capacity today.

 

On the subject of his church, James said Trinity Bible Church belongs to no particular denomination.  Founded in 1945, Trinity is what he termed an ‘interdenominational’ congregation.  According to Pastor James, Trinity belongs to no wider affiliations or conferences and holds members of many Christian traditions within its congregation.

 

The church explicitly supports two area non-profit organizations, Palmetto Pregnancy Center and Renew Our Community.  Palmetto Pregnancy Center’s founder and current executive director is a member of Trinity Bible Church.  The group is geared towards offering counseling to young pregnant women in the Rock Hill area, specifically as an alternative to abortion.

 

Renew Our Community, otherwise known as “the ROC,” is a Christian nonprofit based in Rock Hill.  The group’s stated goal is to alleviate poverty and homelessness in the region by helping guide the unemployed to steady jobs.  Trinity once operated the Trinity Christian School, but that facility was closed in 2008 due to low enrollment.  It is now the site of York Preparatory Academy.

 

When it comes to neighboring Christian groups, Matthew James has sweeping goals.  In his own words, he and his ministry are “aggressively pursuing a discovery for what we can do to join with the Lord’s people in our community to be a blessing”  He believes that it will take “all of God’s people working together,” to shape the Rock Hill community.  Essentially, Pastor James hopes to forge unity between the disparate Christian communities of Rock Hill.  He wants to turn such a union into a political and social force, which would be used to reform Rock Hill towards the principles of his faith.

 

James believes pastors should play a leading role in political and social life.  As was mentioned above, he is a member of a multidenominational, politically active prayer group that meets every Monday morning at the Pork n More in York, SC.  He is a participant in the SC Renewal Project, one branch of a multi-state nonprofit group that offers ‘policy briefings’ to pastors.

 

The Renewal Project provides free weekend stays at local hotels to pastors in the states it operates, where it holds seminars on advice and support for pastors to back ‘godly’ politicians’ election campaigns.  The Renewal Project operated at least as early as the 2008 presidential election, and is currently rallying politically active pastors for the 2012 election cycle.

 

It should come as no surprise that Matthew James has strong convictions on the proper relationship between Church and State.  An open proponent of what he terms “a conservative theology,” he believes that the current separation between Church and State goes against “the Founders’ intent.”  He does not believe either force should be in charge of the other.

 

Pastor James believes that the inalienable rights listed in the US Constitution ultimately come from a divine source, not any particular mortal government.  He holds that the goal of the Constitution’s framers was to prevent any one denomination from persecuting others, not to separate religious and political practice.  He is a definite proponent of the view that the Constitution provides ‘freedom of religion,’ not ‘freedom from religion.’

2012
01/29
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New Beginnings Baptist Church – Visited on 1/22/12

No fanfare announces New Beginnings Baptist Church. It is a simple building, a yellow aluminum-walled barn, whose only windows are the glass panes in its doors. It sits on Old North Main Street in Clover, SC. The road is cracked and holed, and the homes that dot its sides are equally worn. Yet this unassuming building, on its lonesome street, is the seat of the largest charitable organization in Clover, and one of the main such organizations in York County.

Worship at New Beginnings begins early in the morning and continues throughout the day. Most activity takes place in the church’s sanctuary, a space just as modest as its exterior. The floor is linoleum. Rather than pews, there are rows of cushioned chairs, bound into rows by plastic ties around their legs. A stage rises before the seating, with space for a drum set and keyboard beside it and a pulpit at its center. This elevated space was little used on the morning and afternoon of the 22nd. Instead the pastor speaks from a chair beside the stage, or walks the crowd himself.

The pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church is Sam Thompson. At 75 he’s clearly begun to feel his age. He moves slowly and deliberately, and his speech does ramble sometimes. Yet when the band backs him and the crowd’s blood was up—there were at least seventy people within the confines of New Beginnings that morning—his voice still holds its thunder.

At New Beginnings, as in many other churches visited by this blog, music plays a strong role in worship. There are no hymnals in the building. When the pastor or another speaker finishes saying their piece, and the time comes for a song, the congregation turns to the ladies who dominate its ununiformed choir. One takes up a tune. Others, familiar with it from long experience, join in. The band takes their cue from the rhythm and tone of the ladies’ song, and spin into an impromptu accompaniment. Before long enough members of the congregation join the song to send it echoing beyond New Beginnings’ walls.

A church like this does not spring up overnight. New Beginnings was founded over sixteen years ago, and to date Sam Thompson is its only pastor. Thompson entered ministry late in life, at the age of fifty, though he traces his first impulse towards such work to the age of 16. 1/22/12 marked the 25th anniversary of Thompson’s career as a pastor; his son, one of four children, who appears to be Thompson’s heir apparent, led a sermon that morning on ‘Pastorial Appreciation’ in recognition of the occasion.

After over sixteen years New Beginnings is a hub for charitable work in the town of Clover and York County in general. The church operates God’s Kitchen, a program that delivers food to the elderly and those unable to acquire or prepare it themselves. It also operates Clover’s only homeless shelter, as well as a thrift store to fund that shelter.

Pastor Thompson regards himself as 75 years young, and strains to do more with and for his church. At the service Churchspotting witnessed there was talk of raising a new church building with an adjoining education center. On the subject of Church and State, Pastor Thompson said that the church should be left alone, and should not be legislated by the government. He cited legislation against prayer in school as an example of such activity. He was himself on a local committee to organize ‘biblical release’ programs in area schools, in which students with parental release forms received religious instruction during the school day.

2012
01/22
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Trinity Bible Church, Pt. 1 – Visited on 1/15/11

Trinity Bible Church sits at the corner of Cherry and Myrtle in downtown Rock Hill, a two-story hulk of red brick crowned by a slim white steeple.  Cherry is an arterial route the strip malls, drive-thru banks and fast food joints of Rock Hill.  There is a certain honesty in its crass commerciality, from the Earth Fare green grocery store catering to students at nearby Winthrop University to the workers by the roadside advertising car sales and payday loans with garish costumes and cardboard signs.  Myrtle is different.

Myrtle winds back from its juncture with Cherry Road two blocks behind the storefronts and parking lots.  Trees and cheap housing screen Myrtle’s buildings from the scrum of commerce a hundred yards away.  Its houses are brick and whitewash, their porches framed by imitations of Grecian columns, fenced with walls if iron posts and red bricks.  Many vehicles slumber in their shaded driveways, and vines creep along their shadowed walls.

Trinity Bible Church stands at the collision of Rock Hill’s genteel, provincial past and its burgeoning commercial future.  Its windows are a rippling, bubbled glass, distorted to opacity.  From the outside they are blank, dull sheets; viewed from within, on a bright winter morning, they admit a hazy glow of blue and yellow light.

The sanctuary of Trinity Bible Church has the feel of some ancient Viking hall.  Double columns of pews march beneath a vaulted ceiling of dark wooden beams.  The airy space beneath its peaked roof is lit by electric lamps that dangle from on high, gleaming cylinders of metal and glass.  A solid wooden pulpit stands before the pews on a raised stage; a tiered choir loft rises behind it, while a grand piano sprawls in languor at stage right.

The morning service on January 15th at Trinity started at 11 AM, and its congregation was a punctual lot.  The vast majority arrived within five minutes of the call to worship.  They were an older group, gray heads in cardigans and suits, speckled here and there with younger couples and teenagers.  The young children spent the morning’s worship in Sunday Schools behind the sanctuary.

Once the congregation settled into Trinity’s broad wooden pews, the church choir started in with a medley of hymns.  The grand piano offered accompaniment, and a projector screen above the choir provided lyrics for the congregation to sing along.  After one song the congregation broke into a scrimmage of handshakes and ‘good mornings’ at the associate pastor’s command.  The pews that fill the sanctuary floor constricted the crowd’s movements; most worshippers shuffled a few yards in either direction, exchanging hugs and greetings with their neighbors.  Then the choir resumed, and their music called the crowd back to their seats.

After the last hymn Rev. Matthew James took the stage.  The senior pastor of Trinity, James announced that though the 15th was ‘Sanctity of Life Sunday,’ he would not lead that day’s sermon.  Instead, Trinity Bible Church hosted a guest when Churchspotting visited: a Dr. Steve Smith took James’ place behind the pulpit to speak to the congregation about his group, Digging Deep.

Smith described himself as a former Baptist pastor, formerly of Bob Jones University.  He showed a documentary on his group’s work and spoke to the congregation for the rest of the service, yet it remains difficult to say exactly what it is Digging Deep does.  News reports and documentation of the organization are scant.  Smith described it as a Christian organization created to provide American Christians access to historical sites in Israel related to scenes from the Bible.

As best Churchspotting can determine, Digging Deep organizes tours of sites they attribute to particular stories in Christian and Jewish scripture.  The group also plays some role in archaeological excavation of these sites.  They claim to have pinpointed the place where the Last Supper took place, down to where Jesus sat at the head of the table.  Dr. Smith also claimed his group had found the field from which the shepherds of the Christmas story saw the star over Bethlehem.

One of Digging Deep’s programs is Tefahk al Tefahk.  The group claims that the shepherds’ field is now threatened with development, and accepts donations to buy the land and turn it into a Biblical park.  Donators can contribute $77 towards the group to have a stone inscribed with their name set in the field, to represent their contribution to preserving the site.

Dr. Smith made repeated references to Biblical prophecy during his presentation to Trinity Bible Church.  He claimed that all the ritual machinery of worship at the Temple in Jerusalem must be restored before Biblical prophecies of the End Times can come to fruition.  He claimed that goal, realizing prophecy, as the motivation behind Digging Deep’s excavation and renovation of what the group claims are the Pools of Siloam, the ancient bath where classical Israelites washed before worshipping in the temple.

At the end of the service a special offering was taken up from the congregation to support Digging Deep.  As of this writing, the archaeological basis by which Digging Deep authenticates its claims remains unknown.  The provenance of the archaeologists presumably doing the authenticating also remains unknown.

2012
01/17
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Churchspotting Special Report: A Viewing of ‘One Nation Under God’ – Visited on 1/7/12

Today’s Churchspotting is something of a special event.  Rather than our traditional visit to a York County religious service, this week we feature a religious-political event held at the Filbert Presbyterian Church on Highway 321, between Clover, SC in the north and York to the south.

The event in question was a public showing of the film ‘One Nation Under God,’ a video aimed to mobilize evangelical Christians as voters for the 2012 elections.  The movie showing was not itself affiliated with Filbert Presbyterian Church, though their pastor did attend the event to watch.  Rather, it was put on by a weekly prayer group that meets at the Pork N More, a barbecue restaurant in York, every Monday.

According to a Mr. Duncan who spoke for the group, their venue was simply a matter of calling local churches to find one willing to let them use their space.  It was this same Mr. Duncan to whom I introduced myself at the entrance to the venue, where he was greeting attendees at the door.  He asked whether I was Christian before I entered.

The viewing took place in the community hall of Filbert Presbyterian.  Both the church proper and the hall were modest buildings of red brick, with any woodwork in their facades picked out in white paint.  Inside, the hall was a yawning, airy space of white walls and arched ceilings.  From the kitchen near its entrance and the mobile basketball goals sequestered in a corner, the hall’s more regular uses appeared to be sports and community meals.

Well over fifty locals gathered to watch the film that Saturday morning.  The vast majority were older or elderly, though a handful of younger adults arrived with children in tow.  A few of the attendees were recognizable as members of churches visited previously by Churchspotting, including a few from Divine Saviour Catholic Church.  As it was not an official church function, dress varied with the attendees’ preference.

The showing of ‘One Nation Under God’ lasted approximately three hours, including an intermission between the film’s two halves.  Though it was shown in a Presbyterian church, the film’s intended audience was explicitly ‘evangelical Christians.’  The film premiered in mid-November of 2011 in Evangelical churches throughout the US and it references the evangelical movement by name throughout its presentation.

The film was fairly straightforward in its goal.  Its host was Bill Dallas, a former California real estate developer who founded the Church Communication Network, a satellite broadcast company, after serving a five year prison term for embezzlement.  Dallas introduced himself in the film as the CEO of United in Purpose, a non-profit organization with the stated end of mobilizing evangelical voters for the 2012 election.  He then introduced Champion the Vote, a campaign started by United in Purpose to find unregistered evangelical voters, register them, and ensure they voted in the 2012 elections for what he called “the agenda of the lamb.”

Three core issues comprise the “agenda of the lamb,” as presented by Dallas and other speakers in “One Nation Under God.”  First and foremost is putting an end to abortion in the United States.  The other issues are, second, support for ‘traditional marriage,’ i.e. between one man and one woman; and third, support for Christian influence and practice in public, daily life.

To support these issues “One Nation Under God” brought on speakers who included evangelical historian David Barton, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, and Dr. James Dobson, founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family.  Each of these in turn voiced support for making Christian values, as embodied in the three issues listed above, central to American public and political life.

During the intermission pastor Matthew James of Trinity Bible Church in Rock Hill spoke to the audience.  He asked attendees to call on their pastors to get involved in politics, both national and local.  He added that should their pastors be worried about ‘attention from the IRS” as a consequence of political involvement they should seek out a program called SC Renewal Project, an organization that hosts conferences for pastors, including paid hotel stays on-site.

2012
01/08
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