Before I first visited the Greenville Campus in 2006, I would drive by its signs on Roper Mountain Extension and wonder why anyone would name anything—much less a church—in Greenville, SC, “Seacoast.” Despite what Hurricane Helene’s recent ravages to the city might suggest, it’s nowhere near a sea or a coast.
Greenville is a vibrant, upcoming city situated in the northwest part of South Carolina—around two hours (give or take, depending on where you’re starting and ending) from both Charlotte, NC, and Atlanta, GA. Seated at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it boasts rolling, tree-covered hills. Born and raised here, I’m a bit biased, but I think it’s a beautiful, friendly place to live.
How It Started
This year is our campus’s 20th anniversary, so I asked how it got started in our city. The short version is that Pastor Chris Surratt felt called to start a church, and a number of people who had previously lived in Mount Pleasant and attended Seacoast had moved to Greenville and were praying and clamoring for a campus.
The Greenville Campus began as a small group. Each week, they would gather at a different house.
In 2003, the campus began as a small group. Pastor Chris would drive up to Greenville from Charleston on Saturday nights to sleep on a huge, fluffy, white chair at Scott and Deborah Derrick’s house to host the group on Sunday evenings. Each week, they would gather in the den of a different house. They ate together, and Chris played acoustic guitar and then presented a DVD of Seacoast’s previous week’s message.
Chris ended each meeting with, “Next week, we’ll be at so-and-so’s house. Invite your friends. If we get traction, this could be a campus. If not, we gave it a good try.”
Church in the Party Room
As numbers grew, they moved their meetings to Sunday mornings in a room at the Pavilion above the ice-skating rink. Kids were on one side and adults were on the other with curtains in between.
Chris says, “The Pavilion had hockey tournaments during our service. We heard whistles, curses, and people banging against the boards. The room was always sticky, messy, and smelled because it was the party room, and it never really got cleaned. But it was a great time of bonding. God sent us more people than we thought we were going to have.”
The campus officially launched with 315 people at the Expo Center on August 21, 2004. It stayed there three weeks. Next was Greenville Little Theatre downtown for six months. Then, Langston Charter Middle School was our home for three years, but we outgrew that space. We moved to a church building in Simpsonville, but the building was in bad shape.
Over 20 years, the campus has made several moves before landing on a shared space within a school.
Pastor Ross White was the Campus Pastor at that point, and his wife, Misty, worked as a teacher at Carolina Preparatory Academy, the school that took over the former Langston Charter building. She suggested returning to hold services there.
Pastor Ross said, “Absolutely not. You don’t take people back where they were and tell them they’re moving forward.”
However, it ended up being the best option. At the last service in Simpsonville, Ross told people, “There’s a truck out back. Grab a chair and take it to the truck on the way out.” We spent the whole week moving back in so we could have our service the next Sunday. We are still there, sharing the building with the school, but looking for a permanent location to call our home.
In Need of a Permanent Home
Not many churches can lack a permanent home for twenty years and remain the life-giving community that the Greenville Campus is. No matter our location, we welcome people into a comfortable, loving atmosphere. Our services lift us up each week with Spirit-filled, contemporary worship combined with Seacoast’s practical, biblical teachings. I am proud to invite women from the monthly birthday parties we host at Shepherd’s Gate homeless shelter, knowing they will experience Jesus’ love as much as everyone else. And that’s what I think a true Christian church should be like.
Amy Scott, who met her husband, Jay, at our campus says, “Seacoast Greenville has been an active part of our entire lives. It was where we met. It’s where we raise our kids and where we have made lifelong friends. We have given of ourselves and our time for sure, but we have gotten so much more. We have always been cared for and loved, and we know that we always have somewhere to turn when things get hard.”
This year, Seacoast Greenville is celebrating twenty years of not just being a campus, but of being a family. And a family is a family no matter what name it has or what place it calls home.
If you’d like to support our Greenville Campus finding a permanent home, please visit Greenville Campus Project.
