Two Year
Ministry Plan

Check out these awesome summer interns! Be sure to say hi when you see them around. They’ll be with us until August, working with various ministries and campuses while serving and taking internship classes. Click below to watch a video and learn a little bit about them!

Mosaic is our special needs and disabilities ministry, and our staff and volunteers do an amazing job supporting all our Mosaic families. Caring for a family member with a disability can be challenging in the best of circumstances, so we want to create space for families to connect with one another, enjoy community, and get some time to recharge.

Each month, we host events like Respite Night, Parents’ Night Out, and Supper Clubs. Through these events, we strive to come alongside our Mosaic families with love and support, give them opportunities to rest and recharge while they know their children are being cared for, and simply show the love of Christ. Plus, our times together are always fun and full of exciting activities like bowling, learning about animals, and good food!

We hope you will join us in praying for our Mosaic families, volunteers, and staff. If you’re interested in learning more about Mosaic or becoming a volunteer, click below!

This past month, 10 Grace Church members went on our first post-pandemic mission trip to Puerto Rico! We were thrilled to have our feet on the ground and be able to work in person with our ministry partners once more. Team members worked in partnership with Hunger Corp to help rebuild a home in Dorado that was damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2018. On our coming mission trips in July and August, we will continue working in Dorado to help their community rebuild homes and restore small businesses.

Our team was also able to worship with fellow believers at a local church. Another great connection was with Joel, a resident whose home had been devastated and rebuilt by teams in 2019-20. It was exciting for a few team members who had been on both trips to see the fruit of their labor and Joel's huge smile!

We are blessed to see God work through our members to serve others. But we are further blessed to see how God worked in the hearts of our team members. A few of them had this to say about their experience:

"I learned to invest in the people I am with and the people around me. Sometimes we focus on the project and getting it accomplished versus really investing in the souls of others that are around us. People over projects!"

"I saw that God can use me even when I thought my skill set didn't match the calling. If God is speaking, go!"

"A mission trip is more than a vehicle for sharing the gospel. It's an opportunity for God to work on your own heart."

Please join us in celebrating what God has done and praying for the next two mission trips that will take place this summer. If you are interested in applying to join a mission trip this summer, click below to learn more!

As we prepare for another summer of ministry through Camp Impact in Allendale County, we were able to host a retreat for our Junior Staff! This year, our Junior Staff consists of 12 Grace members from Forge and 12 students (all past campers) from Allendale County. These young people will be paid staff members who run Camp Impact—a faith-based summer camp for kids in Allendale County.

The retreat was in Greenville and brought the Junior Staff team together for a weekend of teaching, team bonding, and camp planning. It was a time for the team to get to know one another and begin to create community, even when they come from various backgrounds. The Allendale students were able to attend a Grace Downtown service for the first time as well.

The leaders of the retreat were 2021 Camp Staff members as well as past Camp Staff members who have built relationships with these students and families. As we celebrate our 5th year of Camp Impact, it was a great weekend to celebrate how God has been moving through the Junior Staff program and the lives of Grace members who have worked at camp.

Please join us in praying for a fruitful summer in Allendale—that staff members and volunteers would reflect Christ as they work together to love the community!

With nine campuses across the Upstate, Grace Church is constantly growing and changing. We are excited to share some new renovations that are nearly complete at our Spartanburg campus! Construction crews have been busy adding a multipurpose room at the rear of the worship center, upgrading offices, and adding restrooms in the former lobby area. In the future, we will also be able to add a mezzanine level above these new restrooms. These improvements should be polished up and ready to enjoy by mid-June! To learn more about our Spartanburg campus, click below.

For the past month, our campuses have been hosting Just Serve days and showing up to support local partners, community organizations, and members of Grace Church. Over 1,000 members served at more than 65 sites to do whatever was needed—painting, landscaping, moving furniture, sorting and organizing, completing special projects, collecting trash, and more. We’ve served foster and adoptive families, those in recovery, vulnerable children, single parents, seniors in assisted living, incarcerated and returning citizens, local school partners, and the broader community.

The highlight of Just Serve is coming alongside our neighbors and letting them know that Grace Church is here for them. We want to further the work of Christ in our community, and Just Serve is one opportunity to do that. Thank you to all who coordinated and led their campuses—and to those who invested their time and energy in serving. To learn more about Outreach opportunities at Grace, click below!

This past month, we were able to host Equip: Creating a Culture of Discipleship—a two-day conference designed to provide fellow ministry leaders with training and resources that have helped us make discipleship a high priority at Grace Church. Over 70 ministry leaders from SC and six other states attended Equip, and it was such a blessing to connect with fellow churches and to work collaboratively towards building the Kingdom of God through discipleship.

Pastors and ministry leaders from Grace hosted workshops and training sessions covering topics of community, worship, generosity, gender studies, leadership development, and more. These sessions were not only helpful in equipping other leaders, but they were also great reminders of why we do what we do. Many other churches have poured into Grace over the years, and we are blessed to be able to do the same for others. We hope you will celebrate this opportunity with us and pray for continued unity and fellowship with other churches in our area!

Senior Honor is our elder care ministry, and we are excited to share that we are now partnering with nine different facilities across the Upstate—The Gardens (PL), The Woodlands at Furman (TR), Eden Terrace (SP), NHC (PL), Senior Action Greenville (TL), Brookdale Brushy Creek (GR), Oakview Park (PV), Fairview Park (HB), and Dominion Senior Living (AN). Many of these facilities are opening back up to our volunteers after a year of lockdown due to the pandemic, and we are thrilled to see our friends in person once more.

Each of our campuses provides support to our Senior Honor members and facility staff through encouragement such as meals, notes, care packages, and gift cards. We are also back to holding services at several locations. A new facet of our ministry that we’re excited to see develop is engagement with students! Student ministries at a few of our campuses are beginning to serve in Senior Honor, and we know this provides unique opportunities for both our students and our Senior Honor members.

There are many other ways that we’re supporting, encouraging, and engaging our Senior Honor members, and we would love for you to join us. Please pray for this ministry, and if you’re interested in volunteering, click below to learn how you can participate!

One facet of our Outreach ministry is Missions Grants. Missions Grants is a funding program that invites our members to apply for yearly grants of $1,000-2,500 to support specific projects or programs of their personal ministry. Recipients receive financial support as well as personal encouragement, ministry development, and a communication platform.

We want to take the opportunity to share two updates about our Missions Grants recipients! Mills Village Farms is an organization with a vision to transform communities by developing successful youth entrepreneurs through sustainable agriculture and educational empowerment. They were able to use their grant to build a new drying shed to help safely dry their crops.

Another recipient is GirlUp GVL, which exists to serve under-resourced middle school and high school girls in Greenville, SC through experience, enrichment, and empowerment. With the support of their grant, they were able to host cooking classes!

We hope you will celebrate these ministries with us and take some time to pray that they would be able to continue serving our community effectively. To learn more about Missions Grants and other recipients, click below.

After most of our students retreats last year got cancelled due to the pandemic, we were overjoyed to be able to host retreats for all our high school students this spring! Over 500 students and small group leaders participated in our high school retreats at Carolina Point this past month.

Our 9th and 10th graders engaged the idea of “energy” on their retreat—exploring the ways they can manage and deploy their energy for the glory of God. On the 11th and 12th grade retreat, students focused on the topic of “family.” They learned about and discussed what it means to be part of the God’s family and to unite around the mission of the Church.

What a blessing for these students to sit under biblical teaching, worship together, grow in the community of their small groups, and just enjoy one another! We are so thankful for the growth and life change that was sparked on these retreats, and we hope you’ll join us in praying for our students, their families, and their leaders. To learn more about Grace students, click below.

Over the six weeks before Easter, over 1,000 people participated in Marriage Matters: From Conflict to Connection. This class, taught by David and Ruthie Delk, was designed to help couples not only understand the root of their conflict, but also to point each other to Christ as they grow in oneness as a married couple.

Some of the participants had this to say about what they learned:

“Working on a marriage is much like dealing with an illness. If you only focus on fixing the symptoms, you never really find a cure for the disease.”

“I learned that no matter how broken your marriage has become, it's never too late to recognize it, communicate, and take action. Sometimes you find success through struggle, strength through strife, and simplicity through sacrifice.”

“The idols, wounds, and sins in my life don’t affect just me, but have a direct impact on my spouse and our relationship as well.”

“Our differences are ordained by God and for our growth and benefit.”

This is just a glimpse of how many couples have moved over the past weeks. We hope you will celebrate the growth that these couples have experienced and pray for marriages at Grace Church to continue to grow in oneness and in honoring God.

You can now access all of the Marriage Matters videos, handouts, and other materials online. Click below to learn more!

As we celebrated the resurrection of Christ this Easter Sunday, we also had the opportunity to rejoice with 58 members of Grace who were baptized across all of our campuses. Baptism is a beautiful picture of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and it is also an important step of obedience for a believer. We hope you’ll take a moment to watch this video and rejoice with each one of these men, women, teens, and children who identified with Christ through baptism. To learn more about baptism at Grace, click below.

Every year, the weekend before Easter, Grace Church Kids celebrates Seder with our Camp Grace students (grades 1-4). This celebration involves not only a lesson explaining the significance of Passover, but the children also get to participate in an actual Seder meal. They learn first hand about the different elements of the Seder meal, what they represented to Jews in Jesus’ time, and how they also hold significance for us as believers in Christ. As they eat the Karpas (parsley) dipped in salt water, they learn how the greens symbolize new life and the salt water symbolizes the tears of Israelites in their enslavement. The children also sample Matzah, Maror (horseradish), Charoset (applesauce), and grape juice. Just as the Jews celebrated the passover lamb’s atonement for their sins, so we also rejoice in the redemptive power of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

To learn more about Grace Church Kids, click below!

An important facet of our Care & Recovery ministry at Grace Church is re:generation. Re:generation is a 12-step discipleship process oriented around life change and hope through the application of God’s Word.

Over the past year, the isolation and disruption of the pandemic have had a significant negative impact on many who struggle with addiction. We have seen many who grapple with control, anger, pornography, and similar process addictions, as well as an increase in relapses to drug and alcohol addiction. We are so thankful that our re:gen ministry is in place to help those who are struggling in this way.

Re:gen has helped countless members of our church and community find help, support, and hope in Christ. We celebrate that this year alone, 130 people have graduated from the re:gen program. There are currently 360 participants and 30 mentors who are walking through this journey of hope and recovery.

We are also excited that re:gen is now available at our Pelham, Harrison Bridge, and Anderson campuses—we will also be launching soon in Powdersville! As you pray for this ministry, know that re:gen is not just for those struggling with addiction. It is for all who are broken and dealing with sin to find hope in the gospel—that is all of us. To learn more about re:gen, click below.

One of our partner organizations is Christ for the City International in Nicaragua. They have been working hard, along with local churches, to support the countless individuals who have been affected by the pandemic as well as recent hurricanes. Although we haven’t been able to travel to Nicaragua over the past year, we have closely partnered with our brothers and sisters in Nicaragua through prayer, virtual teaching, and financial support.

Through this partnership, we have been able to help provide food, water filters, clothing, medical assistance, and other vital supplies to those in need. Recently, our Nicaragua Partnership Lead Wes Cavin was able to have a conversation with Fabricio Mendoza, the director of the Christ for the City International Nicaragua base and get an update about how things are going. Watch a short clip from the update below. To watch the full conversation, click here, and to see related photos, click here.

One of our partners in Puerto Rico is Hunger Corp—a local Christian nonprofit organization that works to rebuild Puerto Rico well after natural disasters in a way that brings dignity to those who have experienced loss. Over the past two years, Grace has sent three teams to Puerto Rico, and Hunger Corp has helped train our volunteers and coordinate the work we do there so we can best serve local communities.

Last year, we were able to donate ten thousand dollars for them to purchase two shipping containers. These containers have been retrofitted to store basic supplies so locals can be prepared for the next hurricane season. Afterwards, the containers can be used as mobile shower units for people who have no access to water in the aftermath of a hurricane.

We are also excited to let you know that we have another mission team going to Puerto Rico on May 1! We hope you'll be in prayer for both our members on the team and the staff members of Hunger Corp as they work together to rebuild in Puerto Rico. Click below to watch a video from the folks at Hunger Corp as they tell about the work they are doing in local communities. If you’re interested in applying for a summer mission trip to Puerto Rico, click here.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been unable to send our usual mission teams to our outreach partners in Nicaragua. Thankfully, we have been able to pivot to virtual connections—proving that the fruitfulness of the gospel cannot be limited.

Using Zoom, we have been able to teach several courses—including Core Values of the Church and Leadership Values—and spend time helping pastors and leaders think through how best to lead their congregations during a global pandemic. More than 30 pastors and leaders participated in our video sessions each month and received training/equipping that helps them lead their churches and in their communities. What we learned over the past year is that while the significant benefit of in-person interaction was missed, the work God is doing through our teams in Nicaragua can still have an impact until he opens the doors for us to travel once again.

We hope you will join us in prayer for our brothers and sisters in Nicaragua. As we rejoice in the opportunity to connect with believers around the world, we pray that God would continue to expand his kingdom.

Mosaic—our special needs and disabilities ministry—has some exciting new curriculum offerings for our Mosaic families. We recently had our first group of ladies complete Mosaic Ezer, a six-week curriculum designed for women who have special needs. These women came together and learned in community what it means to be an ezer, made in the image of God and loved by our Creator.

We have also recently launched Mosaic Family Grace, which is a 17-week curriculum care group for parents who have children, teens, or adults with special needs. What a sweet opportunity for these families to come together, share their stories, and encourage each other in their unique journeys.

If you are interested in serving with our Mosaic ministry or would like to learn more, click below.