Two Year
Ministry Plan

Grace Church foster families recently attended special training on Trust-Based Relational Intervention by Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development. This training was aimed towards not only helping foster parents understand the relationship histories of children from “hard places" but also to give parents tools to move forward and deepen connections with them. This training will be moderated by Kelly Childress, a practitioner of Trust-Based Relational Intervention who was trained at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development. Goals for this training were to: gain knowledge and insight about what secure attachment looks like between children and caregivers, learn helpful ways to build a connection with children who come from hard places and did not have secure attachment, understand the impact attachment history can have on children’s behavior, gain insight and awareness about how our own attachment history influences the way we care for children, and learn appropriate proactive strategies to empower children with behavioral tools.

On November 11, over 100 of our church family gathered together to learn more about one of our ministry partners, Homes of Hope, and how we can serve them.

Homes of Hope is working to provide foundational, safe environments for low to moderate-income families in the Upstate. By providing affordable, energy-efficient rental and homeownership options, their clients can now afford housing and power bills. Supplemented by Homes of Hope’s financial wellness program, affordable housing gives families the freedom of a disposable income so that they can begin saving and investing.

At Meet Homes of Hope, we shared several opportunities to serve with this ministry. If you missed the night and are interested in serving, click below.

That's a wrap on Fusion, 24Seven, and Forge Fall Weekends! Each ministry had a weekend retreat together where they spent time playing games, worshiping, sitting under biblical teaching geared towards their age group, and hanging out with their small groups at host homes. 5th-6th grade students learned about the power of our words to bring life or bring death, 7th-8th grade talked through their identity and significance that can only be truly found in Jesus, and our high school students were taught on humility and what it looks like to find freedom from performance in what Christ has already done for us. All the teaching from Fall Weekends is now available to you! Click below to watch.

When most people think of Mosaic, our ministry to those in our church family with special needs, they mostly think of our ministry on Sundays to adults, students, and children. However, we have the joy of serving adults and students during the week, as well. One of those components is our monthly supper club! Each month, a different community group brings dinner and joins our students and adults for fellowship and a meal together. This gives parents of adults and students with disabilities time to go out to dinner, and it gives our church family time to fellowship together. One of the goals is for our families with disabilities to feel supported and be strengthened by the community they have with each other and with our church as a whole. To learn more or figure out how you can volunteer, contact Madison Carithers, administrative assistant for Mosaic, at [email protected]

A couple of weeks ago, Grace hosted a breakfast for the Greenville Behavioral Health Coalition. This was a great time to learn about how to remove barriers related to mental health stigma and access to care. Faith leaders from across the Upstate were able to come together as one to hear from educators and speakers on this crucial topic. Leaders were also equipped with varying community resources at information desks that helped to broaden everyone's support network.

Because of the lack of biblical resources in Spanish, our desire is to create discipleship opportunities to fill that gap and translate studies as necessary. We have now translated all four of our Ezer studies for women—most recently, the A Woman’s Words study. Doris Bickel, from our Downtown staff, is traveling to Nicaragua to teach the female staff of our partners, Christ for the City International (CFCI), and some pastor's wives as well. Our goal is to equip the CFCI staff to teach this material in their churches and in nearby towns where they have relationships built.

We recently visited Leath Correctional with 25 of our volunteers and staff for a women's conference on finding freedom from shame. 60 Jumpstart participants learned that they did not have to be bound by the shame of their past but instead could experience true freedom found in Jesus Christ.

We recently held a conference for some of our women who are leading in our church through Re|engage, re:generation, care ministries, our Ezer ministry, Grace Church Students, and more. We trained our leaders on "Active Listening" and "How to Create Trauma-Safe Spaces", and we announced updates on new materials and resources. We also had several organizations from our community join us to be part of a ministry fair to provide additional resources!

A group (pictured below) left Friday, September 27, to help run a conference for local missionaries in Papua New Guinea. We will be there for two weeks leading worship, teaching, and equipping these men, women, and children as they continue to pour out to the people in Papua New Guinea. Please pray with us that it would be a time of encouragement and nourishment for these missionaries. Click below to learn more from Matt Williams, one of our teaching pastors.

We value the individual passions and strengths of our members and believe that God intends to use them to build his kingdom both here and around the world.

Missions Grants is a funding program that invites our members to apply for yearly grants of $1000-2500 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. Applications for this round closed on October 10.

Click "Learn More & Apply" to find a list of current recipients and what they are doing with their grants, FAQ's, more details, and a section to apply.

Please also consider ways you can personally support, pray for, and encourage our members as they are serving.

"We held this conference to present the gospel in a clear, practical way to our Hispanic culture. After reading the book Craving Grace by Ruthie Delk, I was so impacted by this material that we decided to start the process of translating the book. We are always in need of good resources in Spanish, and our culture is also in need of a good, biblical foundation of what the gospel is and how it can impact every area of our lives and those around us. Ruthie trained me and 20 leaders from our three Grace en Español campuses.

120 women attended. We had ladies from our 3 Spanish-speaking campuses, from other churches, the Catholic church, and some that don't go to church. Friday night we talked about how we live like orphans instead of daughters, lies we believe about God, the idols we run to, and what repentance really is. Saturday morning we talked about sin, we presented the gospel, and we talked about how we can rest in the truth that God loves us. We started working beneath the surface to identify rotten fruit in our lives, lies, idols, and the soil of our story." —Nathalie Richard

This coming week we are going to dig deeper by studying the book in our 8-week women's studies. If you or a friend is Spanish-speaking and want to join a group, click here to register to be a part of one!

We sent a team to Puerto Rico for the first time in August and it was a great trip! They served alongside Hunger Corp. to assist in building and restoring homes for victims of Hurricane Maria. We already have teams set for a November 2019 trip and February 2020 trip as well. Please be praying for these teams and for our friends in Puerto Rico during hurricane season. 

To learn more about our partnership in Puerto Rico and see dates for upcoming trips, click below.

One of our partners, JumpStart, was recently featured on the Greenville News, telling the story of a couple of men who have been impacted by the program and the ministry's efforts. JumpStart’s ministry focuses on long-term discipleship of men and women currently in prison and those recently released. The discipleship program is led by program graduates inside prisons and is supplemented by volunteers.

The Greenville News article begins with the story of Don Williams, who, in 2003, "was days away from finishing a year-long sentence for a drug trafficking charge at the Broad River Correctional Facility when he got a call from his sister. His oldest brother, who had been released from the same prison a few months before, overdosed on heroin after eight years clean, triggering a fatal heart attack . . ."

We are committed to supporting orphans and vulnerable children in our community in numerous ways, including supporting the DSS staff who tirelessly serve the children and their families. Recently, we collaborated with Alfmeier Friedrichs & Rath and the Greenville Foster Parent Association to refurbish the Greenville County DSS visitation rooms to help provide clean, durable, and welcoming spaces that foster an encouraging atmosphere for children, their families, and staff.

Click below to learn about different ways you can support fostering and adoptive families.

We are not only a multilingual church but strive to be a multicultural church as well, as we step into a growing and changing area in the Upstate. Our Grace en Español congregations continue to meet in three different locations weekly (Harrison Bridge, Spartanburg, and Taylors) with over 250 people in attendance. Throughout the Grace en Español congregations, we have 17 countries represented.

Click below as Robby Richards, our Grace en Español Campus Pastor, introduces this idea to our church at large. If you or someone you know is bilingual or Spanish-speaking, you can access all of our Spanish teaching here or on our Grace Church app.

Welcome home, Greer and Anderson campuses! Both of these congregations have moved in to permanent buildings. Watch the video below to catch a glimpse of Sunday mornings in their new homes!

We are trying to equip and motivate our members to get involved in someone else's life, meet their needs, and help them grow in their relationship with Christ. With this lens, we have made several decisions of how to best use our finances as a church. Please watch this financial update from David Delk for all the details.

Continuing a partnership started 16 years ago, we are excited to launch a new three-year Grace Institute Nicaragua. Tom Fowler and Herson Lopez will be training approximately 70 pastors & leaders in Chinandega, Nicaragua from August 26-30. To kickoff the new set of classes, the participants will go through 2 studies: 1) Soteriology; and 2) Survey of Genesis. These classes help set the foundation for the curriculum to be executed over the next 36 months. Our teams are excited to return to Chinandega, as it takes us back to our "roots". The first Grace Church team to serve in Nicaragua spent a week serving in a local church in Chinandega, and the city is also the childhood home of the Christ for the City International - Nicaragua Directors, Fabricio & Claudia Mendoza.