Two Year
Ministry Plan

One of our Outreach partners is Jasmine Road—a two-year residential program for adult women survivors of human trafficking, prostitution, and addiction. We are excited to tell you about a new way we are helping Jasmine Road grow their ministry this year.

Grace Church has donated $115,000 to help renovate a second home for Jasmine Road residents. This new home will triple their capacity so they can serve significantly more women by providing a loving, safe community where they can heal, learn life skills, and move towards independence. Some members of Grace are also donating their time and skills as contractors to help with this renovation project. We are also thankful for other churches and organizations in the community that are joining us to support Jasmine Road—NewSpring, Fellowship Greenville, North Hills Church, and Bon Secours Mercy Health have all donated funds towards this home.

What a blessing to see our community come together to support women in need. If you’re interested in supporting Jasmine Road, you can shop their registry to help furnish this second home! Click below to see what they need.

Over the past few months, three young men on our staff have moved from a position of minister to pastor, a role that involves carrying more significant weight and responsibility. Daniel Black is now the Campus Pastor at our Spartanburg campus, Scofield Foster is the Campus Pastor at our Downtown campus, and Turner Vaughn is a GroupLife and Worship Pastor at our Harrison Bridge campus.

These men have been discipled at Grace over a period of time and have undergone rigorous training, increased responsibility, and growth in maturity. Part of the responsibility of the local church is to establish leaders, and we are thankful to see God’s hand at work in the lives of these men. Please join us in praying for them in their new roles at Grace Church and celebrating God’s hand of blessing on our congregation.

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 the video below to learn more about them!

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 the video below to learn more about them!

Men’s Roundtable is a ministry of Grace Church that provides discipleship and biblical instruction for our men to be responsible for the people and situations that God brings into their lives. We recently launched a brand new version of our core teaching, Authentic Manhood. Over 800 men across all campuses participated in this study, and it was exciting to see our guys come together and learn from God’s Word and sound teaching in community with each other. A few men had this to say after experiencing the new study:

“I feel like I’m able to better recognize passivity vs. self-reliance in practical ways in different parts of my life, and now I can focus on bringing balance through dependence on God and moving toward what I am responsible for.”

“I can think daily about who/what I am responsible for and how I can move towards that person or thing. I will also move forward thinking much more about my story and how it affects my life. . . I can do all of this knowing that while I need to move, I still need to ask God for help, and it's encouraging to know that I can do that.”

What an encouragement to hear how God is working in the lives of men at Grace Church! To learn more about Men’s Roundtable or sign up for a study, click below:

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!