Sherri Wilson was intrigued by First Baptist Simpsonville for two reasons. First, she had heard from co-workers and friends that exciting things were happening at the South Carolina church. Second, she noticed that every Sunday a line formed around the block for people to file in for the service.
“I thought, What’s going on in there that’s so great?” says Wilson, who finally decided to check it out for herself. She immediately saw—and felt—the difference. “People were so committed to the Lord and what he was calling them to do.”
That was 20 years ago. Now Wilson serves on the personnel team for the renamed First Baptist Simpsonville/Upstate Church. She was also part of the church’s search committee that called Wayne Bray to be their lead pastor in 2015.
“The minute Pastor Bray opened his mouth to preach, I believed the Lord was saying, This is the one,” says Wilson.
Founded in 1888, FBC Simpsonville was a steady local church until 10 years ago. Although the congregation had grown over time, they experienced a seven-year decline due to an identity crisis.
“Church leaders and members had great ideas and were trying to achieve them all. Although it was a wonderful church, it was not strategically aimed toward a singular destination,” says Bray. “As a result, we didn’t know who we were.”
Before he was called to the church, FBC Simpsonville had five campuses, but they weren’t cohesive, intentional or strategic.
“Wherever God was moving they threw a campus at it, but it was disconnected,” explains Bray.
When he came on board, Bray broadened the church’s focus to include the entire upstate area, which is an 11-county region of northwest South Carolina. The church officially changed its name and expanded their mission.
“We didn’t violate or abandon our heritage but just really built on top of it in a multigenerational, leaning-forward philosophy,” says Bray.
In 2016, all but one campus was essentially shut down and the people were reintegrated into the main body. Then the church began to relaunch campuses with a consistent, standardized identity and a clear focus on disciple making. This new focus attracted a torrent of people.
“It was like we were standing there expecting to be drinking from a water fountain and God turned on a fire hydrant,” reports Wilson, who, along with her family, felt called to be disciple makers by relocating to a different campus to help grow it. Soon that new location exploded, and they felt called to move yet again to launch a third campus.
Pastor Bray commended Wilson for being a church planter, even though she doesn’t consider herself one. “I said, ‘Sherri, you’ve been at three campuses. Your family has gone all in with what God is doing. You’re putting your comfort aside and going to where God is calling you. That’s church planting.’”
Wilson, who is in her 60s, absolutely loves seeing young adults who are hungry for discipleship and eager to know God. “These young professionals and kids just out of college are looking for their place in the church. Single young adults are the fastest growing demographic, which is wonderful and exciting.”
“We are a weird church in a good way,” says Bray, noting that while the younger demographic is rapidly growing, the church still has one traditional worship service with a choir and orchestra, that represents 10% of the total church attendance.
Though it is only one of the church’s 21 worship services across nine locations, “the traditional core is still seen as the foundation of our church,” adds Bray. “I think that’s such a unique thing because you hear stories that you either lose the foundation when you’re reaching new people or you don’t reach new people to keep your foundation.”
Of their campuses, six of the nine have been borne out of mergers with churches that were struggling but now are healthy and growing. For instance, the Haywood campus has grown from 40 people to 720 in average weekend attendance in just two years.
Keeping up with the pace of expansion from a leadership perspective has been challenging, which led the church to embrace an intentional process of leadership development. They have a team of 12 teaching pastors who rotate around the locations, and their worship teams rotate, too. This led them to create Pastoral Pathways, where they train pastors so that they can discover and develop preachers and worship leaders for future campus expansion.
Bray maintains that God has organically been building and evolving their church year after year. He recently read St. Augustine’s statement that says, “God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.”
“The best thing we’ve done,” he adds, “has been getting out of God’s way, raising the sails, and letting him decide what happens next.”
FIRST BAPTIST SIMPSONVILLE | UPSTATE CHURCH
Simpsonville, South Carolina
Pastor: Wayne Bray
Website: FBSimpsonville.org
Denomination: Southern Baptist
Founded: 1888
Fastest-Growing: 86