The Upstate Church Collective

Hey Griggs Family,

I wanted to make you aware of an awesome program a couple of our leaders are participating in this year called The Upstate Church Collective.

UCC was started by Fellowship Greenville and Summit Church for the purpose of “Equipping church leaders with the character and competency for faithful, lifelong ministry.”

During this first track, the focus is especially on lay-leaders.

Every other Sunday night, some leaders from five churches gather to hear and discuss a topic of biblical church leadership. We break up into small groups and talk about how that topic applies to our specific churches.

Throughout the 10-month program, each leader is coached and encouraged to be the strongest leader they can be. Josh Moll and I (Pastor Mitch) are the coaches for our Griggs folks.

Though this is beneficial for every lay leader in the church, the collective wants to identify people who are called to plant and revitalize churches and help them do so by both training them and helping them raise support.

So the future could entail more gospel-preaching churches planted and re-planted across the upstate. It’s amazing to think about what could happen when churches collaborate.

My hope is that this will help some of our leaders feel more confident in their spiritual gifting and abilities as they serve Griggs. And who knows, maybe one of our young seminary guys can one day revitalize a church just like Griggs, in a mill village like Poe Mill, with a team of people and some funding from the other churches participating!

We have a handful of our leaders attending the Sunday night sessions already, but we can bring another group through the program next year too.

So let us know if you have any questions. It’s all new, but we’re glad to be along for the ride.

• Pastor Mitch