Aiken’s First Baptist Church in Aiken, South Carolina, was empty. During the work week, the church’s classrooms, fellowship hall and family ministry center stood unused. The configuration of the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning system required heating and cooling an entire building to accommodate the church’s small preschool.
As the congregation considered ways to make the facilities more efficient, member Vicky McCullough said, “These talks led to dreaming and some excitement began to be generated.” They concluded what the church needed was bigger than just a renovation. “We realized we needed to figure out exactly what we needed to do, which led to discussions about who we are and what we’re doing in this place at the corner of York and Richmond.”
The hope was to transform FBC into a “seven day a week city-centered church.” It was then that senior pastor John Carrol turned to CBF’s Thriving Congregations Initiative. “The world has changed, and the church was designed to fit into a world that is no longer here. We have to change our systems to be responsive to the world around us.”
Funded by a one-million-dollar grant from the Lilly Foundation, Thriving Congregations leads churches to learn how to cultivate Compelling Clarity, Faithful Agility, Holy Tenacity, Rooted Relationships and Dynamic Collaboration—the traits necessary for congregations to thrive in their unique ministry settings.
During the Thriving Congregations process, the team from Aiken’s FBC evaluated how successfully their church lived out each of the traits. “We can draw up all the blueprints we want, but the reality is, if we don’t address the problems within the system, there’s only a certain amount of moving forward we can do,” said Matt Waller, the minister to children and families.
They found the congregation was weakest in Faithful Agility, their ability to innovate in the face of change. “One of the reasons was because we only adapted when we were forced to do so instead of being proactive,” Carrol said. Although improving the church’s Faithful Agility would be challenging, the team from Aiken was not discouraged. “This is one I think has strong theological ties to it,” Waller said. “When you read the Bible, it’s full of people who knew life one way and the Holy Spirit directs them in a completely different way.”
Once a church identifies a problem, the next step in the Thriving Congregation process is brainstorming a possible solution. Then the congregation conducts a “holy experiment” to address the problem.
For Waller, holy experiments are just as much about intent as they are the actual change. “The idea of holy experiments for our church is readjusting our posture…as Christians, we should always hold ourselves to live into whatever the next new thing the Spirit might be moving us towards.”
Now, Aiken’s FBC is using what they learned from Thriving Congregations as they live into their calling to be that “seven-day-a-week city-centered church.” After speaking with members, residents, the churched and unchurched in their community, the congregation is considering transforming areas of their campus into spaces that would better serve the needs of those in downtown Aiken.
They also hope to make Sunday morning worship more welcoming and accessible through changes in the worship service and the sanctuary. “As we adapt and change, our north star stays the same,” Carrol said. “The God that tabernacled in the wilderness will tabernacle with us wherever we are.”
Such an ambitious project will require Faithful Agility on the part of the congregation. But members like McCullough are excited about the coming changes. “It is bold and only obtainable through God’s power, not ours.”