Resurrection Greenville

Johnathan Davis was part of Leaders Collective’s eighth church planter cohort (2021-2022). He serves as the pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC.

We planted Resurrection on the eastern-edge of downtown Greenville, South Carolina in April of 2021. Our heart was to see God do a new work at the crossroads of a few very different neighborhoods, each of which had a distinct and historic identity, yet never crossed paths with each other. We believed the gospel of Jesus Christ could bring these different people and neighborhoods together.

We had no idea if this was possible or what it would look like, but three years in, God has given us a glimpse of the power of the gospel through Steve and Alex.

Steve grew up in a well-off but broken home. Addiction and divorce plagued his family. He tried to escape the pain through the party scene in college, but it didn’t do the trick. He was a promising accounting student who got recruited to a top accounting firm in Greenville by one of our church members, Kevin. Kevin took Steve under his wing both at work and socially. Soon enough, Steve began attending worship at Resurrection in the gym of the community center. Over the course of the next year, through Kevin’s friendship, the welcome of our church family, and the preaching of the Word, Steve came to faith in Christ. It has been an unspeakable joy to watch the Lord transform Steve’s life. Today, Steve serves on our music team and helps out with our youth group.

Alex arrived at Resurrection in a very different way. In his early 50s, in and out of prison and homelessness, Alex was walking by the community center one Sunday before worship when one of our more bold church members called out to him and invited him to join us for church. Surprisingly, Alex agreed. His first Sunday he sat in the back of the gym. We were able to chat briefly after the service. I was sure I’d never see him again, but he came back the next week…and the next week. Alex continued to sit in the back of the gym, so I told him (insisted) one day, “sit up here with the rest of us, you’re a part of us.” This began a beautiful and complicated relationship with Alex that has included giving him a Bible and spiritual counsel, providing funds to help meet practical needs, serving as references to get him off the street and into an apartment, and most recently, weekly visits to his jail cell. While we’ve seen the Holy Spirit doing good work in Alex, he continues to find himself in and out of trouble. And maybe most interestingly, some of God’s most pointed work yet has happened during these past three months of his incarceration. During our visits he talks about how he’s never read the Bible or prayed like he has recently, that he’s never been humbled like this, and that he can’t wait to get back to his church family when he gets out of jail.

To have Steve and Alex sitting in the same row of foldout chairs in the gym for worship each Sunday is the reason we planted Resurrection. Praise God for his kindness in allowing us to be a part of the new work he’s doing here. Please pray that God continues to do this work in our surrounding neighborhoods. Pray that we’d be faithful to minister to both the up-and-coming and the down-and-out.