The buildings and grounds of any congregation reveal the values and priorities of the worshiping body. None more so than First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C., whose richness of visual symbols is celebrated in stained glass and a boldly designed worship center.

Perhaps, though, the church’s most prominent symbol now is not its elegant steeple, but rather the one-year-old Activities and Youth Ministry Center tucked away on the back of the church property. The AYMC with its open spaces and more-windows-than-walls speaks boldly of two commitments of the soon-to-be 180-year-old congregation: outreach to the community and environmental sustainability.

The commitment to outreach in the community is evidenced in the large number and diversity of people the new recreational facility is reaching. By hosting church league, Greenville Tech’s intramural and adult community pick-up basketball games, the facility has drawn people from the community to, and into relationship with, FBC.

Matt Rollins, activities minister and AYMC director, said interaction between the community and the congregation has tripled or quadrupled since the building has opened.

“If you come through that door, you are greeted by someone from behind this desk. And that’s an opportunity we’ve previously had on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. When this building opened, we’ve got that opportunity every day of the week,”Rollins said.

Responsible care for creation is also evidenced in the recently erected facility. “Coming to see that if we were going to expand our facility, we were going to have to do it responsibly…became a congregational commitment that cost it money—that cost it trouble—but that says this is a part of our Christian identity,” Jeff Rogers, senior pastor, said.

“That commitment was cultivated, considered, grew and came into being in the course of the planning, the thinking, the praying, the funding as we considered what this building needed to be, to do, to say,” Rogers said.

The Center also speaks deep concern and care with its open spaces, windows that invite one inside, lights controlled by movement sensors, life-giving colors, environmentally sound engineering—all symbols of a recently claimed commitment of a congregation with a rich history.

But perhaps the most striking symbol is the bridge that crosses the Reedy River and links the church property to the predominately African American neighborhood of Nicholtown. For a church featured in a giant picture at the Upstate Museum of History turning away African Americans in the 1960s, the bridge speaks volumes. 

The bridge, constructed by the city of Greenville, bears the name of Jeanne Lenhardt, an educator, civil rights activist and Spellman alumna whose grandfather was a long-serving pastor in Nicholtown, and who started attending FBC during the last seven to eight years of her life. At Lenhardt’s funeral, which took place at FBC, Rogers said the bridge, then under construction, should be named the Jeanne Lenhardt Bridge because she had crossed the river before the bridge was built. Now, because of Lenhardt’s legacy and the vision of the crafters of the AYMC, the river is being crossed more and more frequently. Additional efforts to interact with the Nicholtown community are being made possible through a program designed to prepare preschoolers for reading readiness that was launched this summer with seed funding from FBC.

The most recent addition to the FBC, Greenville campus embodies the values and priorities of the congregation—and its commitment to respond to the complexities and challenges of their setting. May their outreach to the community in which they are located and their commitment to environmental sustainability serve as witness and encouragement to the rest of us!