From humble start, S.C. congregation has boomed to a membership of 3,500
By John H. Adams, The Layman ,Volume 34, Number 6,Posted October 5, 2001, October 8, 2001
Whether it’s a traditional service, knocking on doors or a fog machine, Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S.C., will do just about anything required to bring people to Jesus.
Robert ‘Robby’ McBride“We pray daily that God would send us people,” says the Rev. Dr. Robert “Robby” McBride, pastor of the Confessing Church. “Then we pray daily that God would send us more.”
The prayers have been, in King James’ vernacular, “effectual.” Since the first meeting of the new church development attracted 14 people in 1982, Saxe Gotha has grown to 3,500 members. The boom hasn’t slackened. More than 300 have joined this year.
On any given Sunday, thousands will attend worship, overflowing the parking lot and the side streets off Sunset Drive, the main thoroughfare into Lexington off I-20. The number of cars at Saxe Gotha from 8 a.m. to noon Sunday far exceeds the number at the 24-hour WalMart Superstore a block away.
The spectacular growth at Saxe Gotha may have siphoned off retail traffic, but it apparently has not come at the expense of other Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations in the Lexington area. Lexington is on the western outskirts of Columbia, the state capital, which has 12 PCUSA congregations.
Church parking lot has more cars than nearby WalMart Superstore.Bucking the denomination’s 12.2 percent decline since 1989, those 12 congregations have grown by 4.2 percent. And the 69 congregations in the Presbytery of Trinity as a whole have experienced membership growth of 4.3 percent from 1989 to 1999, according to PCUSA data.
The presbytery is rock-solid conservative. In 1997, it voted 110 to 35 in favor of the denomination’s current “fidelity-chastity” ordination standard. In 1998, it voted 105 to 35 not to repeal that standard.
The entryway into membership in Saxe Gotha is belief in Christ and a response to “an altar call with integrity.” McBride says what he does is ask people if they want to profess their faith in Christ and become members. Then he directs them to ministers and elders who sign them up immediately. The training comes later.
Related story:
Pastor, elders identify growth factorsSaxe Gotha is a mix of what works. It is traditionally Presbyterian in Sunday worship, Saddleback in purpose and Willow Creek on Wednesdays – when there is a “multisensory” experience of high-energy Christian music, a fog machine, lights, action, drama and dance.
McBride seems amused that he is in the middle of this revolution and professes that “50 percent of the time I know what we’re doing, 50 percent of the time I don’t, but I’m not sure which 50 percent I’m in.”
A good-natured burly fellow with a pure South Carolina drawl, McBride seems an unlikely candidate to lead such explosive growth.
McBride was a high school football coach in Charleston, S.C., and later a school administrator. His wife and he dutifully attended Second Presbyterian Church, which is steeped in Presbyterian tradition and Southern gentility. No fog machines, thank you.
McBride sensed a call to the ministry, got his divinity degree (and later a doctor in ministry in church leadership and growth) from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., and became pastor of two Presbyterian churches in Denmark, S.C. One had eight members, the other 80.
In 1982, a committee from the Presbytery of Congaree (now Trinity) invited McBride to begin a new church development in Lexington, where the name of the township used to be Saxe Gotha in recognition of the German Lutherans who settled the area.
It was an awkward time for a new church development – particularly in the South. The big issue in the Presbyterian Church that year was a vote by presbyteries in the Southern and Northern denominations on whether to reunite and end a split that began in 1861 at the outset of the Civil War.
Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church decided from the get-go to be part of the new denomination, the current Presbyterian Church (USA).
But the affairs of the denomination have never been an obsession at Saxe Gotha. “I’ve never preached denominational politics from the pulpit,” McBride said. “Anyone wants to know, I’ll tell them in my office.”
Even so, McBride is not pleased with the direction of the denomination. He recently recommended to the session that Saxe Gotha join the Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA). On August 20, the session unanimously adopted a resolution to align with the growing movement.
Of first importance to McBride is growing Saxe Gotha. For that purpose, he has a large and energetic team. The paid staff numbers 37, but only three are ordained ministers. Lay people are trained for a variety of key leadership roles.
From the pulpit, McBride is Biblical and intentional. “We let people know what we believe. People hunger for basic Bible content, for Biblical Christian relationships. We do not try to be all things to all people. If someone does not believe as we do, I will help them find another church.”