START TEAM Cliff Marshall, Team Leader In 2018, Ricky and Sarah Wilson moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, to plant a new church in Spartanburg. When Ricky reached out to the Start Team to get information about church planting in the state, he wasn’t yet connected with an SCBC church. The strategists on the Start Team introduced him to the leaders at Impact Community Church in Duncan and worked with them to create a church planting residency. This allowed Ricky to learn the culture of Spartanburg and develop a core team under the authority and guidance of the church. Ricky completed the SCBC Start Team church planting pathway of assessment, training, and coaching and, in 2019 Impact Drayton was launched in the Drayton Mills area of Spartanburg. Since then, the church has relocated to the Clifton area of Spartanburg and changed its name to ID Clifton. When Ricky and Sarah moved to Spartanburg from Ohio, a young man named Taylor Little made the move with them. In 2016, Ricky met Taylor at a flag football game and shared the Gospel with him. After several breakfasts and several more Gospel conversations, Taylor began following Jesus. When Ricky told Taylor that God was calling him to move to South Carolina to plant a church in 2017, Taylor knew God was calling him to be a part of that, too. As Ricky worked on plans to launch the new church, he continued discipling Taylor. From the beginning, Ricky desired to start a church that would start more churches, and he began training Taylor to be the first church planter that the new church would send out. In 2019, Taylor began serving as a church planting resident at ID Clifton just as Ricky had once done at Impact Community Church. In 2021, Taylor completed the Start Team assessment and training process, and early next year he will be sent out from ID Clifton to another area in Spartanburg to plant a new church. The mission of the Start Team is to create a movement of multiplying churches in South Carolina. The story of Ricky Wilson and Taylor Little can become the norm at our convention. By providing multiplying church collaboratives and cohorts, the strategists on the Start Team are continuing to create a culture where churches plant churches. By providing tools like church planter assessment, training, and coaching, they hope to make the daunting task of planting a new church a little easier for the already existing churches of the SCBC. START Progress
• Hosted a Multiplying Church Collaborative in the Lowcountry region in partnership with the Savannah River Baptist Association. Twelve pastors and two Directors of Missions attended. Out of that event, two Multiplying Church Cohorts have begun with another scheduled to launch in the fall of 2021. One new church has started from these cohorts.
• Five Multiplying Church Cohorts are currently meeting monthly in the Upstate. These groups are the result of Multiplying Church Collaboratives hosted by the Start Team in Greenville and Spartanburg.
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