History
The idea for what would eventually become Southbrook Church began when eight individuals assembled back in the Singleton’s living room in 1997. At that point, pastor Rob began painting a picture of church as it could be – not simply church as usual. The vision was clear even then; however, the roadmap was anything but.
The core group of eight met for many months before launching official services as Grace Community Church (GCC) in early 1997. Growth happened quickly and GCC grew from eight to almost 200 in a little over a year. We moved from the family room to Weddington Swim and Racquet Club to Mckee Road Elementary School all within nine months! On the outside, things looked great. However, on the inside, pastor Rob was concerned that the vision of a different kind of church was turning out to be “Church as usual.”
Pastor Rob: “Recalling those days I remember saying that the last thing Charlotte and the surrounding areas needed was another church doing church for the already convinced. I’d said from the beginning that if we grew by reshuffling the deck (transfer growth), then we might as well fold up the tent, so to speak, and shut the thing down. With only a handful of conversions and a whole lot of “churched folks” calling GCC home, I never felt like more of a failure. We’d “talked” about a different kind of church until we were blue in the face, but we weren’t actually living out the dream. That was when God said, “Move now and let me worry about the rest.”
Over the next three months, GCC grew from 200 to fewer than 80! Like my math? That is growth, I promise you that. Maybe not numerically, but certainly in the areas of unity and harmony.
The few who remained believed whole-heartedly in doing church a different way—Church for the Unchurched. So, we gathered what few leaders we had left, renamed the church Southbrook and essentially started over in the fall of 1999. In October of 1999, Southbrook Church was born.
Several things began to happen almost immediately. The unchurched began showing up, people were committing their lives to Christ Jesus and believers were deepening their relationship with the Lord. Southbrook grew quickly into a healthy vibrant church filled with seekers, those who were just fresh in their faith and mature believers. And what happened over the next several years can only be described as a “God thing!”
The first year after Southbrook Church was born, we moved from 50 to 200 and almost 50 of those new folks met Christ for the first time here! By year two, we added a second service and another 100 people. Years four and five saw Southbrook’s attendance grow from 300 to 600 and more than 300 individuals publicly professed Jesus Christ through believer’s baptism! We moved again from elementary schools to high schools and from high schools to movie theaters — from movie theaters to private schools and then back to a high school before the decision was made to purchase some land in Weddington for a permanent home.
In late 2003, we began construction on a permanent worship center and by June of 2004 we had our first services in Weddington at our new church home. Before that very first weekend, we had already outgrown the ability to have only two services and by the second week we added a Saturday evening service with attendance now averaging around 1,000 and more than 1,500 calling Southbrook home.
Over the next two years, Southbrook saw more people come to Jesus Christ and profess Him through baptism than we’d seen in the previous five years combined. We all felt like we were having an Acts 2 experience! And “life transformation” became a daily occurrence.
Today 2,000 people each week worship at our two campuses. Over 4,000 men, women and children have made Southbrook Church their church home and are doing this journey called life in this wonderful community called Southbrook. I hope you’ll stop by soon to see what God is up to among His people at Southbrook Church!