Seacoast Church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seacoast is a large American interdenominational church located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; a suburb of Charleston. It was founded in February, 1988 by Greg Surratt and a team from another large church in the area, Northwood Assembly in North Charleston. Surratt continues to serve as Senior Pastor. Seacoast was one of the churches who pioneered the multi-site church technique.

Early history

According to their website, "Seacoast began in February 1988 with sixty-five people meeting in an apartment clubhouse. In April of the same year the first 'public' meetings were held in a rented theater with a vision for reaching out to the unchurched people of the Charleston area. The dream was to build a church" The church grew quickly with its contemporary worship style and support from Northwood Assembly, a similar church in North Charleston. Today, the church has over 10,000 worshipers who attend weekly.

Multi-site coast

The church went through several building programs and helped create the idea of having satellite services on off site campuses. This idea of a multi-site church has won Seacoast praise as being the 7th most influential church in America from The Church Report.^{[citation needed]}

The idea came out of necessity, however. In 2002 the church had over 3,000 people attending weekly service leading the church to request permits to expand their facilities with local officials. The town of Mount Pleasant denied all requests, however. The church then began to use a video feed to show sermons to an off-site location. This was so successful that Seacoast began to open other "satellite" facilities throughout the Charleston metropolitan area and throughout the state and now in Georgia and North Carolina.

In 2006 the church's original campus in Mount Pleasant opened a new 100,000-square-foot (10,000 m²) facility and provides different style services for people who have different preferences in music and worship. The sermons, outside its original facility, are a live worship experience with a video teaching recorded at the original campus using the multi-site church philosophy for which Seacoast is recognized.

Seacoast currently has 11 campuses in two states, including an Internet campus.

South Carolina's junior Senator, Tim Scott, is a longtime member of Seacoast and a former member of the church board.

List of Seacoast sites

Charleston area

Main Campus - located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
James Island Campus - located in James Island, South Carolina
North Charleston Campus - located in North Charleston, South Carolina
Summerville Campus - located in Summerville, South Carolina
West Ashley Campus - located in Charleston, South Carolina

Outside Charleston

Asheville Campus - located in Asheville, North Carolina
Columbia Campus - located in Columbia, South Carolina
Greenville Campus - located in Greenville, South Carolina
Irmo Campus - located in Irmo, South Carolina
Manning Campus - located in Manning, South Carolina
Internet Campus

Beliefs

Seacoast is an interdenominational or non-denominational Christian church and states its "sole basis for [its] belief is the Bible." They believe the Bible is infallible. Further, they believe in the trinity, that God exists eternally in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

They believe that Jesus Christ, "lived a sinless life on earth and voluntarily paid for our sin by dying on the cross as our substitute." They believe "He rose from the dead and is the only mediator between us and God."

News articles

Politics from the pulpit