COASTAL OBSERVER

Six months after it left the United Methodist Church, St. Paul’s Waccamaw is thriving.

Membership has grown so much that there are now three services every Sunday: two traditional and one modern.

“I think people are looking for a church that is willing to unapologetically stand on the Scripture,” said the Rev. J.R. Virgin, pastor at St. Paul’s. “They’re going to say, ‘this is what the Bible says and this is how we understand it.’ We are going to be very clear about that.”

St. Paul’s, which was founded in 1986, officially joined the Global Methodist Church on July 1. In doing so it became one of the thousands of congregations to “disaffiliate” from the United Methodist Church in the last five years.

“I thought the transition went very smoothly,” Virgin said. “The new denomination is very similar theologically to the previous denomination. We’re still rooted in Wesleyan theology.”

Although Methodism dates to the teachings of John Wesley in the 18th century, the United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 when the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist churches merged.

The average attendance when Virgin arrived at St. Paul’s in 2022 was 80 at two services. Now it’s 350 between the three services.

“It has really grown, but it was really growing even before we disaffiliated,” Virgin said. “We’ve definitely seen a boost since. I think the rate at which we’ve grown has increased over the past six months.”

Virgin may have hoped for this kind of growth at St. Paul’s, but he  never imagined it.

“God always works beyond our imagination,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 18 years in full-time ministry. I’ve found when I’m faithful, when the congregation is faithful, that God does things that we don’t expect and there are unanticipated blessings as a result of faithfulness.”

The growth of the St. Paul’s congregation is not just felt in the pews and the parking lot. The church’s ministries are growing rapidly.

“We went from having one or two Bible studies a week to having six or seven Bible studies a week,” Virgin said. “We’ve gone from a couple of small adult Sunday school classes to having four adult Sunday school classes, one of which has 100 members in a Sunday school class.”

The church and the congregants have been “patient” with the growing pains, he added.

“We can’t do everything all at once,” Virgin said. “We’re doing our very best to accommodate everyone’s needs as they come along.”

Once St. Paul’s voted to disaffiliate, it owed the United Methodist Church $1.03 million to buy its property.

According to Virgin, about half the money was raised and the church borrowed the rest to pay off the debt.

Virgin committed last year to staying at St. Paul’s after disaffiliation.

“I’m really proud of this church. They have developed a reputation for being welcoming. I’ve heard that a lot from new folks,” Virgin said. “I think that attitude has created a great place for folks to come together even though they may have different backgrounds and just have an opportunity to worship God together in spite of our differences.”

Disaffiliation remains an issue for other Methodist churches.

Duncan Memorial United Methodist Church in Georgetown recently lost its pastor because it did not disaffiliate.

The Rev. Ross Chellis announced this week that he is leaving the church to become pastor at an independent Methodist church in Summerville.

Duncan Memorial was in the process of deciding whether to disaffiliate when the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church ruled last year that a paragraph about closing churches in the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline could not be used by congregations to disaffiliate.

The ruling of the Judicial Council, which is like the Supreme Court of the church, also seemingly brought an end to a disaffiliation movement at Belin Memorial United Methodist in Murrells Inlet.

A group of parishioners, included some serving on Belin’s Church Council, tried earlier this month to get the council to require a vote by the congregation on whether to disaffiliate.   

It was the latest attempt by disaffiliation supporters to sway parishioners to their side and move the church closer to leaving the United Methodists.