This Sunday we celebrate 10 years at our Dave Lyle Blvd location and I thought I’d share a few memories and photographs from the past. Our journey started much earlier than 2004.

God blessed FBC beyond what we could imagine. In the early 90s we were growing and running out of space for Sunday School and worship. We were in three Sunday morning worship services and purchasing businesses on Caldwell Street downtown just to keep up. We hoped to eventually tear down those buildings, have the city close Caldwell Street, and add to our downtown facility a new sanctuary and more SS space. The city decided not to close Caldwell Street and we were forced to look at other options. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was God’s plan all along. He made the property we now occupy on Dave Lyle available and we entered negotiations to purchase it. Those negotiations lasted a year, but on Monday evening, February 5, 1996 the Long Range Planning Committee presented a contract to our deacons. The deacons voted to support the purchase, and the church Trustees then signed the contract contingent our church approval. We even wrote into the contract that we had to have an 80% affirmative vote for the contract to be approved.

The news spread quickly throughout Rock Hill and the region. Tuesday morning it was the lead story on local radio stations and Tuesday evening it was a prominent story on CN2. Wednesday morning it was on the front page of the Herald (see photo below).

One personal experience that was funny concerned our son, Steven, who was nine at the time. In 1996 the land where Manchester Meadows soccer complex is now located was the city’s old sewage lagoons. Whenever it rained hard, an unpleasant odor filled the air. We were driving by the property one day when Steven asked from the back seat, “Dad, we’re not going to build a church out there where it smells bad, are we?

Tomorrow I’ll write about the day FBC voted to purchase the property. Meanwhile I’d love to hear from you what you remember about the public announcement and the property. Share your thoughts with me in the comments section below.

Pastor Steve Hogg