SUMTER COUNTY, S.C. — In Sumter County, a new childrens’ home is on the cusp of opening. On Tuesday night, members from surrounding churches are gathering to help furnish the rooms. It’s the latest in a series of efforts from community members to support the local ministry as it works to serve kids. Pastor Paul Goff has been trying to open a children's home at Wedgefield Baptist Church for five years. Now because of help from the community, that goal is just in sight.
“I saw the need, I saw the poverty,” Goff explained. “I saw the hunger in the kids.”
Goff has been working at the church for 22 years. In that time, he’s seen the need in his community to help serve children, which is why he fosters two kids with his wife and has been working since the end of 2018 to open the Wedgefield Gospel Mission for Children.
“What God did through that and how He's joined together men and churches through cross-denominational lines just came together for one goal, for one cause?” Goff shared. “Unbelievable.”
People like Ronnie Smith, Truitt McNair and Frank Johnson, who run the Christian Men of Concord. The group started in 2007 with the goal of helping communities while connecting neighbors.
“Most of the time you’re at a funeral,” McNair explained about the group’s mission. “That’s about the only time you see your neighbors pretty much, but for this, you can get together and have a good time, have good fellowship, and just enjoy each other and get to know your neighbors better.”
Since its beginning, Smith says the group has donated more than $158,000 back to the community.
“We have five churches that have joined together, and those five churches work together,” Smith detailed.
Those churches are all in the Concord area, which is just east of Sumter. This month, they got together with other faith-based organizations. Together, 14 churches hosted a barbecue fundraiser to support local children's homes in the area.
“The Christian belief, the first thing we're told is to help the widows and orphans,” Smith explained. “There was 41 grills out there, probably close to 100 men just working together. And the inside probably 100 to 150 people. And when you walk in, there's a chatter in the room. And it's just everybody talking and laughing and having a good time and people working together and beginning to know each other and fellowship with each other that we have lost where neighbors don't know neighbors now. We live in subdivisions and don't know who lives next door to us. And we're trying to restore that to our community through helping.”
McNair says they called on the community to help at the event, which raised over $31,000.
“You sit there you see all them grills sitting there and all them men cooking and smoke coming off of them and people running around checking to make sure everything is done,” McNair reflected. “It’s awesome. You know, everybody's just there to help what they’re there to help…”
Johnson agreed.
“There's no written agreement for anybody to show up. It's strictly just, you know, we're having this fundraiser. We appreciate you using your grill. Can you please show up and help?” McNair explained. “It's just kind of a stressful situation to me when even though you know the Lord will provide, when you get there in the morning, you know you’ve got to cook the food for 2500 plates and put them in the plate. And there's only a handful of people there. And then they all start showing up. It's just like, where did they come from?”
For Goff, he says it’s a testament of the Lord’s provision.
“It's just God's way. He makes a way when there is no way and He uses people. And that's what's happened. People have done it,” Goff shared, tears welling in his eyes. “I wept. I couldn't help it because it was just…in all the fundraisers that I've been a part of over the years for the school, for the orphanage, I've never been a part of anything as marvelous as that.”
Goff says he's hoping to have the children's home up and running by the end of this year. That facility will be able to fit eight children who can come on short- or long-term basis once it’s open.
As for the money from the fundraiser, the group says it will be divided between four different children's homes through the Midlands, allocated according to the greatest need.
On Thursday night, different churches came out to furnish the rooms in the building. Goff says he’s naming the rooms after each organization, including: Pine Grove Baptist Church, Dalzell Baptist Church, Pinewood Baptist Church and Summerton Baptist Church.
Initially, Goff said his idea was to register the children’s home through the South Carolina Department of Social Services (SCDSS). After recognizing the cost, which he says is hundreds of thousands of dollars, Goff and his team have decided on a different approach.
“We've recently learned that there may be a simpler way to do it, so we're searching that out,” Goff elaborated. “We're hoping to have some meetings over in Greenville at Tabernacle Children's Home [which has a similar structure] and maybe learn some things that will help us to shorten our path to being able to open.”
As far as staffing, Goff says he has members of the church who work in children’s homes throughout the area who are “ready to go.”
“They're ready to take over,” Goff said. “And you could drop them off on the doorstep today, and we got people that could take them in tonight and take care of them.”
Goff says opening this children’s home is the second step in his three phase vision for the church. The first phase was “Christian education,” Goff says, based on Proverbs 22:6. To meet that goal, Goff says the church opened its Christian school, which teaches students from nursery age to 8th grade.
The second phase of his vision comes from James 1:27, Goff explains.
“We felt like that we need to do our part in taking care of those who are less fortunate: our orphans, homeless children, children who are less fortunate, who are in not so good situations at home,” Goff said. “Just to do our part, just to help.”
After the children’s home opens, Goff says the third and final step in his vision is to open a facility to care for senior citizens in the area.