Meet Your Church Planters: John David Mangrum
Origins Church in Greenville, SC
John David Mangrum is a church planter in downtown Greenville. His church, Origins, was started after he moved to Greenville in October of 2008. John has a type of “Paul and Timothy” story, where an older church planter from Canada poured into and discipled him, and as he grew in Christ over the years he told the Lord in 2005 that he would follow in those steps and plant a church if He ever called him to do so. After doing demographics work and praying over 18 different cities, John and his wife felt called by God to plant their church in downtown Greenville and they made their move from Georgia to begin this chapter of their lives.
John and his wife Natalie have been married for seven years. They have one son, Noah, who is about to turn two years old. Their young family developed a vision to plant a church in downtown that would minister to the local arts community, as well as to the business owners and the green communities. Because those are all tight knit groups it was not easy to come in as “outsiders” and begin to minister to them. However, they shared a strong vision to be what John defines as a “harvest church”—a church where members do not come from other churches. The impetus for this vision was that they did not want to steal members from sister churches in the area, and they wanted the leadership and DNA of their church to reflect the community they were trying to reach. So they had no core group of solid Christians when they began to help get the church started, and they have been discipling new Christ-followers even as they helped plant the church.
One such story is a joy for John to tell and a joy to hear. An unmarried couple named Jon and Jessie moved in next door to their family over a year ago, and Natalie baked them cookies to welcome them to Greenville. They came to find out that they had been living in the Caribbean islands for a few years in an attempt to run from God and have a good time. John and Natalie invited them to a Bible study in their apartment the next week and they surprisingly came. But the story didn’t stop there—they kept coming and haven’t stopped! Shortly thereafter they got married, joined Origins, and were baptized in the pool behind their apartment complex. After a year of growing in Christ, getting pregnant, buying a home, and serving Jesus, they are totally different people than they were a year ago. They are about to start their own community group in their home to try to reach other couples who need the hope that they have found in Jesus! Their story is such a great example of the life transformation that the gospel brings, and the harvest strategy that John and Natalie dreamed of. The continued stories of life change have encouraged John to keep pushing forward in the hard work of church planting. He has seen Jesus redeem marriages, call skeptical people into Christian community, give them influence with leaders in downtown, and allow them to engage beautiful and yet spiritually lost people in a conversation about the difference Jesus makes. The joy of watching Jesus work makes all of the hard work more than worth it.
John is learning that some of the things he thought would make his church successful—Sunday services, generous offerings, and large crowds—might not be the best goals or measuring sticks for their particular context. He is learning to appreciate involvement in the community, people sharing life, men leading their families, and spiritual conversations with people who don’t know Jesus much more than they typical indicators of ministry “success”. Much more important things in their context are events like the art auction they put on where local artists joined with at-risk children to create art and support the local children’s shelter.
God has provided great friends for John and Natalie, wonderful spaces for their church to meet, soft soil in some people’s hearts, resources, and miraculous rescues from sin in the lives of some of their people. John is praying for more salvations of people who are far from Jesus in downtown Greenville, and that their missional church can dig deep roots and make it long-term in the area. John wants to love Jesus more, lead his family well, see more leaders raised up in their church family, and continue to trust in God’s sovereignty so that he can laugh more and worry less.
God is at work in Origins Church in Greenville—that much is easy to see. We pray and hope for this movement to continue and for the name of Jesus to be magnified in their community while His gospel frees them from bondage.
