Gallaudet University, a Washington DC university for the deaf, estimates there may be 37,000 deaf people in South Carolina, and Christian sources estimate fewer than 370 attend regular church services.

That’s a wide open market for South Carolina Baptist churches said Jerry St. John, an SCBC retiree now serving as a deaf ministry consultant with the convention staff’s Evangelism and Missions Team. St. John has worked in deaf ministry for more than 40 years.

“My wife, Erkle, and I were in a Berkeley, California church in 1960,” he said. “We began taking sign language classes in February. In May, our interpreter moved to Kentucky with her family. The pastor came to me and said, ‘You’re it’ and we’ve been involved since.”

St. John said he recently had a conversation with Tommy Ferrell, team leader, SCBC Evangelism and Missions Team, and Ferrell pointed out Sunday School literature claiming fewer than 1 percent of all deaf people attend a Christian church. Ferrell suggested a Deaf Ministry Forum, bringing together deaf people and deaf ministry workers. The forum was Saturday, Jan. 10 at the South Carolina Baptist Convention Building, Columbia.

“We had about 37 deaf people and workers attend from 12 churches,” St. John said. “We divided them into four mixed groups so that we could have an honest exchange of ideas between the deaf and the workers.” The groups were asked to brainstorm over four questions:

1. How can we encourage more deaf people to share their faith with non-Christian deaf friends?

2. How can we reach young deaf people for Christ?

3. How can we reach deaf students in public and deaf private schools?

4. How do we reach those deaf students who are bused home from private schools every weekend? Bus schedules often prevent students from attending church while they are home.

5. How can the SCBC help churches reach and minister to deaf persons?

“We had a lot of good ideas,” St. John said. “To name a few, we learned that we need more evangelism training for the deaf, we need an emphasis on building relationships between deaf people, we need more camps for deaf young people, and, we need to develop relationships with the parents of deaf students.”

St. John said the forum’s idea bank was so great more regional follow-up meetings are being planned, and these meetings will allow more contact with local church ministries around the state. “We want to share what we learned at the forum, and get other suggestions and ideas, too.”

The research, St. John said, goes toward a greater goal of:

1. Encouraging SCBC churches to begin churches for the deaf. Currently, there are only three churches in the state – Greenville, West Columbia, and Union. The Midlands Deaf Church, West Columbia, averages about 30-35, St. John said.

2. Encourage SCBC churches to begin interpretive deaf ministries. Currently, St. John said about 40 churches have deaf ministries that touch between one and 40 people.

3. Strengthen existing deaf ministries; and,

4. Improve relationships between deaf ministries and churches with the deaf community.

“Many years ago,” St. John said, “when that California pastor asked us to lead the deaf ministry, we said ‘no way.’ And, the pastor then said, ‘You are all we have. You may not give them everything, but if you don’t help they won’t get anything.’”

St. John said he and others are hoping South Carolina Baptist churches will help close the gap between the state’s deaf community and the Christian community of believers.

For more information on deaf ministry and the South Carolina Baptist Convention, please call the Evangelism and Missions Team Office at (800) 723-7242.