Our Story

JUNE 1, 2014

Our church began meeting for worship services in the Wall Auditorium at Coastal Carolina University. We started with a small plant team of about 20 adults who previously met in our pastor’s home as we prayed and planned for the launch of this church.

LATE 2015

As Ekklesia grew, we began searching for a permanent building we could remodel, but we were unable to find a suitable space. We shifted our search and began looking for land where we could build.

SPRING 2016

We signed a contract to purchase the 8.3-acre tract where The Launchpad, our main worship building is now located. We needed to raise $100,000 in six weeks to make our down payment, and the congregation of approximately 150 people rose to this challenge. We closed on the land in June.

MAY 2016

We relocated to the 1100 building at Horry Georgetown Technical College, where we could continue to grow into a larger auditorium and more children’s space.

JANUARY 2017

We began raising money to construct a planned 12,000-square-foot worship facility.

Our Faith Takes Root campaign saw about 250 people give up-front gifts and pledges totaling more than $500,000. During this time, the church continued to grow, necessitating a new building design to construct a 30,000-square-foot community center.

JULY 2017

We entered into a partnership with The Solomon Foundation, a church extension fund, to design and build The Launchpad.

JANUARY 6, 2019

We held our Grand Opening services with 747 people in attendance.

YEARS 2019 – 2020

The church continued to grow through 2019 and into 2020, launching a third, and then a fourth weekend service. Weekend attendance had just broken the 1,000 mark when in-person assembly was disrupted by COVID-19. Ekklesia immediately shifted our energy into online ministry and financial and food support for those in need. Our online campus thrived through this season and we reassembled eleven weeks later. We then began to rebuild our in-person engagement as people in our community started returning to the church.

AUGUST 2020

We entered into a purchase agreement to acquire the two properties neighboring The Launchpad— Miller-Motte Technical College and The Hub building. We launched the Outgrowth giving initiative in December of 2020, to raise $2 million dollars above tithes over two years to renovate The Hub and to begin construction on The Launchpad expansion.

DECEMBER 2021

We completed the renovation of The Hub, and this building opened in December 2021, housing church offices, community tenants, a cafe, and our Shine Auditorium where special needs worship services meet weekly.

throughout 2022

The church continued to grow to nearly 1,400 in four weekend services. We renovated our upstairs space to provide more classrooms for students, and we added a new children’s wing onto the front of our existing building. We designed a new building, including a large lobby and 1,200-seat auditorium, for our adult services and ministries so that we could turn our entire existing facility over to the next generation.

January 1, 2023

We broke ground for our new building and we anticipated holding our first worship services there on December 17, 2023.

today

• Ekklesia now offers three weekend services with an average of 1400+ people per weekend.
• The Launchpad is open daily for after-school camps, outreach to under-resourced youth, and homeschool gatherings.
• We have an Online Campus, run by a team of World Changers, streaming to multiple platforms and reaching hundreds of people across every inhabited continent on Earth.
• Our kids and student ministries are consistently launching World Changers by providing solid discipleship and giving all ages opportunities to serve and lead.
• We’ve taken on international mission projects in Haiti, Thailand, Jamaica, Panama, and most recently, Kenya, while continuing to faithfully serve our local community.