‘A faith connection’: How a Fort Mill business spot became an unlikely church startup
Downtown Fort Mill is filled with large, historic churches that show full parking lots and sanctuaries on Sunday mornings. Alongside them, there’s an unlikely spot where believers gather, grow and go forth. A spot with an uncanny record of starting churches.
LOOM Coworking opened on Academy Street in 2016. What started in the former Tony’s restaurant site across from the Fort Mill police station has grown into multiple buildings with 6,000 square feet of coworking, gallery and event space.
LOOM also is a startup church incubator.
Ignite City Church just became the fifth congregation to launch at LOOM, outgrow it and move to its own larger space. Three more churches meet there now. Almost a dozen more have held special events at LOOM.
“It wasn’t just the churches,” said LOOM founder Jennifer Belk, who notes more than a dozen other nonprofits utilize space for everything from sorority meetings to mental health awareness groups to scout or soccer clubs. “It’s still the same thing. It’s helping people have a physical presence.”
For pastor Ed Gourdin with Faith Connections Ministries, Belk and LOOM are more than just a gathering place.
“I don’t even think she realizes how big an impact she’s made,” Gourdin said.
‘Divine connection’
Ed and DaWanda Gourdin felt a calling, but were short on details.
“When we first started out with this, we had no clue how it was going to happen,” DaWanda said.
The pastoral pair found LOOM in 2016. Faith Connections was the first church there, spending three years at LOOM before the move to a building on Carolina Place Drive.
“We were just going to do it out of our house,” Ed said. “Frankly, it just came about. We just kind of aligned.”
Faith Connections started as a small Bible study in the lounge. It grew to include a youth events and luncheons. Now the church has about 60 people on a Sunday, plus a strong online following.
Coworking typically happens during the work week, which fits the often weekend heavy church schedule for shared space. Upfitting a building as a church, Ed said, is expensive. So using event space for a small, new church makes financial sense.
Then, the coworking setup allows church planters to meet people not only as potential congregants, but as experts in design, sound or other skills that could serve a growing church.
DaWanda said there is something special about a group of people set to share and build something together.
“Definitely a divine connection,” she said. “That was truly a faith connection.”
Homecoming faith
Omard Potts thought football was his way out. Potts was one of the better players on one of the better teams — his senior year squad went 10-3 and to the third round of the state playoffs — Fort Mill High School ever fielded. Also a standout wrestler, Potts had a football scholarship and big plans.
But Potts made decisions that derailed them. He spent a few months in jail. He was hospitalized. Potts battled depression. He’d moved to the beach, but decided to move back here to be closer to his son.
“I cried out and I said, you know what God, I’m tired of living my life like this,” Potts said. “That set me up on the path to where I am now.”
Fast forward several years. Potts and wife Italya launched Solid Rock Faith Assembly in mid-June. He preaches. She leads worship. Steele Street Park hosted the first service, followed by services at LOOM.
“We were looking for a place and I knew God was calling me to minister in the Fort Mill area,” said Potts, who commutes Sunday mornings from Columbia. “They’re big with the community. They love to help smaller churches get started. It was great for us.”
Potts still has connections in the Paradise area. His Sundays start early due to the drive, and the startup congregation may have a dozen or so folks at a time.
“The Spirit had already told me this first six months was going to be rough,” Potts said. “That’s what you can expect when you’re starting out.”
For small startup churches like his, buying a building isn’t feasible. For the community connection and convenience a park offers, it’s little help in bad weather. A place like LOOM gives a new ministry a chance.
“It’s a lot of work,” Potts said. “Especially starting a ministry from the ground up. But when you’re called to do something about God, it’s not really up to you. You just do it.”
The puzzle master
Part of Belk’s own faith journey seems to fit with the startup churches that now use LOOM.
“I don’t think I ever went to a ‘normal’ church,” Belk said. “I went to one at a skating rink, movie theaters, that kind of thing.”
Belk has been part of a couple of churches in Fort Mill. On occasion, Belk visits or keeps up online with the churches that met or still meet at LOOM. It didn’t take long into the LOOM experiment to realize the coworking setup wouldn’t be some cubicle farm.
“Five months into it we realized not everybody makes their living sitting behind a computer and working,” Belk said.
LOOM has a podcast studio and space for music lessons. Events range from gingerbread houses to drum circles, a dance studio, an exercise studio, a COVID-delayed high school reunion. There have been memorial services.
“We had an emergency wedding,” Belk said. “We were pulling ottomans. I was stealing ficus trees from everywhere.”
Just before COVID, there might be six events in a weekend. Events are picking back up now. Belk’s job is to make sure the church band practice and podcast recording don’t conflict, or the children’s party with a corporate work call.
“Jen was the puzzle master,” DaWanda said.
Coworking always will be a main focus. Belk likens it to a student union space for adults, fun and inviting, but well-focused on helping business succeed.
“We have a lot of corporate refugees,” Belk said.
Yet the event space makes room for a growing faith community too, an unexpected byproduct but increasingly, a significant one.
“LOOM truly invests in this community,” Ed Gourdin said. “That’s what we wanted to be a part of. People are changing and church is changing. What isn’t changing is people need people. God is God.”
Potts sees churches already separated by race, denomination and other factors. Yet, Potts said, there is one God. In a way LOOM provides what Potts wants for the larger faith community in Fort Mill.
”God called us to come together and commune together as brothers and sisters,” Potts said. “And not just in your congregation. Even though you may not be the same denomination, you still serve the same God.”
In a post COVID world, Ed Gourdin said the value of togetherness, connection and belonging are increasingly important in church and beyond it.
“She was ahead of her time,” Ed Gourdin said. “In this age, you’re going to see more of this.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2022 at 8:54 AM.
