Seacoast is a large Americannon-denominational church located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; a suburb of Charleston. Seacoast was one of the churches who pioneered the multi-site church technique. Josh Surratt is the Lead Pastor. Seacoast Church has 14 different locations around South Carolina and North Carolina. Greg Surratt is the founding pastor and father of Josh Surratt. The main campus is located in Mount Pleasant on Long Point Road. Seacoast is a “mega church” and is one of the biggest churches in South Carolina. It is also a key member of a church planting organization called ARC. Greg Surratt currently leads ARC which have planted over 900 churches.
History
The church began in February 1988 with 100 people meeting in an apartment clubhouse by Greg Surratt and a team from Northwood Assembly, another large church inNorth Charleston. In April of the same year the first 'public' meetings were held in a rented theater with a vision for reaching out to the unchurched people of the Charleston area. The dream was to build a church." The church grew quickly with its contemporary worship style and support from its mother church, Northwood Assembly. Today, the church has over 10,000 worshipers who attend weekly. Surratt continues to serve as Founding and Teaching Pastor, while his son Josh Surratt serves as Lead Pastor.
Multi-site
The church went through several building programs and helped create the idea of having satellite services on off-site campuses. This idea of a multi-site church has won Seacoast praise as being the 7th most influential church in America from The Church Report. The idea came out of necessity, however. In 2002 the church had over 3,000 people attending weekly service leading the church to request permits to expand their facilities with local officials. The town of Mount Pleasant denied all requests, however. The church then began to use a video feed to show sermons to an off-site location. This was so successful that Seacoast began to open other "satellite" facilities throughout the Charleston metropolitan area and throughout the state and now in North Carolina. In 2006 the church's original campus in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina opened a new facility and provides different style services for people who have different preferences in music and worship. The services, outside its original facility, are a live worship experience with a video teaching recorded at the original campus using the multi-site church philosophy for which Seacoast is recognized. Seacoast currently has 13 campuses in two states, including an Internet campus. South Carolina's junior Senator, Tim Scott, is a longtime member of Seacoast and a former member of the church board.
Youth
The youth at Seacoast Church, also have many opportunities to serve, from becoming a greeter, to working at the cafe. The youth even have opportunities to go on mission trips all over the world. At Seacoast the youth have their own period of praise, where they stay in a different room the entire service, worshipping and listening to the youth pastors go in depth into the Bible. They also have their own nights, where they go to the main campus and go more in depth in the word of God, and worship.
Beliefs
Seacoast is a non-denominational Christian church and states its "sole basis for belief is the Bible." They believe the Bible is infallible. Further, they believe in the Trinity, that God exists eternally in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They believe that Jesus Christ "lived a sinless life on earth and voluntarily paid for our sin by dying on the cross as our substitute." They believe "He rose from the dead and is the only mediator between us and God."
