What is Our Story?
Our church began as a Pentecostal tent revival at the corner of Pine and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the early 50’s. We soon moved to our first permanent building on Lenna Avenue; where we stayed until the mid 80’s. We moved to a finished portion of our then incomplete building at our current location on Kingsway Road.
Pastor Terry Wallace came to us in August, 1988. His first accomplishment was the completion of the building project. We were soon a growing family church.
Much of our growth was from military families that had been stationed at MacDill. However, due to military downsizing of the early 90’s, the number of personnel at MacDill was significantly reduced. We lost nearly half our congregation in one week. It was devastating to the life of our church. We began a decline that lasted almost 10 years.
By the year 2000 we were down to a third of our former size. Pastor Wallace was mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted. He was ready to quit.
Then one rainy winter night he had been invited to a meeting.
He said to his wife: “I don’t want to go, tonight.”
She said: “You don’t have to talk me out of it.”
Then he said: “Maybe, God has a word for us. Let’s go.”
He was right; God did have a word for them. Steve Sjogren was speaking that night about servant-hood evangelism. Pastor Wallace won a copy of Steve’s book “Conspiracy of Kindness”. After that evening, the direction that our church had to go became clear. We would change from a come-and-see-church to a go-and-do-church.
We began to give away cookies, have free car-washes, free yard sales and even tried to give away free lunches. Our church started to show some signs of life, but we still weren’t growing. In fact, we were having trouble loving our community because we lacked love for each other. We were a very unhealthy church and our lack of love for each other was demonstrated by gossip, dissension and infighting.
About this same time the pastor and his son were discussing the spiritual condition of the church and determined that we weren’t a safe place for new believers. So we immediately set about creating a service that was designed to be a safe place for people to learn about God and decide for themselves. We started a Saturday Night service called Quest, but we wanted to practice this new format before inviting the public.
By the time we were ready to open the service to public, all of our members who had volunteered were stretched thin and overwhelmed by the amount of work that was required to make this extra service run smoothly. We loved the new format, so we decided to move it to Sunday Mornings in place of our traditional service. Not everyone was happy with the new format, but some adapted and others moved on.
Soon, we were unified around becoming a safe place for our community to get to know Jesus. We began to grow again, and life returned to our church. We were once again seeing people choose to follow Jesus. Peoples lives were being changed.
We were settling into our new identity, when Larry, who was coming to the church occasionally, was out riding his Harley with his friend Benny. A large truck cut them off, and while Larry was able to stop, Benny wasn’t and was killed. Larry asked Pastor if he would say a few words at Benny’s memorial since he didn’t have a pastor of his own. Of course, Pastor Wallace agreed to do it. He was nervous and excited and not sure what to say. He has owned one bike or another throughout most of his life. He told them some of his riding stories, and just offered them words of comfort.
That day he discovered a community that thought they would never be accepted by any church, and they discovered a pastor who would love and accept them just like they were. He was asked to speak at a few more memorials at some of the bars that Benny frequented. As he spent more time around the biking community, friendships were developed. Some of them came to church, some members of their families came to church, and through the connections that were formed out of that tragedy we have been able to reach further and wider into the Seffner community than we otherwise would have.
That’s where we’ve been, and where we’re at now. We can’t wait to see what God will do here next. If some part of our story has resonated with you, we invite you to come be a part of the next chapter