Seacoast is a large American non-denominational church located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; a suburb of Charleston. It was founded in February, 1988 by Greg Surratt and a team from Northwood Assembly, another large church in North Charleston. Surratt continues to serve as Senior Pastor. Seacoast was one of the churches who pioneered the multi-site church technique.
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Early history
According to their website, "Seacoast began in February 1988 with sixty-five people meeting in an apartment clubhouse. 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.
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 100,000-square-foot (10,000 m2) 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 12 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.
Charleston area
Outside Charleston
Beliefs
Seacoast is an non-denominational Christian church and states its "sole basis for [its] 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." [1]