Editor’s Note: The following first appeared in the October-December 2025 issue of Good Faith Magazine, which is a free resource to Good Faith Advocates.
During summers in high school, I traded my 5,000-square-foot house (complete with a pool and pool house) for a room in a low-income apartment complex in North Charleston. I spent mornings and afternoons in the thick, low-country humidity, leading backyard Bible clubs for the children who lived nearby. I supervised children whose parents worked and had no other childcare options.
At the time, I thought my most important contribution was introducing these children — most of whom were Black and brown — to Jesus. Many of them would nod and pray the sinner’s prayer and ask for another Popsicle.
Later in my life, I came to understand this approach to ministry as colonizing. Most of these kids already knew God; their grandmothers had a deeper faith than I could have imagined. Our time would have been better spent working alongside their grandmothers to advocate for just housing solutions in Charleston County.
I have reckoned with my experience in Charleston for over two decades. What is most important is the awareness I developed of the injustices of our country, of the stark difference between my life and theirs, and of my inherited wealth as a white person. No matter how fraught that experience was, it helped me claim my own calling to ministry.
As the Senior Pastor of a church in a wealthy town that is continually growing and gentrifying, my congregation is at the literal crossroads of this problem. We sit at the corner of Kildaire Farm and Maynard Roads, right at the entrance of one of the most appealing downtowns in the country.
Like many churches, we also find ourselves with more building than we need. Thankfully, my congregation doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions or engaging in challenging solutions. Greenwood Forest has always been an inclusive community of faith, opening its doors to community groups and fostering healing and connection in its neighborhood.
My people decided they wanted to be a part of the solution to the problem of affordable housing in our town and use our space to create the world as it should be, a place where all can be safely and comfortably housed. In partnership with DHIC (a leading affordable housing developer in central North Carolina), The Carying Place (a program that helps families transition out of homelessness), the local YMCA, and our own preschool, we are building the Timothy Ash Carr Center (named after a beloved church member who was instrumental in project planning before he died in 2024), which will include affordable housing and childcare.
This is the gospel. The good news isn’t about how things will be better by-and-by; the good news is that the world of God’s dreams, where all God’s children can thrive, is possible now — at our corner, and yours.
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Rev. Lauren Hayes (she/her) is the Senior Pastor of Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, a community she has loved and been a part of for fourteen years.