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We originally saw Southbrook by driving by and being next door to the ball fields. We decided to try it out after hearing great things from members at the ballfield and heard that SB had great youth programs. That by the way was well demonstrated last night. So we came two Xmas ago and it was everything we had heard and more.

Drove by and Invited by a member

We found Southbrook on your “old website”. Remember the one with all of the goofy videos?? “I think I love you by the Partridge Family?” The Date that Michelle wanted to go on…….Rob gousting? Ha-ha! We’re sorry we missed those days! And it wasn’t enough to scare of off!

Invited by dechurched neighbors who we are still trying to get to attend.

I used to drive to work on 84 everyday. I saw the building going up and then the sign with the web address. We visited the website and decided to give church a try. My wife visited first then we went together the following week. We liked the Saturday night service and the style of worship and teaching.

Well, you did bug me about it every time I saw you, but that was a couple of years ago. Paul and Sandy Allen invited us to come Fathers day 2005 - I think it was their third sunday at Southbrook.

We first came upon Southbrook by driving by taking our kids to games at Optimist Park. We were curious, so we then checked out the website to see what SB was all about. The website told us everything we needed to know and made us feel more comfortable coming for the first time. For us the website let us test the waters, so to speak, before we jumped in.

Driving by… My work route changed, and drove me past Southbrook. Something in my head kept calling me to try it out, UM GOD!!. Can’t remember the series at the time, but as you always say, 10′oclock serivce Sundays first timers!! That was us a few years ago, and have never left, (of course we have left the 10′oclock service though).

We drove by Southbrook several times and it was on our list of churches to “check out” for quite sometime. We then were at a cookout a little over a year ago, and a friend of a friend actually suggested Southbrook. They said it was a inviting, come-as-you-are atmosphere, but decided to also throw in that they stopped going because they felt like all the church wanted was “their money.” Well, even though Pastor Rob isn’t afraid to talk about money (and that is a good thing!) it is abundantly clear that Southbrook is after seekers hearts and not “our stuff.”

Unfortunately I haven’t seen that couple since, but when I do, I will thank them profusely and invite them back!

A friend mentioned that he drove by there and it seemed like a happening place so we checked it out and fell in love the first night.

Website, once we heard the series on money, we were hooked!

The Real Estate agent of a house we when to see when we were looking to buy a home (and I should mentioned the agent is Catholic) told me about Southbrook when I mentioned I was looking for a chuch. Funny how God works.

A co-worker / friend that works with my Wife.

Art had been telling Susan about Southbrook and when Derwin Gray was coming to speak she said she would like to go, I was all for it. (She is the bigger Panther Fan….)

We kept coming back every Sunday waiting to hear Pastor Rob preach, as I remember it was a long run between Derwin and Pastor Rob.

After finally hearing Pastor Rob preach, we still kept coming back ;>)

Drive by, but it was a co-worker of my wife’s who invited us. The rest is history. We love it and what God is doing in us and through us.

Website - Our blended family of churched and unchurched needed to worship in a church committed to contemporary worship. Good preaching helped solidify the deal!

Amy Parrott invited us.

Before the church was built, we saw the trees being cut down and said to each other “Must be another Harris Teeter going up.” Cool…. food at my finger tips. “See Dar, there is a God” Then a few days later the sign was put up saying “Future home of Southbrook Church, we now meet at Providence High School”.

Cool… God will provide food for us. And boy did He. We were fed the moment we stepped into the high school. Ron & Liz Flowers were greeting at the door. They made a difference just by the way they opened the door and welcomed us with the heart of Jesus. We’ve been here ever since. You never get a second “First Impression.”

We first learned about Southbrook from the sign. Then by word of mouth. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. And it’s not expensive.

We were drive-byers. We saw the sign shortly after our move to Charlotte, and made it our church to visit our third week of church shopping. We loved the worship style, the focus of the church, and that it was a growing church. But it was definetely the love we received as soon as we walked in that brought us back.
God is, and has been, moving at Southrbook. Can’t wait to see what else He’s gonna do!

OK, it was November of 2000 when we were invited by a friend to Southbrook. Our first week we attended there were 85 people. (Rob … you were counting back then so I am sure there were only 60 … I think you counted kids twice back then) I have to say that I talk to a lot of people about what has happened at this little Church of GOD’s that we attend … and everyone is amazed with the numbers of changed hearts … the quickness of growth … how we celebrate the LORD … it is an amazing ride that the LORD has allowed my family to be on …

So who will I invite today? Good question … I will find someone …

In HIS Service,
Mark C

We moved to Charlotte almost 3 years ago and were very active in our church in Raleigh for over 4 years prior. It was very much like Southbrook as it was “seeker friendly” with good worship, relevant messages, and a dynamic pastorial staff. I looked around the net before we moved here to scope our some churches in the Charlotte area and I found Southbrook’s website. After we moved here, the first church we visited on the first weekend we were here was SCC. (it was the first week in the new building too!) Not to knock our last church but it was like Rob and company had found 11 on the amplifier that we were used to being set at 10ish and it has just exploded from there. With that being said we have grown so much more in the past three years than we have ever grown in our walk with Christ.

What an awesome, powerful, loving, providing, and infinitely huge God we serve. There are so many other great things that have happened in our lives as well. Sorry for the cliché but it is definitely a “God thing” going on up in here, no one could ever dispute or question that.

Dean was driving to our house that was being built and saw the sign for the future home of Southbrook Church. The kids and I were still in Nebraska, so he had me check out the website for him. He started going and never left. What sealed it for me was that Daryl was introduced as the new Youth Pastor the first Sunday that the kids and I attended. No youth pastor had been my only reservation about making Southbrook our home. I knew at that moment that God was telling me this was where he wanted us. Our family can’t imagine serving God anywhere else!

Years ago I attended my friend’s church in Ft Wayne, IN that is very much like Southbrook. I loved it and tried to find a church similar in New York but could not find anything but the “usual”. My husband and I decided to move to Charlotte, NC (August 2006) to escape the high taxes and real estate costs. A friend of mine, Alysa, (who also moved down here from NY), mentioned Southbrook and that she went to visit once. I went with her in the end of January 2007 and it has been a life changing experience since. My kids love going and now my husband goes too! I think someone mentioned above…word of mouth is powerful! I truly believe that God wanted us to come down to Charlotte to find Southbrook. When we first moved down here I was a little home sick and thinking “what the heck did we do…leave our family…friends and jobs to come here” but after a few weeks attending Southbrook, I believe the man upstairs had it planned along!

My brother inlaw invited us many times and we always had a reason not to come. We finally visited so he would quit bugging us. One visit was all it took. Our lives were forever changed by the love, teaching, and fellowship we experienced at Providence High School. Its been an awesome time of seeing the Lord work not just our lives but in the lives of countless others. God is so GREAT and I thank Him for the people he’s brought to Southbrook everyday!!!!!! I love this church!
Joni

We heard about Southbrook from a few friends and decided to check it out back in the summer of 2004. We loved it right away and knew this was the type of church we could serve at in the future.

It was a full 2 years before we were led back to Southbrook. Once we found out Paul Allen, Mike Cruser, and Jim Young were all involved at Southbrook (Janna and I have a ton of respect for these men and their families), we figured there must be something good happening.

We moved to Charlotte in August of 2004. Church seeking was absolutely somtething we were dreading. I kept saying to Kyle, boy I would really like to find a church but the whole ordeal was just that, an “ordeal”. After about a month in the area we had set up an appointment to have our blinds installed in the new house. This was an appointment that I would never forget.
The gentlemen (whose name was Matt, I later learned) who came to do the installation was great, enthusiastic and immediately asked if we had found a church yet. Of course, being a “chicagoan”, this really caught me off guard (you just don’t come out and ask these things right off the bat!). So he proceded to tell me that I ought to try Southbrook because it had a great youth program was really contemporary and was a “come as you are church”.
The first weekend we tried SB Rob & Michelle were team preaching and it was awesome. And the bonus was that our 9 year loved the music…all we heard on the way home was how it “totally rocked”. That says it all!
So I would definitely say that word of mouth is great and I will always be in gratitude to the “blind guy”! We love SB!

My husband and I were still in NJ and checking out area churches online. I’ll never forget sitting at our local Borders with our laptop and coming across the SC site. It was back when the spoof on American Idol was on. My husband, two daughters, and I couldn’t stop laughing! We swore we’d check out the church after settling in here. Well, we got lost the first time we tried and ended up somewhere else. Although we were quite content at the church we started attending, something made us want to go back and try Southbrook. We were floored by the warmth of the people, the awesome music, and of course Pastor Rob’s powerful message.

I thank God for leading us to Southbrook Church! It’s truly a life changing place.

My husband and I came as a result of the website. We absolutely love it! I personally like the ‘tell like it is’ (essentially it’s the ‘tell it like the Bible tells it ALREADY) approach.

We we attending another church in 2005, and I really wanted to see what Southbrook was all about. We both were involved in ministry at the other church, so we tried to discreetly check out a Saturday Night service. I remember my wife commenting that the worship leader had a true heart of worship. Our baby was very cranky that night and would not stay in children’s church, so I had to take her and “walk the halls’. Why I was doing so, I met the worship leader my wife mentioned. He introduced himself as Dan. We had a great conversation and I remember thinking how most churches you can go to for weeks, maybe months @ a time and feel like a complete stranger, but Dan made me feel comfortable in an awkward situation, (with a screaming, cranky 1 year old!)

In closing, Southbrook is home, Dan is still my friend, my baby girl loves childrens church now, and we still sometimes attend Sat. Nights. Thank you for your First Impressions ministry. . . Go God!

In my previous post I forgot to mention how we heard of Southbrook. We would drive by all the time and always see something happening and ask each other, “I wonder what that Southbrook place is all about?”

We were looking for a church. A friend told us about Southbrook. She described it as loud and really different, which caught our attention. So now we’re members - our kids, too!

My husband and I had driven by the church a number of times because my brother-in-law lives close by. We drive from Unionville each week and are happy to do so. A church that is alive is worth the drive!!

Mark & Jessica Brown had invited us to come two years ago. We didn’t visit right away but when we recieved the mailer for “Desperate House Lies”, I thought “wow, that’s creative” and we visited soon after getting that. We had been out of church for a year then and were ready to find a new church home. Halfway throught the service, we knew Southbrook was our home.

WE found out about Southbrook through other people at our former church…we needed to find a church that had a strong Youth program…your reputaion was great…we checked you out, got the “thumbs up” from our son..we loved it too, prayed and here we are!

We moved to the area september 22, 2006 from Baltimore, MD. The only way we knew how to get to our house was off exit 57 from 485 so we had to travel down providence road to 84 and then all the way to Wesley Chapel. So in doing so (quite a number of times because its the only road we knew!) we passed several churches along the way. One day Michael told me to get in the car and “drive by” the churches on 84 and write down the names so I could come back and look on the internet. So my son and I did that the week after we moved in and I had 3 or 4 on my list but after researching on the internet, it was clear the one we wanted to “try out”. Needless to say, we threw the list away after our first visit to SB. We prayed about it but the Lord was so LOUD, we didn’t spend much time on it!!!!! We knew thats where He wanted and needed us to be. We thank God on a regular basis for leading us to Wesley Chapel and Southbrook!!!

Michael, Sherry, Dylan and William McCoy

We were driving to the neighborhood where our house was being built after attending another church on a Sunday last May. We relocated here Jan ‘06 and we were still looking for a church home. As we drove by Southbrook, we saw all the activity outside( including many young people). That really appealed to us because we have four teenagers. I visited Southbrook’s website and then we began visiting the church. That was a year ago. Boy time sure does fly!

About 5 years ago, we began looking for a “smaller” church, closer to home where we could make friends with other families with young children. Good worship music was also a high priority. We had selected several churches to visit, and then were invited by our neighbors, Phillip and Kelly Vaughan, to visit Southbrook (which at that time met in the high school). We were very impressed by the friendly, family feel which we hadn’t experienced in our previous “large” church. At our previous church, we had also felt continually “beat down” about what we were “not doing”. At Southbrook, we were encouraged by the message, supported by friendly folks who really cared and we loved the music! We never visited those other churches because we had found our “home” and we’ve been there ever since!

We heard about SB from our paster at a great little church in Dubois, PA. He suggested we visit willowcreek.com. We followed his advice once we moved here and decided to try SB. Our first visit there left us knowing that we had found a church home. We love and look forward to spending more time with ya’ll [Isn’t that how we say it in the south?]
Rock on Dan and the gang!!!

We heard about SouthBrook from a friend 7 years ago when SouthBrook services were held at Providence High School. We were nominal Christians at that time and found our world rocked by what we were learning at SB. As SB grew, so did the depth and committment of our faith. So much so that in January of 2005, we answered God’s call to become full time missionaries….which SB immediately offered to support. It took us a year and a half to be “field ready”, but in August of 2006 our family of six touched down in Papua New Guinea, where we are presently serving full time with Wycliffe Bible Translators as support missionaries. The amount of encouragement and support we have received from both SouthBrook Church iteself and that of many of the members/attenders there has been amazing. We have an incredible sense of peace and JOY because of the honor we have in serving the Lord in this way. And it would have never happened if we hadn’t taken our friends advice and visited SB way back in the “old days”! It’s an honor and a privilege to be a part of the SBC family.

Our daughter started coming with a neighbor when you were still at Providence High School. She came home and told us that you Pastor Rob came into the church on a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and we were a bit concerned so we came to check you out. We haven’t left since.

We’d been in Charlotte almost 3 years and just had recently started going to church (a different one), but I just wasn’t feeling it, and the kids seemed to bored! I loved the feeling of going to church as a family but my husband would not even consider attending a church that was not of a particular denomination. I prayed for guidance. We met a great group of people that my husband liked and respected who could not say enough great things about Southbrook, they were not pushy, just genuine. We finally attended for the first time about 6 months ago and haven’t stopped going. My family and I are what I like to call a ‘work in progress’ - spiricutally speaking and we are so thankful for Southbrook leading the way as we cont. on our journey!

[…] found out about Southbrook Church and post it as a comment after my previous blog. Just click here, http://www.robsingleton.net/?p=257 and post your answer. I will share the results in a couple weeks. We need at least a hundred […]

I had moved here from NY 3 years ago this month. A friend of mine from NY had moved here a year and a half before me and has known the Rosado family for over 20 years. She mentioned to Denise that I was moving here and that I was looking for a job. I started working with Denise a week after I moved here. She is the one that invited me to come visit SB. I didn’t come right away. I wanted to wait until my family moved down so we could attend together. Well, needless to say that we all loved it the first time we came and have been here ever since. We went to visit a few other churches that we were invited to, but it just didn’t feel the same. I think we knew in our hearts that we had already found where we wanted to be.

There is no doubt that us being here was a GOD thing!

[…] go to this posting, http://www.robsingleton.net/?p=257 and tell us of your introduction to Southbrook church. When we get to 100 I will give you all […]

A friend asked me…..and asked me….and kept asking me. I frequently visited Rob’s blogs and downloaded Podcasts before ever visiting. My first visit was on Easter Sunday - I finally gave in….and I have been back several times since. I really like the style of the worship service. Everyone is very welcoming. (Is that a word?) =) Anyhow, you guys have an awesome church!!!

Our “northern” Catholic family moved to the Charlotte area almost 2 years ago. We tried many different churches but never got a 100% family vote. A neighbor suggested we try Southbrook nine months ago and at our first visit, I was in tears and my entire family was hooked. We never stopped. It has been quite the growing, enriching , heart altering experience for each of us. A blessing. Now the kids are loving youth group and are inviting all their friends because they feel it so awesomely (?) to share!

We moved to Charlotte in August of 2000 and knew one person in town–the old children’s pastor of the church we had attended in Wilmington who was called by a local Charlotte church to start a plant church for them in Weddington. So, we went to that church until it became apparent that in attempting to be a seeker friendly church they were not holding true to many principle beliefs. We tried to work from within for a few months.They also had no youth group and when our then twelve year old returned from a weekend spent with her old youth group and said “I am so missing out,” we knew it was time to look for a new church family. Led by the needs of our children, we began to look. My husband’s two requirements were “no new churches and no ones that meet in a school (HA!) At the time, our youngest was in Melanie Chitwood’s preschool class. At one of the little parties, I heard several ladies talking about their church and it sounded like just what we needed. We first came to Providence High school the same day Daryl Sutherland joined the staff. Jimmy Thomas, Joni Haudic and Joel Flowers were very welcoming to us. We never looked back and have bloomed where we have been planted. Southbrook is home. Southbrook is family.

I was invited by a friend, Tom Haywood at work in October of 2002. After just one service I had to invite my then fiance, now wife to SBCC. We found a home in the Southbrook family fast and have loved watching our family grow ever since!

a friend invited me

In Fall of 2003 I was house hunting in the area and saw some mud and a Southbrook sign. We finally got to visit at Providence High School in January.

I was invited by a friend of a girlfriend. The girlfriend is gone but Southbrook remained!!!!