A Reformed Church on Haywood Road
Faith Free Presbyterian Church sits on Haywood Road on the north side of Greenville, South Carolina, in a part of the Upstate that draws families and commuters from nearby Greer, Simpsonville, Five Forks, Travelers Rest, Mauldin, and Easley. The congregation is a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America (FPCNA), a small, conservative Presbyterian denomination that grew out of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in Northern Ireland. Visitors who come looking for a Bible-preaching, reverent, Christ-centered church tend to stay, drawn by a steady diet of expository preaching, traditional Psalm-and-hymn worship, and a community that takes prayer as seriously as its pulpit.
From Sharon Drive to Haywood Road
Faith traces its beginnings to 1972, when roughly eighty members of a Greenville congregation followed their pastor, the Rev. Alfred Mersman, out the door to form a new work called Faith Presbyterian Church. They met at first in the Piedmont Natural Gas building, then bounced through the Seventh Day Adventist Church on East North Street, Wade Hampton High School, and Duncan Chapel Elementary School near Furman University before settling in 1976 into a modified house on a three-acre property on Sharon Drive.
In 1977, during a visit to Bob Jones University for its Bible Conference, the elders of Faith Presbyterian asked Dr. Ian Paisley for a private meeting and unanimously petitioned to join the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. After being received, the congregation changed its name to Faith Free Presbyterian Church. Though Toronto Free Presbyterian Church was the first FPC work in North America, Faith holds the distinction of being the first Free Presbyterian church in the United States and the pioneer FPC congregation in Greenville.
For the next two years Free Presbyterian ministers rotated through the pulpit, each staying a month or two. In 1978-79 the Rev. Alan Cairns, then a minister in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, came for a two-month supply and was soon called to be Faith's first settled minister. Dr. Cairns, who had been a professor of Systematic Theology in the Ulster seminary and was instrumental in the Let the Bible Speak radio broadcast, took up the pastorate in 1980 and served until his retirement in 2009. Under his preaching and leadership the congregation grew, took on a confessional identity, and in 1982 began training preachers - work that grew into Geneva Reformed Seminary, which still operates from the Greenville area.
After Dr. Cairns's retirement to Northern Ireland in 2009, Rev. Colin Mercer served as Senior Minister until 2017. In January 2019, Rev. Armen Thomassian was installed as the current Senior Minister, and under his leadership Faith continues to operate from its current location on Haywood Road.
What They Believe
Faith is a conservative, confessional, Reformed church. Pastors, elders, and deacons subscribe to the Westminster Standards - the Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, and the Shorter Catechism - with a few confessional modifications recorded in the FPCNA's Book of Church Order. Scripture, however, is the supreme authority, and the church teaches the historic Christian faith in the Calvinist tradition.
On the Bible, Faith teaches the inerrancy, inspiration, sufficiency, and authority of Scripture. The Authorized (King James) Version is used in all services, including the responsive readings. The church confesses the doctrines of God's sovereignty, the Trinity, the creation of man in God's image, the fall, federal headship, election, justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, adoption, sanctification, the mission of the church, and a robust eschatology covering personal, general, corporate, and apocalyptic last things. Salvation is summarized regularly as by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
One distinctive feature of the FPCNA, and of Faith, is an open policy on baptism. Members and office-bearers may hold either a paedobaptist (infant baptism) or a credobaptist (believer's baptism) position without discrimination, and the policy is one reason Baptists who love Reformed doctrine often find a home here.
Worship on a Sunday
Faith holds two services each Sunday at 1207 Haywood Road - morning worship at 11:00 AM and evening worship at 6:00 PM. Both services are reverent, Christ-centered, and shaped by the regulative principle of worship. There is no worship band. Instead, the congregation sings Psalms and hymns together, and the singing is intentionally robust and wholehearted; visitors frequently comment that the congregational singing is one of the most striking parts of a Faith service. Prayer, public Scripture reading, and expository preaching fill out the order of worship. The morning service runs about eighty to ninety minutes and is slightly more formal than the evening service, with responsive readings from the pews. The evening service is followed by a weekly fellowship meal, which is a natural way to meet members and get to know people.
Sunday School meets at 9:30 AM, before the morning service, with classes for children, youth, college-age adults, and older adults. Coffee is served between Sunday School and the 11:00 service.
Visitors who plan ahead can fill out the Plan Your Visit form on the church's site. On arrival, greeters help with seating, families with infants and toddlers can use the nursery during any service, and members of the welcome team hand out a packet with information about the church. Pastor Armen seeks to greet every visitor after each service.
Expository Preaching
The pulpit is the heart of Faith's ministry, and the preaching is expository, Christ-centered, and earnest. Sermons grow out of the Bible text itself rather than from a topic chosen first, and the congregation regularly hears books of the Bible opened passage by passage. Pastor Armen is currently working through the book of Hebrews on Sunday mornings, and a parallel series through the Gospel of Luke runs alongside it. Other recent series have included expositions of Song of Solomon, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Psalm 51, Psalm 90, an exposition of Genesis, a topical series called Lives Well Lived, a 3 Word Sermon series drawn from short biblical phrases, and a Church History Turning Points series taught by Dr. Mark Sidwell. Guest preachers and members of the congregation also fill the pulpit from time to time.
The sermon library at faithfpc.org holds years of recorded preaching - over a hundred pages of it, including audio of many of Dr. Cairns's classic sermons - and is searchable by Scripture reference, speaker, service type, and year.
A Church That Prays
Faith is unusually committed to corporate prayer. The midweek Prayer Meeting on Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM is described as the primary prayer gathering of the church and the appointment many members look forward to all week, but it is far from the only one. The prayer calendar includes Sunday morning prayer at 10:30 AM and Sunday evening prayer at 5:30 PM, a men's prayer on Saturday mornings at 7:00 AM, and a men's prayer on the first and third Friday of each month at 9:30 PM. Four times a year the congregation sets aside a Sunday afternoon for three hours of sustained prayer. Visitors are welcome at any of these meetings, and no one is pressured to pray aloud.
What to Wear, Where to Park, and Other Practical Details
There is plenty of on-site parking at 1207 Haywood Road, and the building is easy to access from Haywood Road. The dress code is informal in policy - "come as you are" - though in practice most people wear traditional Sunday attire or business casual. Families are encouraged to keep children in the worship service, but a nursery is available during every service for children ages 0 to 3 if needed. Office hours run Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, and the church can be reached at (864) 244-2408 or info@faithfpc.org.
Learning Together: Sunday School and Discipleship
Beyond Sunday School for all ages, Faith runs ongoing discipleship opportunities for men, women, and young adults. A Biblical Theology of the Trinity Sunday school series taught by Dr. Mark Sidwell has been working its way through the Old and New Testaments, examining how the persons of the Godhead appear in Scripture from Genesis through the Gospels. Small groups and fellowship meals knit the congregation together between Sundays, and the pastoral staff is readily available for one-on-one counsel.
Children, Youth, and VBS
Children are welcomed into worship at Faith rather than sent off to a separate program, but the church offers a nursery, full Sunday School classes for every age, and a Vacation Bible School each year during the third week of June. The VBS is known in the community for its organization and biblical emphasis, and its size is limited only by the number of volunteers who can help. A summer youth camp serves twelve- to eighteen-year-olds and draws volunteer counselors from the congregation each year.
Music Ministry
The choir and orchestra enhance the morning worship service. Each Sunday morning service opens with one piece from the choir, and musicians - vocalists, instrumentalists, organists, and pianists - are invited to join and add depth to the congregational singing. Volunteer audio and video teams run the live webcast that reaches shut-ins and others who join from a distance.
Reaching Greenville: Local Outreach
Faith has a strong conviction that the gospel is for the city as well as for the sanctuary. A regular street evangelism team hands out tracts and opens conversations downtown. The Neighborhood Bible Club takes the gospel into a nearby Hispanic community - Spanish-speakers are particularly welcome - with a focus on children and parents. Each week, members take the Sunday service into a local seniors' home for residents who cannot easily come to church. The congregation also supports Generations Boys' Home, a residential ministry for teenage boys from difficult backgrounds. Annual events include a church-wide work day each March, twice-yearly care packages for missionaries, and a security team that helps provide a safe environment on the church grounds.
Reaching the World: Supported Missionaries
Faith supports an unusually broad missionary enterprise for a single congregation. John Kelly, a Geneva Reformed Seminary graduate, was sent out under Faith's oversight in the fall of 2022 to plant a church in the St. John Valley of northern Maine, holding services in Fort Kent and St. Francis. Internationally, the church supports Jason Boyle in Mexico City (the first FPC work in Latin America), Ramon Sosa in Santo Domingo (ordained January 2023), Lalo Peña in Córdoba, Mexico (the denomination's first native Mexican church planter), Paco Orozco in Hermosillo, Mexico, Richard Craig in Little London, Jamaica (the first FPC work in the Caribbean), Seongkyu Lee in Gwangmyeong, South Korea, and Bill Jones with New York Gospel Ministries. Through the wider Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the congregation also has connections to works in Australia, Spain, Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. A twice-yearly missions trip has taken teams to the Dominican Republic.
Leadership and Oversight
Faith is led by a teaching elder (the pastor) and a session of ruling elders elected by the congregation. The current session includes Bruce Byers, Brad Carper, Tim Davis, Dr. Ed Dunbar, Tim Farr, Steven Lee, and Paul Overly, with Byron Verdin and Charles Koelsch serving as elders emeritus. A diaconate of ten men - Mark Boyd, Seth Carper, Scott Foster, John Fulton, Larry Killian, Rusty Little, John Matzko, Anthony Melsom, Levi Myers, and Ben Owen - cares for the practical and merciful needs of the congregation. The pastor is assisted in counseling and visitation by the elders, and members may request a pastoral visit for illness, bereavement, decision-making, marriage or family struggles, doubts about faith, or conflict.
The Senior Minister: Rev. Armen Thomassian
Pastor Armen was born in Scotland and raised in his mother's homeland of Northern Ireland. He was brought to saving faith in Christ at nineteen, served several years in his local congregation in Ballymoney, and was sent by the Mission Board of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster to Australia in 2007 to supply pulpits in South Australia and Tasmania. After returning to begin ministerial training, he graduated in 2014 and accepted a call to Calgary Free Presbyterian Church, where he began in January 2015. He received the call to Faith Free Presbyterian Church in 2018 and was installed in January 2019. He also teaches at Geneva Reformed Seminary and preaches at conferences and churches across North America. His ministry is marked by three burdens: recovering family worship, reviving corporate prayer, and raising kingdom laborers.
Becoming Part of the Church
For those wishing to put down roots, the church provides a clear set of next steps: hearing the gospel and becoming a Christian, being baptized (whether as an infant or upon a personal profession of faith), becoming a member of the congregation, and finding a place to serve. A seminary scholarship is available through the church for students heading to Geneva Reformed Seminary or a similar institution. Giving can be done online through Zeffy, and the live webcast of every service is available at faithfpc.org/live.
At the heart of Faith Free Presbyterian Church is a simple conviction: that the Bible is to be preached, that prayer is to be practiced, that the gospel is to be proclaimed in Greenville and to the ends of the earth, and that the people of God are to be knit together in real fellowship around Christ and His Word.