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In the last thirty years, Faith Baptist Church has grown from a community outreach in Poe Mill Village, Greenville, South Carolina, to one of Greenville’s largest Baptist churches. God has allowed Faith to become a leading Fundamental church in America, and its humble beginnings are a testimony to God’s faithfulness.

In March 1896, the F. W. Poe Manufacturing Company opened as the second major textile mill in Greenville. As was typical of the period, the company built housing for its employees as well. By 1930, Poe Mill Village was one of Greenville County’s largest communities and home to over two thousand people in Greenville’s West End. In the mid-1960s, the teenagers of Boulevard Baptist Church in Greenville realized the need to spread the Gospel in Poe Mill Village. The teens began “Club 3:16” in a little house at 23 B Street. Named for John 3:16, the club required children to memorize that verse to become a member. Held weekly, Club 3:16 had considerable influence in Poe Mill Village. So many children and teens joined the club that it began meeting two nights a week. When parents began attending with their children, Boulevard Baptist soon recognized the need to plant a church.

Club 3:16 became the Poe Mill Mission and called Rev. Al Thornton as the pastor. Thornton was born in Joplin, Texas, in 1913, and accepted Christ at an evangelistic meeting when he was twenty. Six feet, eleven inches tall, Thornton was a successful basketball player in high school and in a semi-professional league. Yet, through listening to radio preachers, he felt God calling him to preach. Rejecting a potentially lucrative basketball career, he enrolled in Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Over the next several years, Thornton pastored churches in Indiana, Oklahoma, and Missouri before moving to Greenville where he and his family joined Boulevard Baptist Church.