THE VERY BEGINNING

It was the summer of 1973, and Lou Anne O'Brien was going to enter Clemson University as a Freshman in a few short months. Lou Anne, living in Florida, decided to attend a Christian conference sponsored by Great Commission in Tennessee with a friend. The conference was powerful, and God worked mightily in many hearts. Lou Anne decided that she wanted to be involved in fulfilling the great commission herself, and she wanted to join one of many evangelistic teams sent out after the conference. But there was a problem: she had promised her parents to go to Clemson! In tears, she asked Herschel Martindale, one of the conference leaders, what she should do. Herschel told her to go home and love her parents, and he would take a team and come to Clemson briefly in the fall to help Lou Anne get settled into school.

With a team of 5 young people, Herschel made good his promise and drove to Clemson at the beginning of the fall semester. The team had prayed for 3 things: (1) that God would help them to meet Christians to fellowship with Lou Anne, (2) that God would give them some unbelievers for Lou Anne to witness to, and (3) that God would lead them to someone who would help Lou Anne to grow spiritually after they left. Lou Anne was overjoyed to see them and said she missed all their singing so much, so they all went out on the lawn in front of her dorm and began singing. About 30 other college students (strangers) came out on the lawn to sing along in an awesome spontaneous time of fellowship. The next day, the team talked to students all over campus about the gospel. 15 said they would be glad for Lou Anne to later visit them and share the gospel with them. Three guys on bicycles visited them, and one, named Steve Nelson, seemed to Herschel to be really strong in the Lord. Herschel felt strongly led to ask Steve if he could look out for and help Lou Anne spiritually. Steve said he had never heard of such a thing, but said he would take it as from the Lord and try to do it. So God answered all 3 prayers in two days!

During that year, Herschel came with others to visit Lou Anne and other Christian friends she had made. On one of the visits, they made it into a mini-conference and taught around the clock for several days. As they talked about practicing what they had heard about character qualities and fulfilling the great commission, Herschel asked the Clemson people if they would consider forming a church fellowship committed to really doing these things. After some discussion about such a seemingly crazy undertaking (after all, none of these were pastors or professionally trained), they decided to do it, and what is now Clemson Community Church was born.

In the years since, the church has sent out dozens of people into full-time ministry, birthed several new churches, and literally hundreds of young people have been led to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it amazing what God can do through the willing heart of a single young person?