As Springs of Grace Lutheran Church celebrates 25 years, it’s dedicated members like Diane Ablett who have been instrumental in the impact of this small but mighty congregation on the Spartanburg community.
Ablett first moved to Spartanburg in 1999 from Saginaw, Michigan with her husband, Gere Ablett. The couple had driven through the Carolinas several times when visiting Florida, so when her husband received a job opportunity down south, they took it, eager to leave the cold, snowy weather of Michigan.
Soon, Spartanburg felt like home. “It was so pretty down here, and I felt that people were friendly and accepting,” Ablett says. She appreciated the area’s proximity to both the mountains and the beach, and found that her new location was the perfect road trip stop for friends and family traveling down to Florida on vacation. “It’s allowed us to see people that we might not have been able to see if we’d lived in another location,” she shares, grateful for the unexpected gift.
One of Ablett’s priorities upon moving south was to find a church. She had been baptized into the Lutheran church as a baby, and had stayed active in her faith all her life. Though there were a few large Lutheran churches in the area, Ablett had always enjoyed the family feel of a smaller church. When she got word that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was sending a minister to the area to start a new church, she and her husband knew they wanted to be a part of it.
“We met at his house in the very beginning,” she says, “and then we had a few more people get involved, so we rented a building and put up walls to have a sanctuary and Sunday school rooms and an office. We struggled over the years. Lutheran churches aren’t very common in the south, and we had to move from place to place, but eight years ago we finally built our church building.”
Through it all, Ablett has always felt that God was with her congregation. “I always felt that He really wanted our group to have a church,” she says. “And we accomplished that. We did. We accomplished that, and we’ve maintained that family feel. That’s one of the comments I frequently hear from people, that we make people feel very comfortable when they come to our church, and that’s what I like about it. I think that’s how a church should be, very welcoming to people.”
Doing things for others has always been an important part of Ablett’s life. When she was a very young child in Sunday school, she told her parents that she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. That passion for care never faded, and that’s exactly what she did — going through nursing school and working as a nurse until her retirement.
And though Springs of Grace is a relatively small congregation — Ablett estimates they have around 60 members — they’ve consistently worked to make a meaningful impact on the Spartanburg community.
“Even though we’re small, we try to reach out,” she says. “We’ve been very involved in the community, and have organizations we’ve supported and worked with, and to me that’s important. That’s what you’re supposed to do. There’s a sign you’ll see sometimes hanging by a church driveway, and it says something to the effect of, ‘Our work begins when we leave the church.’ And to me, that’s what’s important, what we’re doing outside our church doors.”
The church has poured into numerous organizations, including Project Rest, Hunters for the Hungry, and Miracle Hill. They also have partnered with school systems in District 2, and work with groups providing support and resources to communities who have experienced natural disasters. Currently, Ablett says the women’s group is making prayer pillows to give to the sheriff’s department for children found on the scene of 911 calls.
“Like I said, we’re not a big group, but you can do a lot, even when you’re not very many people,” says Ablett.
The congregation is excited to celebrate their 25th anniversary, and Ablett says plans are underway for a celebration later in the summer. They hope to gather former members and pastors to come together and share memories of the past quarter century.
Additionally, the church will be recognized at the Synod Assembly in Columbus this June.
For Ablett, it’s a celebration of 25 years of building a church family — and making a lasting impact on the community she calls home.
