Personal Injury Attorney in Conway, SC

Now that school is back in session and October is upon us, fall décor and images of bountiful harvest can be seen on city streetscapes, and pumpkins don the lots of many churches in the city of Conway.

But one church that won’t have a pile of pumpkins on its front lawn is Harvest Church. Led by pastor Joshua Sorrows, Harvest Church has an average of 200 in-person attendees in the non-summer months and yet has no church building, and no church lawn to have a sprawling display of pumpkins. Currently meeting on the campus of Conway Christian School in Conway, Harvest Church has positioned itself as a new church of believers in the faithful City of Conway where churches already line many of the streets.

A different kind of harvest

Harvest, defined as a noun, is the process or period of gathering in crops, and as a verb is to gather a crop. Harvest Church in Conway has just celebrated a two-year anniversary of gathering new members. The head “farmer” is Pastor Sorrows.

By December, Sorrows will be presented his Doctor of Ministry degree in Church Growth of Multiplication from the Biblical Institute of Los Angeles Talbot Theological Seminary. What does this degree mean in simple language? Sorrows will have a doctorate as a church planter. He and his wife, Sara, have been active in two church plants – one in Dallas, Texas, with the Normandy Community Church, and now Harvest Church in Conway.

A church planter

What exactly is church planter? When asked to define the term which Sorrows describes himself as, he said a church planter “plants or creates a church where that type did not previously exist.” He explained that a church planter usually has “a vision of a church to reach the people – the other people” in an area who are not currently active or involved in a church group of people.

Sorrows’ southern “roots” are that he grew up a Southern Baptist at both a large congregation with over 1000 members as well as a smaller, 200-member church in Georgia. Both brick and mortar, established congregations offered the foundation.

“I got my first calling when I was 17,” he said, adding that he was more engaged by “the sermon versus the music piece.”

He took some turns along the path and took the definite direction into church ministry in his early 20’s.

And how exactly has Sorrows learned to cultivate the growth of churches? Sorrows explained that starting a new church and leading it can be approached in the way one might start a business and attract the best leaders, volunteers and eventually staff. Rather than applying for a job at an existing church with a tall steeple, padded pews, 100’s of givers each week and a choir full of people, church planting is a very specialized endeavor.

Evaluating potential leaders

Just how high school or college students often take Myers-Briggs personality test to help them learn personality characteristics for job placement success, the Birkman method is a placement test that’s been recently updated and used in the realm of church leaders. Converge churches is a nonprofit organization with a mission of starting new churches around the world. Sorrows said the original framework Converge used from the 1980s has now been thoughtfully and systematically reviewed to improve ways for prospective church leaders to reach their best potential.

In addition to the theology knowledge aspect which makes up 34 questions, researchers like Sorrows worked to refine their assessments on topics like marriage and response to conflict. “We even created an escape room,” Sorrows said, adding that the goal was to see “who takes charge, who steps back…who is the shift maker.”

The characteristics of effective church planters personality assessment helps to identify what roles would fit for that person and whether church planting is the right step.

“You might feel the calling to be in church planting… but that might not be how God wired you… and you might have been wired to a different position on the bus,” Sorrows said.

The Birkman assessment has helped potential leaders realize the leadership position that is most compatible for them to fulfill their calling and be in the right spot of “the bus.”

Planting in Conway

Sorrows’ approach is part of a national group of churches in the Converge Convention. Harvest Church started with a core team who met in home settings as they worked to form a group of leaders who shared a vision and mission for the new church.

“Our church is intentionally built differently. It is not a program centered church,” Sorrows said. “We have a pathway church with the goal to know Jesus and grow with him.”

The church’s slogan is from Acts 2:47, which reads “praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (ESV) As seen by the 247 logos on the church’s media, this passage is the foundation of Harvest Church.

Sorrows said that while there is no church building, the church began providing enrichment through what they called “Harvest Homes.” These intimate gatherings of parishioners were the original method the church used before gathering the number of people warranted to meet in the Conway Christian School. The sermons were taped in the pastor’s home and then shared in the small groups of harvest homes each week. After listening to the sermon, the small groups would be able to discuss the message.

“More than Sundays,” Sorrows said, are the gatherings of their church members in home settings where members get to talk more intimately about their walks in life after the large gathering meets regularly each Sunday. Rather than being an on-site, program-centered church, church members gather at Anderson Oaks, Shephard’s Table, area festivals and first responders’ workplaces.

So as harvest season is upon the town, consider the notion that a harvest can show up in yet another form – in this case, a congregation of believers who call themselves Harvest Church. And be on the lookout for some seeds to sprout soon as leaders plan for Harvest Church to take root in a forever home on fertile soil down Cates Bay Highway on Ole Alston Avenue in the near future. Sorrows said the church hopes to raise funds to purchase the land by next March.

Tommy Cardinal is the managing editor of MyHorryNews. Reach him at 843-488-7244 or tommy.cardinal@myhorrynews.com. Follow him on X @BySTCardinal.

Conway Mayor Barbara Blain dressed like a pirate and stood on the dock at the Conway Marina on Thursday, Sept. 19, saying things like “Ahoy, me hearties” and “arrrgh.”

Then, after a half dozen swings, she smashed a ceremonial bottle on a replica pirate ship, christening “The Proclamation” as the latest spooky attraction in the city that each October changes its name to Halloween.

Blain said the “scourge of the seas” will join the tunnel of bones, the witch's garden, haunted city hall, shiverwalk, and other scary sites the city has conjured up since adopting the holiday as its own in 2019.

City officials said the displays and accompanying events attract scads of visitors, give businesses and hospitality tax collections a boost and solidify the city’s reputation as the city of Halloween SC.

“Every year we try to raise the bar,” Conway City Manager Adam Emrick said.

This year they raised the bar by raising the Jolly Roger over the eerie pirate ship.

It's a creation of the master boat builders in the town’s construction services department — “our incredibly gifted, talented staff,” Emrick said.

The entire department also dressed like ornery pirates, stood behind the mayor and said “arrrgh” a lot at the christening ceremony.

“They came out in appropriate garb after having made all this possible,” the mayor said.

Blain said the craft, with its smoke machine and ghostly animatronic pirates, is “built to strike fear into the hearts of the bravest souls, man or ghost alike, aye.”

The hull of the Proclamation is actually a flat-bottomed shrimp boat that Conway Construction Services Director Robert Cooper said had been sitting unused in the woods “for about 30 years.”

And on this platform they constructed a wooden pirate ship and painted it black, working off examples they found online.

From stern to bow sprit, with a crows nest and gun ports packing cannon, coils of rope on deck and netting draped from the rails, the twin-masted ship is everything but authentic. “It turned out well,” Cooper said.

In the big picture, the “Haunted Harbor” where the ship is docked is just one more attraction on a list of 16 on Conway’s Halloween visitor's map.

Gallery

The Halloween decorating started in 2019 as kind of a warmup for Christmas.

The city also does Christmas big time, and had been angling for a spot on Southern Living magazine’s top 10 list of Christmas towns, to no avail, Emrick said.

So they tried another tact to attract visitors, and found a niche.

“Everyone does Christmas,” Emrick said. “That wasn’t the case with Halloween.”

First came the plastic jack-o’-lanterns hanging from the trees along Main Street in 2019. They cleared the shelves at Walmart that year, and the collection has since grown to about 2,400 plastic pumpkins.

“Five years ago the city of Conway dressed its canopy trees in perfectly bloomed jack-o’-lanterns, the start of what would be a world-class showing of all things Halloween,” Blain said in her proclamation.

News

The displays feature skeletons, pumpkins, ghosts, spiders, cobwebs, assorted creatures, all manner of frightful things. Locations downtown have been temporarily renamed to things like Ghoulish Grove, Shiverfront Park, Squeal Alley and Town Scream.

It takes more than a minute to put up the decorations, a job that falls largely to the 25 men and women in the Hospitality and Beautification Department.

The jack-o’-lanterns — the ones with the handle that kids carry when trick-or-treating — are affixed to the trees with zip-ties. First, they drill holes in the bottom so the water will drain when it rains.

“We put them up at night, at one or two in the morning, with bucket trucks,” said Timmy Williams, the city’s director of hospitality and beautification.

He said several city departments lend a hand, and even mother nature pitched in by draping some of the trees with spooky Spanish moss.

The rest of the decorations and attractions go up as time permits, and the decorating reached a fevered pitch toward the end of September, which Conway Public Information Officer June Wood described as “the nightmare before Halloween.”

By Oct. 1, Wood said, all will be in order, and Halloween will begin with a costume parade at 7 p.m. from the intersection of Kingston Street and Fourth Ave. to the Town Green, where live music will follow.

“It’s the beginning of 31 days of horror,” Mayor Blain said.

And a plethora of seasonal events, including the First United Methodist Church Pumpkin Patch, scary movie Fridays at The Terrace, Ghost Walk tours of haunted Conway, a Halloween Golf Cart Parade, a haunted theatre at Theatre of the Republic. Plus scary boat tours, witchy wine tasting, a Halloween Hustle 10K/5K.

There’s even amateur wrestling — Scare in the Square — at the Town Green at 5 p.m. on Oct. 27, and Coastal Carolina University’s basketball team will play a Nightmare on Elm Street exhibition game on Elm Street from 6-8 p.m. on Oct. 30.

That’s just a sampling, and more events are being added every day. A complete list can be found at events.cityofconway.com.

The Halloween spirit is contagious in Conway, with some homes already decorated for the holiday.

Downtown businesses have also taken the cue, holding sales, hosting ancillary events and creating holiday menus.

Downtown restaurants are already reporting a bump in business from the Halloween decorations, according to Hillary Howard, executive director of Conway Downtown Alive.

“If the 2023 numbers from Halloween SC carry over to 2024, our Downtown businesses should be in for another great year,” Howard said, noting that October sales now surpass December’s.

Wood said there’s no easy way to determine how many visitors come to see the displays and participate in events, but anecdotally, it’s a lot busier than it used to be.

She described “shoulder-to-shoulder” crowds in the downtown on Sunday afternoons last October, on what would normally be a slow day in Conway. And city officials estimate that foot traffic increased five-fold last year over 2022, as the decorating intensified and the word spread.

For Conway kids, who get to live in Halloween, it's 31 days of hype leading up to the big payoff on Oct. 31, when Trick-or-treating is held from 5:30-9 p.m., and the city starts decorating for Christmas.

Reach Casey Jones at 843-488-7261 or casey.jones@myhorrynews.com.

A major new development in the Conway area plans to add more than 1,000 homes to the city, as other planned projects add more housing to the county seat.

According to a press release by First Continental, a firm specializing in “residential lot acquisition and development financing,” the Auberon Woods is a community set on a 758-acre tract of land featuring 1,100 houses and two amenities. The entire community will be completed in 2027; however, work began on 206 home developments in 2023, with an additional 194 single-family homes scheduled for completion in 2025.

The home builder, D.R. Horton, offers three floorplans. A 1,618 square feet, three beds, two baths and one story tall option. A four-bed, two-bath option with 1,774 square feet and a one-story-tall option and 2,271 square feet, four-bed, 2.5-bath, and two-story tall floorplan. According to D.R. Horton’s website, prices range from $304,000, $310,000 and $388,000.

D.R. Horton did not return a request for comment before publication.

Horry County Land Records marks the development near Teddy Bear Circle along South Carolina Highway 90. While massive, the project isn’t the biggest development that could reshape the area around the City of Conway.

Warden Station, which the City of Conway unanimously approved in January 2024, will add more than 3,300 thousand single-family detached, townhomes and multi-family units to the area surrounding Conway. The project is near Pitch Landing Road and Harper Road next to Highway 701 South.

Meanwhile, other smaller-scale projects are also cropping up along Conway. DRB Homes will add more than 70 homes in the Longs area as part of its Chesnut Farms active adult community that caters to 55 and older communities. Meanwhile, other developers want to add 100 single-family homes along Poplar Church Road in Conway.

The increased development comes as Conway sees an influx of new residents. According to a 2023 updated version of the City of Conway Comprehensive Plan, Conway is the seventh fastest-growing city in South Carolina. The State also reported in May 2024 that the Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach metro area saw some of the largest population gains in 2023 compared to other metro areas in the Palmetto State.

The Sun News

Ben Morse is the Retail and Leisure Reporter for The Sun News. Morse covers local business and Coastal Carolina University football and was awarded third place in the 2023 South Carolina Press Association News Contest for sports beat reporting and second place for sports video in the all-daily division. Morse previously worked for The Island Packet, covering local government. Morse graduated from American University in 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism and economics and is originally from Prospect, Kentucky.

A large shopping center in the Conway area will be re-developed, and construction is expected to start soon.

Rise Partners bought the Coastal Centre property at 1610 Church St. in Conway and intends to re-develop it. The firm announced the purchase in a LinkedIn post.

Rise Partners is a commercial real estate firm focusing on commercial real estate and the development and re-development of properties. The company focuses on high-growth areas like the Grand Strand in the southeast United States.

Indeed, the firm has also invested in other South Carolina shopping centers and mixed-use projects in Rock Hill and Easley. According to Horry County Land Records, RP Coastal Centre LLC bought the parcels that make up the property for $14 million.

In an interview with The Sun News on Oct. 30, 2024, Rise Partners Partner Greg Wilson said that the firm was looking to bring in new national tenants to the shopping center, although he could not say who. Wilson added that the firm hopes to start construction on the project in 2025 and complete it sometime in 2026.

“We’re super excited about it,” Wilson said. “Conway is growing and needs better options in the market.”

Wilson added that the center would remain retail-focused, and no residential component would be part of the project. The Coastal Centre falls within Conway city limits.

City of Conway Public Information Officer June Wood wrote in an email to The Sun News that the city hadn’t received any plans from the developers for the Coastal Centre.

It’s not the only shopping center along the Grand Strand undergoing re-development. Construction and demolition on the Inlet Square Mall in Murrells Inlet started in October 2024, with rubble piling up.

The site plan includes converting the enclosed shopping mall with several distinct retail components, potentially including a residential component. Hobby Lobby and Home2 Suites have already been announced as tenants for the property.

The Sun News

Ben Morse is the Retail and Leisure Reporter for The Sun News. Morse covers local business and Coastal Carolina University football and was awarded third place in the 2023 South Carolina Press Association News Contest for sports beat reporting and second place for sports video in the all-daily division. Morse previously worked for The Island Packet, covering local government. Morse graduated from American University in 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism and economics and is originally from Prospect, Kentucky.

Who will be Conway’s 2024 burger baron, prince of patties, top bun?

The third annual Conway Burger Week is underway and runs through Sunday, Sept. 22. Nearly a dozen downtown restaurants are competing for the title of best burger in the river city.

Restaurateur and chef Darren Smith is hoping to win the Golden Burger trophy, and 12-months of bragging rights, for a third consecutive year.

“I never thought I would have that title, but they like my burgers,” said Smith, owner of Rivertown Bistro, and Bonfire — a Smokin’ Taqueria, both in downtown Conway.

The public can vote for their favorite burger online at conwayalive.com, or at any participating restaurant by scanning a QR code. When the votes are counted and the trophy engraved, Conway Downtown Alive and Burger Week sponsor Pepsi Bottling Ventures will deliver it to the winner in an impromptu ceremony.

Conway Burger Week is a fierce yet friendly competition between restaurants situated in Conway's downtown historic district, said Kelli Thomas, communications manager for Conway Downtown Alive, which organizes the popular event.

And Smith and Rivertown Bistro are on a winning streak.

But there’s a movement afoot among other downtown restaurants, she said, to knock Smith from the throne.

There’s a lot at stake. “A full-year of bragging rights,” Thomas said.

She said downtown chefs have outdone themselves this year.

“They’re very creative. They think outside the box. They take what they do best and make a burger out of it,” Thomas said.

For example, Rivertown Bistro’s Low Country Spring Roll Burger is a burgerized version of the restaurant’s popular Low Country Spring Roll appetizer.

Buns are optional in the best burger contest.

Bonfire’s entry, the Quesa Burger, features cheese quesadillas top and bottom.

The Mac Attack Cheeseburger Stromboli entry at Chantis Pizza is, true to its name, a stromboli.

And Hop N Wich’s Conway Cowboy Burger is served on cinnamon honey butter Texas toast.

Other entries include Caribbean Jerk Cuisine’s Jamaican Jerk Burger, Coppers Restaurant’s French Onion Burger, Crafty Rooster’s Hangover Burger, Trestle Cafe and Bakery’s BBQ Beef & Brisket Burger and Whitakers Crispy Katsu Burger. Crooked Oak Tavern has two entries — the Get Up and Go Burger and the Burger Wellington.

If Smith keeps winning, he may soon need a trophy case.

He’s already got a passel of plaques from Readers’ Choice contests to go with the Bistro’s twin burger trophies. And he also has trophies from two wins — one for each restaurant — for other dishes in Chef Swap at The Beach, a competitive cooking show on the Cooking Channel.

A three-peat will be hard to accomplish, said Smith, while noting there are no losers for promotions like Burger Week that increase foot traffic downtown.

“I think it’s great,” Smith said. “It gets people out; people talk about.”

And, he agreed, the burger, and its partner the hot dog, are the quintessential American foods.

“I couldn’t agree more. Hot dogs or hamburgers; I’ll take one of each,” Smith said.

“Who doesn’t love a good hamburger,” Thomas said.

Reach Casey Jones at 843-488-7261 or casey.jones@myhorrynews.com.