Danny Seay

Growing up, my family and I attended a traditional Southern Baptist Church where we held 3 church services a week. Our church had a choir, we enjoyed potluck gatherings, there was a cemetery in the back, and you could find my family’s home right next door - the church parsonage. I was raised as a pastor’s kid and from a young age I heard and read stories about God and many other bible characters often. I learned about sin, heaven, hell, and Christ’s forgiveness in Sunday school, at VBS, and in many other church services. At the young age of 6, I made a profession of faith in Jesus and was baptized. At the time, I couldn’t verbalize the reason why I needed to make this profession and I certainly did not yet understand the depths of my sin or God’s immeasurable grace until much later in life.

The local church was always directly tied to my everyday life. Many of my friends attended the same church as my family and I found myself spending a large amount of time there with them. Although I made a public profession of faith at the age of 6, my faith was not genuine. I spent the next 10 years immersed in church without ever truly experiencing God for myself. I was seemingly righteous on the outside but spiritually dead on the inside. At the age of 16, God confront me in my sin while I was reading my bible one night. God’s conviction settled on me and years of gospel work on my heart clicked into place. I began to feel a call to ministry that continuously became clearer as I spent time working in various churches.

After graduating from high school, I decided to pursue a Christian studies degree at North Greenville University. During my time there, God began to challenge and stretch my understanding of himself. My view of God expanded and my studies at school encouraged me to begin reading my bible differently. I was given opportunities to serve at several different churches during my time as a student at NGU. Many of these churches varied in size and health, however, they each gave me a greater appreciation for what worshipping God should look like. I found a love for orderly and liturgical approaches to worship, and God has continued to deepen this passion over time. While talking to a friend at college, I found that we shared a very similar childhood salvation experience. Neither one of us had taken the steps to be baptized as true born-again believers and we both began to feel convicted about that as we had been serving in a local church. We were later baptized together and are both serving faithfully in our local churches today.

After God made the call of pastoral ministry and church planting clear to me, my wife and I began to seek out a new church that could invest their time equipping me for these skills. We soon became connected with CFNW and became members in January of 2018. Over the years, my role here at CFNW has evolved and grown. I am now an elder and serve in a wide variety of ways. The past 5 years at CFNW have been some of my most joyful and fruitful times in ministry. I have learned so much, been strengthened, encouraged, and have built deep and lasting relationships with many of our members. The fellowship, accountability, and unity that we have experienced here has made Ashlyn and I both so thankful for CFNW. I am thankful for our church’s missional heart to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, both by way of church planting here in Greenville, and around the world through our missional partners. I eagerly await what God will do next through the family of CFNW in the days ahead.