Grace Family Church in Jamaica Turns 6!

Grace Family Church in Jamaica was planted in January 2019 by a team led by Joel Bain, Sean Taylor and Sheldon Campell who are ordained pastors in Sovereign Grace Churches. Joel Bain (Lead Pastor of Grace Family Church) shares this update…

On Sunday, January 26, Grace Family Church celebrated our 6th anniversary with a service and picnic under a tent on an immaculately manicured lawn at the Caymanas Golf Club in St Catherine, Jamaica. It was a beautiful day. But perhaps because this is the way we’ve celebrated each year, I almost missed the miracle. Thankfully at a point after the service I felt God arresting my perpetual motion, nudging me to stop and look around at the evidence of his kindness in the collage of people and stories joyfully mingled and mingling together. 

There was Sonia, a member of our church, a retiree, widow and grandmother who is always joined by her sons and grandkids for our celebration. It’s wonderful to be able to welcome them each time. She shared with me recently that one of her teenage granddaughters asked her if she could become a member of our church. There was Chris, who is not yet a believer but has been among us for several months listening to the gospel and leaning in, who asked if he could buy GFC t-shirts in every colour we have available. We treasure his presence and pray for his salvation.

There was Telika, a young believer who started attending our church regularly at the beginning of 2025 but was eager to be in our membership photo because she signed up on our website the previous night! She is eager to grow in her faith, reads ravenously, and now tells her friends that she won’t be there if they plan activities on a Sunday morning because she loves being at church. There was Russell, who has gathered with us almost every Sunday for close to a year and shared that he has never been baptized but would like to be. And there were, of course, our members - an increasingly close-knit, gospel-shaped family that has grown to 70, many of them serving joyfully in different roles that day, welcoming our guests and celebrating God’s grace. God has been tremendously good to us.

That morning I envisioned the church for deepening discipleship. Rather than having the shallow impact that is common in our nation, we want to spend the next 5 years pursuing Jesus and community in such a way that the gospel will pervade our lives. We just began preaching through Genesis. We’re looking forward to baptizing a few precious folks and beginning a new membership cohort in March. We’re also about to begin training deacons and have started exploratory conversations about pastoral ministry with a few men and their wives.

There’s much to look forward to with patience and in faith - because nothing has happened quickly for us. But it would be wrong to long for that in a way that fails to turn aside to see and appreciate the treasure we already have - our church - this magnificent, messy testimony to the love of God in Christ!