Former InterPastor and Wife Celebrate Fifty Years Of Marriage and Ministry

Dr. and Mrs. Wayne Brown (Joy) will celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary on August 16, 2019. They were married on August 16, 1969, and began serving on the staff of Millbrook Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. the very next month, in September 1969. So literally, this is the 50th anniversary of their “marriage and ministry” together. Dr. Brown served as interim pastor at the First Baptist Church in North Myrtle Beach from 2015–2017.

The Browns met when they were in high school, but they did not begin dating until they were students at Limestone College in Gaffney. Wayne, the son of JM and Minnie Williams Brown, was born in Spartanburg, but moved with his parents when he was three months old to where he “grew up” in his hometown of Blacksburg. Joy was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Gaffney when she was five years old with her parents, James and Mary Clary, and her younger sister, Lynn.

South Carolina Baptist churches have been-and always will be-very special to the Browns. Wayne made his profession of faith, was baptized and later was married and ordained as a Minister of the Gospel at the First Baptist Church of Blacksburg. Joy made her profession of faith and was baptized at the East Gaffney Baptist Church in Gaffney. Years later, Joy’s family began a mission church, sponsored by the Temple Baptist Church of Gaffney, in the basement of their home, and that little mission church of dedicated members became Montgomery Street Baptist Church and today is Central Baptist Church.

As a psychology and sociology major at Limestone College, Wayne began his ministerial career serving as the part-time Minister of Music at Providence Baptist Church in Gaffney where he also was licensed into the ministry. Later, during his first year as a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., he served as the Student Chaplain and Minister of Music at the Murdoch School in Butner, N.C. During the summer of 1969, Wayne served as the Youth Minister at the Converse Baptist Church in Converse, S.C., while also attending the School of Pastoral Care at the North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C. 

Joy graduated from Limestone College, where she majored in Sociology and Secondary Education, and then received a degree in Deaf Education from Converse College in Spartanburg. She taught at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind in Spartanburg the year before she and Wayne were married, and then when they moved to the seminary, Joy taught Language Arts in Youngsville, N.C. and Special Education at Wake Forest High School. During their ministry in Myrtle Beach, Joy received a Master of Education degree as a Reading Specialist and taught at Horry Georgetown Technical College.

The Browns were married in August 1969 at the First Baptist Church in Blacksburg, and after moving to Wake Forest, their first home together was an apartment on the campus of Southeastern Seminary. That is when Wayne began serving in Raleigh at Millbrook Baptist Church as part-time Minister of Music, Youth and Education and would later continue those positions full-time as well as becoming associate pastor. While at Millbrook, he graduated from Southeastern Seminary with his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees and his project in ministry was an original musical drama he wrote and presented with the Youth Choir of Millbrook.

While in Raleigh, God blessed Joy and Wayne with some of the happiest days of their lives with the birth of their daughters, Meri Beth in 1971, and Molly in 1975. In 1975, the Browns moved to Winston-Salem where Wayne served as Associate Pastor and Minister of Youth and College Ministries at the First Baptist Church.

The Browns returned to their home county, Cherokee, in South Carolina in 1977 to pastor their first church, West End Baptist Church in Gaffney, from 1977-1984. They moved from South Carolina to pastor from 1984-1988 at the West Monmouth Baptist Church, a mission church in Freehold, New Jersey, in the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association. From there, they moved to Myrtle Beach to pastor the First Baptist Church from 1988-2003.

The Browns left Myrtle Beach in 2003 to serve as the pastor of First Baptist Church in Boone, N.C. until 2008, when they returned to Myrtle Beach to officially establish Diversified Ministries, for outreach in missions and ministries locally, nationally and globally. They are continuing that ministry presently with the goal of using diverse methods . . . to reach diverse people . . . who have diverse needs. Their ministry provides a bridge for building relationships individually, domestically, globally, evangelistically. The four tenets of their ministry are missions; evangelism; support for ministers, missionaries and their spouses; and the production and development of Christian literature and resources.

God has led the Browns to see the big picture of world missions and they try to encourage others to join them in going “from the pews to the people of the world”—wherever and whenever God may lead to share the good news of the gospel. Their outreach has ministered in the United States from north to south and east to west. International outreach has included the Bahamas, Saint Thomas, Israel, Jordan, Europe Puerto Rico, Guatemala, India, Russia, Morocco and Canada. As part of their “ministry of availability,” the Browns have enjoyed interim pastorates in four churches: Pleasant Meadow Baptist in Loris; Olyphic Baptist in Olyphic, N.C.; First Baptist in North Myrtle Beach; First Baptist in Florence; and presently as Supply Pastor at Pleasant View Baptist in Nichols. Wayne has recorded two CDs of Christian music, “To God Be the Glory!” and “Christ, the Savior, Is Born!”

Joy and Wayne have tried to be actively involved in Southern Baptist work, as well as interdenominational endeavors for the Gospel, wherever God has led them including their local churches, associations, the Baptist State Conventions of South Carolina, North Carolina, New York, various committees, teaching and serving on the staff at Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center, leading Marriage Enrichment Retreats for the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, serving on the Board of Trustees of Charleston Southern University and on the staff at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center. Wayne says he felt God confirmed His call to him into the ministry in 1965 while he was serving as a student summer missionary with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention with the Navajo Indians in Shiprock, New Mexico, and Cove, Arizona, and with the Spanish Baptist Mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Joy has spoken for Women’s Conferences locally and nationally, and has authored or co-authored 12 books, the most recent being Finding Joy: 70 Life Lessons Along the Way, a devotional book in which she shares valuable lessons she has learned through her years of life and ministry. Wayne and Joy lead marriage retreats, prayer retreats, mission tours (nationally and internationally) and are planning a trip—God willing–in 2020 to the Holy Land and also to the famous Oberammergau Passion Play that is only presented by the residents of their small village in Germany every decade.

Wayne wrote a poem for their daughters when they were young and it is being published by Courier Publishing. I kiss you with a prayer is a reminder that true “Love” is spelled “Time” and it is vitally important that we take time to pray with—and for—our children. Time and prayer are precious gifts we are blessed to give to others and to receive from them as well. The book is a colorful and beautifully illustrated work of one father’s journey and his attempt to pray for his children “as an earthly father who knows he must entrust his children to their loving Heavenly Father,” but who wants them always to remember that while they were still at home, he loved them so . . . and he “kissed them with a prayer!”

Joy and Wayne treasure their family as pure blessings from God and their family now includes their daughter Meri Beth and her husband, Thomas, and their eleven-year-old son, Ty, and the Browns’ younger daughter, Molly, and her husband, Christman, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Mazi Grace, and their nine-year-old son, Bronson.

The Browns have learned some important truths as they have journeyed through the mountains and valleys of life . . . marriage . . . and ministry together including: “It is more blessed to give than to receive!” and “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care!” They have discovered that true joy comes by loving and trusting God and each other . . . praying with and for each other . . . laughing often . . . forgiving each other . . . going the second mile (and third and beyond) in serving others gladly and willingly in Jesus’ name . . . and stepping out in faith wherever and whenever God leads you. They truly try to “enjoy the journey” each day, because most of us spend our days regretting the past . . . fearing the future . . . and missing the joy and the blessings of each new day as a true gift—the present—the now!

The Browns want to live their lives gratefully and gracefully—prayerfully and fully–much like one of their friends who said of his own life, “I try not just to see the glass as half full or half empty, but as overflowing!” They also still remember and agree with a quote they used on the bulletin of their wedding on August 16, 1969—a quote by Geoffrey F. Fisher that Wayne still uses in wedding ceremonies he officiates: “The ever-living Christ is here to bless you. The nearer you each stay to Him, the nearer you will stay to each other.”

If you would like to invite the Browns to speak, sing, sign, teach, lead a seminar, revival, marriage or prayer retreat, to present the Gospel through drama or creative means, to share their Christian faith with humor and positive encouragement, or to join them on a mission tour, you may call them at 843.796.0397, or contact them through Diversified Ministries, P.O. Box 70777, Myrtle Beach, S.C. 29572. You also are welcome to visit WayneandJoyBrown.com to “stroll down memory lane with them,” or to leave your comments, pictures, or videos. On the website, they also have the offer of a free gift–as an expression of their gratitude–for any who would like to request it as a “thank you for the memories!”

After 50 years of “marriage and ministry” together, they just might have a lesson or two God has taught them that they can share with all of us.