In the summer of 2015, Venture Church launched Growth Groups in Laurel for the first time. Over the next several years, groups continued to gather and grow in Jones County, and in 2017, we pioneered the idea of Watch Parties in Jones County for people who wanted to be a part of the Sunday morning worship experience but couldn’t make the drive to Hattiesburg.
God continued to allow the momentum in Jones County to build as we partnered with local schools and ministries to host Camp Venture in both Ellisville and Laurel. In October 2020, we hosted our first Vision Night at The Gables, a wedding venue in Laurel, to look to the future and praise God for all that was to come.
In 2021, we were incredibly blessed to be able to officially launch The Jones County Campus as a portable campus at The Gables in Laurel. In the next season, the campus adapted to a weekly routine of setting up church early on Sunday morning, hosting families at the Worship Experience, and staying late to tear down and pack up everything for the next week.
A year after launching, Venture Church was presented with the opportunity to purchase The Gables as the permanent home for the Jones County Campus. And in February 2022, on the one-year anniversary of The Jones County Campus launch, we announced and celebrated the campus's transition from a portable campus to a permanent campus. As we continue to grow, we know that God has big plans for Jones County, and we are so fortunate to be a part of those.