Joey Brown said it started out simple enough.
He and the brotherhood group at Ethelsville Baptist Church heard about a woman who had come into some hard times. Her husband had died recently, and funeral costs had sapped a lot of her finances.
And the winter was sapping her wood supply.
“We found out she needed some wood to burn,” Brown said.
He knew how to supply that need. He and his two brothers are in the logging business, and he made a plan for them and other volunteers to get together and carry her some wood.
“I said we could try to get some more too, if we could find some more people who needed it,” he said.
They did — 18 truckloads worth. That was 10 years ago; this year, volunteers split and delivered more than 140 loads of firewood before the Iron Bowl started Nov. 30.
“It’s probably the best year we’ve ever had,” Brown said.
For the past decade, he has received scrap wood donated by nearby lumber companies, and volunteers from local churches have come out to chop it up and deliver it on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and the second Saturday in February.
“We’ve never had to buy any wood — God has always provided us with wood,” Brown said.
And throughout the past 10 years, nearly 30 area churches from across denominational and racial lines have come together for the “wood bustin’” and delivery.
“It’s fun to watch everybody work — all the volunteers really work hard,” Brown said. “The people who take it out and deliver it really get a blessing from that too. It’s just really uplifting to talk to the people and see the appreciation in their faces. They can’t believe someone would go out of their way to do that for them.”
Brown’s sister-in-law, Wendy, said she’s proud of the vision he had.
‘Just love people’
“This has stretched all over the county and into Mississippi helping people,” she said. “And the wood isn’t just available on those two days — it’s available at our family farm anytime for people to come and get.”
Sometimes people who can afford to buy wood will come there to get it and leave a donation, and Brown uses that money to pay the gas bills of people in the area who don’t burn wood and need a little extra help.
Jordan Lollar, pastor of Ethelsville Baptist, said he thinks it’s a great ministry to the community — a perfect way for Brown to use his gifts to meet a unique need.
“It’s a great way to come together and present the gospel and just love people,” Lollar said.
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