Two years ago, Devins Jackson would have said things were going well for his church, but they were lacking one thing they needed — a family.
“Ministry was good, but we were just out there by ourselves, we had no fellowship, no covering,” he said.
Fasting and praying
Jackson was leading The Body of Christ Church in Huntsville, and he had gone into 2019 fasting and praying for two things — for God to give them a multicultural congregation and for the church to know what God had for them next.
And then out of the blue, he got a call from Jarman Leatherwood.
Leatherwood, pastor of House of Hope and Restoration, Huntsville, had been in a similar boat a few years before.
He had reached out to Madison Baptist Association for some guidance, and they connected him with Lamar Duke, church planting catalyst at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
Through Cooperative Program funds, the SBOM offered resources and eventually connected him with Highlands Baptist Church, a local church with a dwindling membership struggling to maintain their large facilities.
After some time of planning and prayer, Highlands Baptist gave their buildings to HHR, and HHR now has a thriving ministry in the community there.
And Leatherwood, now also serving as a church planting catalyst with the SBOM in addition to his pastoral role, thought Jackson might be the right fit for a similar story.
Another local congregation, All Nations Church, was looking for a way to better reach its changing community.
“Larry Inman was about to retire (as All Nations’ pastor), and he felt God leading him to be instrumental in helping the church make the transition to bringing in an African American pastor,” Leatherwood said.
The church had already changed its name to All Nations Church from Hillsboro Heights Baptist Church in 2011 to reflect its desire to reach the diverse community around it.
The predominantly white congregation felt that calling an African American pastor would be the next step, Leatherwood said.
‘A God thing’
And when he, Inman and leaders of Madison Association sat down to talk about it, Jackson’s name came up. They brought him into the conversation, and “everybody in the room felt like this was supposed to happen,” Leatherwood said.
“We thought it was a God thing.”
The All Nations congregation agreed wholeheartedly — everything moved forward quickly after those initial meetings.
Fast forward to today, and the merged church — which kept The Body of Christ Church as its name — is functioning as the multicultural congregation Jackson had prayed for, worshipping and doing ministry in the former All Nations Church buildings.
“The idea behind the name ‘The Body of Christ’ is that what it looks like in heaven is what it should look like on earth,” Jackson said.
They work together, serving the community through avenues like their feeding ministry — they provide about 200 food boxes a week to their neighbors, along with other needed items. They also have a partner from Puerto Rico helping them get a Spanish-speaking ministry started — a growing portion of the surrounding neighborhoods is Hispanic.
And with the resources and connections of Madison Association and the SBOM, they’re able to take the church’s ministry to the next level, Jackson said.
In a year where racial tensions have been high, they just want to be a light to the community and show what unity can look like, he said.
Leatherwood agreed.
“We’re not divided,” he said. “There may be some differences in the way we express ourselves, but when you think about the heartbeat of who we are, at the foundation of it is Jesus Christ.”
For an existing church to decide to partner with another church in this way is “a statement to the world,” Leatherwood said. “God’s hand is all over this.”
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