By Tim Akers
Pastor, Crossroads Baptist Church
My name is Tim Akers. I met my wife, Donna, at the University of North Alabama. We’ve been married for 32 years, and we have three children and three grandchildren.
After we were married, I worked as a computer programmer for about seven or eight years. I felt the Lord calling me to full-time ministry. We went to seminary, and while at seminary, we felt a call to missions.
We served with the International Mission Board for 16 years in Ukraine. We came off the field with the voluntary retirement incentive and moved back to Alabama.
I’ve been pastor for four years at CrossRoads Baptist Church, Rogersville, in Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association. Our oldest son lives in Muscle Shoals. Our daughter has just returned from Mongolia, where she was teaching English as a second language. Our youngest son is attending William Carey University.
Before the pandemic, CrossRoads was averaging about 100 people in worship. When we got word about the pandemic, our emotions swayed to extremes. When the governor decided to lock down our state, we stopped having services.
We didn’t know what to do. Even though I have a computer background, I had no idea how to do livestream. I listened to some other pastors and got some ideas from them. The Sunday after the lockdown, I was the guy who did the livestream for the first time in my life for our church members. It was scary, not knowing how this was going to work. Were people really listening?
Seeking God’s wisdom
The church members were very gracious to me. We just had to pray about the right thing to do. I had no clue about how to communicate with my church members. Every day was a new day of praying and asking for wisdom from God.
I did what I’d already been doing with our shut-ins, keeping in contact with them by phone; I couldn’t go visit them.
I also took the church roll and went down the list, calling church members one by one: “How are you doing? Are you OK? Do you need groceries?”
I made sure our deacons were on standby to help.
When the governor lifted the lockdown, the praise team and I moved back into the church and socially distanced ourselves. I asked the praise team to sit in our seats so I would at least see somebody when I was trying to encourage the church. After some time, people started trickling back into our services.
Probably the hardest thing was having a church member who went to heaven during that time. When I went to the hospital to be with the family, I was put in a room and told, “As soon as they come out, then you’ll be able to be with them.” It was just me in a room, praying for them and waiting for them to come out. It was very hard to see someone grieving and not being able to hug that person to show comfort.
At the end of August, I tested positive for COVID-19. The only thing I could trace it back to is my daughter and I went to a grocery store; we had on masks and gloves, and we sanitized our hands. But the next day, on Sunday morning, I had a low-grade temperature and a sore throat. My wife recommended I get tested, and I tested positive. I’m fine now. No one else in my family tested positive.
It was a trying time to be a pastor, to be the leader, to encourage people, and yet, I had to tell them “I’m positive.” The church did well; the leadership took care of that. We had other guys to come in and preach and help during that time.
Since then, we have had three more church members test positive but not because of contact at church or with other church members. So far, we continue to have services with safe distancing.
Pastor and father
When we heard the pandemic was spreading, I experienced a range of emotions. Our daughter was in Mongolia. As dads, we always want to be the one to help our children, and I had no way of helping her. Praise the Lord, she was able to come back to the U.S.
Our oldest son has asthma. We didn’t want to expose him because he already was somewhat high risk; we were trying to protect him.
As a pastor, I know what the Word says. I know that God’s in control, and His plans are better than ours. And in my heart I felt the urgency of sharing the gospel because people are getting sick and also Christ could be returning soon.
The church members, after that initial shock, began to come back and began to serve and help other people in the community. I think the pandemic has really rejuvenated us as a church to say, “We need to be about the Father’s business, and we need to continue to share the gospel with urgency.”
Through livestream, we have more people who have been contacted with the gospel. We thought livestream in the past would be for shut-ins, but others are watching our service also.
We recognize as a church that this is an important ministry. Even if everything returns back to normal, we’ll continue the livestream because there are still people out there who, for various reasons, are not able to come to church, and that is a way they can connect. We need to look at different avenues God is opening to connect with people.
We had a couple of teenagers who made professions of faith. Because of the pandemic, usually the pastor is the one who baptizes, but it was a great opportunity to let their fathers baptize them so there wasn’t any outside risk. We had not done that too much in the past, but now we think that’s a great way to get the family involved. It’s a great testimony for others to see fathers being involved in their children’s lives.
Working together
I don’t see myself as being very creative. I pray and ask God, “Please bring the creative people to the front and give them ideas so we can work together and think of different, new ways of reaching people.”
From the beginning of this pandemic, our association did excellent work in keeping in contact with its pastors. I never felt like I had been isolated.
Even when we were in lockdown, I knew that our director of missions, Eddy Garner, and other pastors would be doing Zoom meetings, getting together and praying online.
I also received many phone calls from state board leaders. It was an honor to me for those men to call and pray for me. That really helped me too — to know other people care and are praying for us.
EDITOR’S NOTE — As told to Margaret Colson. In Their Own Words is an oral history of Alabama Baptists during COVID-19. The interview has been edited for clarity and space.
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