Baptist paper helps state ministries

Being featured in The Alabama Baptist not only helps readers discover sources of spiritual and practical help, but it will help ministries identify the people who need their help as well as partners to get the job done.
   
After Leslie Gary’s ministry Beyond the Eye, based in Gadsden, was featured in last May’s edition  of The Alabama Baptist, she has received more calls for their service than she could handle.
   
“Our phone has really rung off the hook,” she said. Beyond the Eye is a ministry through which a team of female college students directs conferences for girls, elementary to college age, and teaches them to look beyond our culture’s focus on outward appearance and to focus on the biblical teachings on character and modesty.
   
Following the publication of the article in The Alabama Baptist highlighting the ministry of Beyond the Eye, Gary has been able to book conferences through the end of the year.
   
Likewise, within a week of being featured in The Alabama Baptist, Cindy Best, who leads the Westwood Ballet for Westwood Baptist Church, Forestdale, was fielding inquiries from people interested in dance in a Christian environment.
   
Furthermore, Best has also discovered Beyond the Eye in the pages of The Alabama Baptist and is working with several people including her youth minister and an area high school teacher and others to bring the Beyond the Eye ministry to the Jasper area for a conference.
   
“When we read that article it was just like, ‘Oh, this is everything we wanted and somebody’s already organized it.’”
   
She solicited Beyond the Eye to partner with Westwood Ballet in a communitywide effort Nov. 13. They hope to draw 800 to 1,000 girls from surrounding cities.
   
“We feel like our ballet program ties in so well with the Beyond the Eye program,” said Best. “We had had these ideas and it was just like God to go, ‘Here’s this person, and I’ve already equipped her.’”
   
Gary Swafford, who serves the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) in church planting and building services, uses The Alabama Baptist as a practical tool to help churches.
   
Swafford works with churches to conduct space analysis and planning of new church buildings.
   
Many of the churches that contact him cite information gleaned from an ongoing Building God’s House series featured in The Alabama Baptist.
   
If they haven’t already read the articles, Swafford often refers churches to the series “to help them get ready.” Swafford said the SBOM hopes to eventually work with The Alabama Baptist in publishing the Building God’s House articles in a booklet format for use with churches.
   
Besides calls from state Baptist churches, Swafford said he has received calls from churches in other denominations and out of state, interest often generated through The Alabama Baptist Online.
   
Because these consultations are funded through Cooperative Program gifts, on-site ministry is offered free of charge to Alabama Baptists.
   
“We will do as much as we can for anybody else who calls.”
   
Articles are not the only means of aiding ministries.
   
Magnolia Mortgage advertises its services each week in The Alabama Baptist and, as a result, the business has fielded calls from as far north as Florence and as far south as Pensacola, Fla.
   
“When we advertise in The Alabama Baptist, it gives us an opportunity to help people,” said Bill Hart, loan officer for the Daphne office and a member of Eastern Shores Baptist Church.
   
“I’m a helping professional by education,” said Hart, whose graduate degree is in counseling.
  
Therefore, when business comes to the mortgage company, which Hart calls a Christian-based company, “via The Alabama Baptist, clients bring expectations for high levels of integrity and service, even to the point of sharing prayer requests. We don’t get that kind of response from city publications.”
   
Not only does being featured in The Alabama Baptist help ministries, it can make a critical difference in the lives of individuals.
   
After his need for a kidney transplant was reported in an overcoming series, Sam Fitts, pastor of First Baptist Church, Tarrant, received five calls from people interested in donating kidneys.
   
None matched, but Fitts has just as much hope in the prayers that the article also generated. “That’s the key to the whole thing.”