Project gives hope to the hurting in Montgomery

A photograph of a 10-year-old boy, smiling broadly as he poses with the scooter he won for memorizing John 3:16, hangs on the office wall of Neal Hughes, director of Montgomery’s Project Hope.
   
“We keep this in front of us all the time to remind us of the urgency of the gospel,” said Hughes, a church planter with the North American Mission Board (NAMB). This child’s image serves as a poignant reminder because a week after that Project Hope block party, the boy prayed to receive Christ.  
   
Three weeks later, the boy was dead, the victim of an accidental shooting in his own home.
   
This boy is not the only one who epitomizes the significance of Project Hope, an effort by the Montgomery Baptist Association to plant multicultural cell churches in the city’s multihousing areas among its unreached people groups. There are other living examples such as Huey, a gang member who woke up one Easter morning in the throes of a troubling dream. He sought out an uncle who could answer the question now burning within him:  “What must I do to be saved?”
   
Since then Huey has abandoned a lucrative drug business and become a volunteer with Project Hope, traveling cell to cell, an effective evangelist displaying the awesome power of Christ with his own life. 
   
“When these people come to Christ, there is such a dramatic effect on their lives and communities,” he said, noting one area that had six homicides last year has not had any since Project Hope.  
   
Project Hope began in October 2000 as a two-year pilot project by Montgomery Baptists with support from Alabama Baptists and NAMB. Since its inception, 36 cell groups have been planted and 562 professions of faith reported. 
   
The mother congregation, Hope Community Church, has achieved formal church status, and Mobile Chapel, which meets in a double-wide trailer in a mobile home community, has just taken root. Crack houses seized by the city are being utilized by Project Hope and converted into regional churches and community centers where ministries like literacy classes are being offered. Other ministries, such as furniture distribution, operate in conjunction with existing ministries operated by local churches.
   
To characterize Project Hope as an inner-city ministry would be a myth, Hughes said, because it’s broader than that. “We’re outer city, too.”
   
But Project Hope is unique in that it targets multihousing communities, many of which are situated in the inner city. While 50 percent of Montgomery is considered unchurched, the number in multihousing communities reaches 90 percent, according to Hughes.
   
“Not that the people don’t love the Lord or have a knowledge of the Lord to some degree,” he explained, “but that’s not to say they have a saving faith in Jesus Christ.”
   
Planting cells in multihousing communities rather than trying to reach them through a traditional church is critical, said Hughes, who served as pastor of McGehee Road Baptist Church in Montgomery until becoming director of Project Hope. While serving as a pastor in Montgomery, Hughes often found himself in multi-housing communities conducting opinion polls for FAITH, a LifeWay Christian Resources strategy of ministry and evangelism. “One of the things we discovered was a huge harvest field.”
   
For example, a FAITH team led a whole family to church who then went into the complex and found others ripe for their witness.
   
“But even though they were coming to Christ they would not come to our wonderful church,” Hughes said. So he searched for a different strategy.
   
“It starts with a cell,” said Hughes, who initially trained 28 volunteers called missionaries to send into the multihousing communities of Montgomery. After four cycles, indigenous leaders are receiving training, a key objective to long-term influence in the communities.
   
As professions of faith are made, cell groups, which usually congregate outdoors on Sunday afternoons, baptize the converts. The missionaries, called pointmen, utilize the Hope Boat, a portable baptistry set up at the cell site, resulting in public, bold declarations of identification with Christ.
   
“When you and I were baptized there were nothing but
cheerleaders,” Hughes noted. As cell groups baptize their converts, an encouraging group may gather to watch. “But along the outer perimeter, there is also jeering and hollering.”
   
Such allegiance to Christ strikes a nerve and has provoked violent repercussions, according to Hughes. One convert was run over by a car. Another was so badly beaten that he woke up in a body bag in the morgue, mistaken for dead. “But he remains faithful. It did not deter him.”
   
Because some multihousing communities become repositories for drug dealers and prostitutes, the volunteers are aware they place themselves in potential jeopardy.
   
“We are in danger, and it’s all around us,” Hughes said, “but if we’ve ever feared it’s been very seldom.” Aside from a single rock-throwing episode, there have been no incidents of violence.
Meanwhile, those involved do endure harassment, both from within the communities and from their own families, who often question why they would place themselves in danger for the sake of the gospel.
  
What will happen to Project Hope, now past midpoint, at the end of its two-year development “remains to be seen,” according to Hughes. It has already become a model of multihousing ministry and evangelism. Project Hope has partnered with four states and four countries as well as with individual churches to provide training on how to reach people who will not worship at a conventional church.
   
And in Montgomery, Project Hope promises to leave an impression. One woman, a former homeless prostitute and drug user who made a profession of faith at Hope Community Church, recently called Hughes to express her desire to start a cell herself. “Is that OK?” she asked.
   
It was a request that embodies the soul of Project Hope, as stated in its theme: “Transforming our city one heart at a time.”