Birmingham-area churches partner to assist those in need through Serving You

Birmingham-area churches partner to assist those in need through Serving You

In 2009, members of NorthPark Baptist Church, Trussville, found themselves running into an issue that’s common to many churches — feeling overwhelmed at the thought of navigating and managing the church’s benevolence portion of its ministry. Though they had an in-house ministry in place, they felt God was calling them to start something bigger. 

And now churches across Birmingham are joining in and helping make the ministry even larger.

“Initially we started the ministry as an offshoot of the church as an auxiliary ministry,” said John Herring, executive pastor of NorthPark Baptist. “We thought this would be a great opportunity to get other churches involved, and once it was established we quickly saw that it would be something that churches would want to participate in.” 

There were initially a handful of churches represented on Serving You’s six-member board, and they started out by trying to gain funding to help provide things like food, clothing and utility bill payments to people in need. The board came up with a monthly budget used to help anyone who visited the center, housed in modular trailers in NorthPark’s parking lot. 

Serving You’s Executive Director John Gibson said the ministry serves 10 ZIP codes in the northeast Birmingham area. 

“People come in and fill out paperwork and then we interview them, kind of get their story,” he said. “We don’t want to enable somebody — we want to help someone who’s going through a circumstance in their life.”

Those circumstances can range from dealing with a serious medical condition to going through a divorce to the unexpected loss of a job and more. 

But there was more that the Serving You team wanted to address, so they brought Gibson on as executive director and he helped introduce an outreach to assist other populations in need, like the elderly or children who often don’t have enough food to eat over weekends and summers when they’re not given meals at school.

“We’re trying to find ways to meet needs,” Gibson said. “We do block parties in transient areas, trying to share Christ with them, since normally 85 percent of people in apartment complexes are unchurched.”

The ministry also has a group of volunteers who put together bags with various essential items, and the Serving You team members keep a few bags in their cars at all times to offer to homeless people they encounter.

One advantage to Serving You not being affiliated with a church and instead being its own nonprofit is that the ministry is eligible for foundation money. They’ve received funding from United Way, the Walmart Foundation, Baptist Health System and more. 

“When somebody dials 2-1-1, which is the helpline of Alabama, they are asked for their ZIP code and then are given a list of places that can help them,” Gibson said. “We get lots of people from the 2-1-1 helpline in our area, but we also get people who come into our various member churches looking for help.”

Serving You is able to centralize and monitor requests from all connected churches — something that becomes helpful in avoiding people who might be trying to scam the system. 

The need for an outreach like Serving You has only grown, and so beginning July 7 the ministry will have a satellite site in Hoover, located in the parking lot of Hunter Street Baptist Church, which will initially be open Mondays, 9 a.m. to noon.

Callie Priest, a member of The Church at Brook Hills and now a Serving You board member, said, “We have always known about Serving You, but in the last few months … [the need has been a] bit overwhelming. When churches talk about benevolence that’s kind of twofold. You have people in your faith family you have to care for, but there are those in your community as well, and Serving You handles the community part really well — often things that churches aren’t able to do as well because they’re trying to help with its faith family.”

Looking forward

Priest said she’s looking forward to watching Serving You continue to grow as its current partnerships strengthen and new ones emerge. 

Gibson said the goal is to have a ministry center in the Roebuck area, housing other nonprofits under one roof. 

“We want to create a families-in-need center where [families] can come and get job training, child care and tutoring, etc.,” he said. “Serving You is helping immediate needs, both spiritual and physical, but we also want to start an afterschool kids program that will educate them, give one-on-one tutoring, feed them a hot meal, let them have classes like dance, etc., that they wouldn’t normally get.”

 

Serving You partners

ABC Trust Foundation

Baptist Health Foundation

The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham

Christ Church, Trussville

Clayridge Baptist Church, Clay

CrossPoint Baptist Church, Trussville

Eastern Women Junior Committee

FBC Center Point

Daniel Foundation

Hewitt-Trussville High School

Hilldale Baptist Church, Center Point

Hopewell Baptist Church, Pinson

Hunter Street Baptist Church, Hoover

McSweeney Foundation

NorthPark Baptist Church, Trussville

Walmart Foundation

Serving You • 205-908-7985

For more details about Serving You, visit ServingYou.org or find them on Facebook.