During a weekly senior adult lunch, three pastors — Rob Paul, Bill Sears and Gary Fisher — sat down to share how churches can work together to minister to senior adults.
Rob Paul became the senior pastor of Huffman Baptist Church, Birmingham, in 2019. When he took the position, he openly shared with the congregation that change was imminent. The church once ran 1,500 attendees, but since then, attendance had plummeted to 150 people.
Asking God, ‘What’s next?’
In early 2022, Paul walked the halls of the “huge campus” asking God what was next. He thought, “At one point this building was full, it was given to this church as a blessing.” But when Paul arrived, he did not see the building as “a blessing.” He saw it more as a “liability.” “We were an aging congregation,” he explained, joking that, “My wife and I brought the average age down.” As he prayed, the word “partnerships” came to his mind.
The church soon brought in the Christian nonprofit Elevate, which specialized in character education and literacy development in public schools. The sprawling empty halls prompted the organization’s leader to casually mention to Paul as they walked the campus, “You could put a school in here.”
Paul learned nearby Banks Academy was looking for a new home. Less than a month later, the church began hosting the school on its campus.
When the leadership team announced the partnership to the church, said executive pastor Bill Sears, “a spontaneous standing ovation broke out.” Since then, many Banks academy families have joined the church, sparking renewed preschool, children’s and youth ministries.
The demographics, Sears noted, have also shifted at the church with African American members now making up more than 30% of the congregation. The church has also baptized more than 80 children and parents with Banks Academy.
Drawing ‘vulnerable people’
Following three years of partnership, Elevate has since branched out to after-school clubs — and the space they left behind has been filled with Positive Choices, a crisis pregnancy center. “We get to be the face of Jesus as vulnerable people come into our building,” Paul said.
The partnerships, he noted, are focused on ministry. “We’re not in the real estate business.” He added, “If we don’t have alignment theologically, if we can’t do ministry together, you don’t need to be here.”
In 2024, the facilities of their senior adult ministry began to show their age. One pastor described some of the space as a former “dungeon.”
Sears estimated $400,000 or $500,000 necessary to make it a useful and beautiful space again, but the church had no such spare capital. A month later, a water main ruptured and flooded the first floor. It took the city several hours to turn it off. The result: the asked-for half a million was provided through insurance.
Paul noted, “We got permission from our leadership team to put the space back the way we needed it, not the way it was.”
Church leadership, Sears said, had been discussing the need in their community for a more traditional service.
Enter South Roebuck Baptist Church. Pastor Fisher has been serving the church as pastor since 2012.
Fisher wryly bragged that he’d brought attendance of the neighborhood church from about 200 to 50 at most, claiming funeral officiant as one of his major roles. That 50 already included the absorption of another aging congregation, First Baptist Church Roebuck Plaza, whose pastor had suddenly died in the summer of 2025. They gave up their building to the association and were folded into South Roebuck.
But unable to keep up their own facilities, South Roebuck had sold their building in 2017, and had been renting the fellowship hall from the new owners. In the fall of 2025, feeling they had overstayed their welcome, Fisher contacted Pastor Paul. Knowing Huffman’s space and ministry for partnerships, South Roebuck asked if they could worship in Huffman’s chapel space. An agreement was reached which included renovating the room with funds from the sale of Roebuck Plaza’s old building.
Flourishing relationships
Since the move, “The relationship has flourished,” Fisher said.
Huffman now offers space to the 30 to 50 new people from South Roebuck, and Huffman’s senior adults regularly gather with them for a traditional worship alternative to their more contemporary style in the sanctuary.
“We do everything we can together with the two churches. … Sunday School, Wednesdays, ministry in the community. The only thing that’s separate is our worship services,” Paul said.
On most Wednesdays, Fisher and Paul alternate teaching through a book of the Bible.
Both pastors noted how well both churches work together. “You can’t tell who’s who when we’re together,” Fisher said of the combined congregations.
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