After three college students burned Pleasant Sabine Baptist Church in Centreville in 2006, a group of Carpenters for Christ from Golden Springs Baptist Church, Anniston, in Calhoun Baptist Association was instrumental in rebuilding it.
Every year, hundreds of men minister to others through their participation in Carpenters for Christ by constructing new churches, upgrading existing ones and in the case of Pleasant Sabine Baptist, rebuilding those that have been destroyed.
“You can help build a house and help one family, but help build a church and it helps a whole community of believers add to God’s family,” said Lee Loveless, a member of First Baptist Church, Ranburne, who coordinates annual Carpenters for Christ projects for churches in Cleburne Baptist Association.
Carpenters for Christ is believed to have started at Golden Springs Baptist, according to church member Eddie Bush and Tommy Puckett, director of the office of men’s ministries and disaster relief for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
Bush said the organization evolved from a trip in 1975, when seven men from the church helped with disaster relief after Hurricane Fifi struck Honduras in 1974.
Other trips followed each year to areas such as Boston and Marlow, Okla.
It was during the trip to Marlow in 1978 that someone approached the men while they were doing roofing and repair work to St. York Baptist Church, which had been struck by a tornado.
When asked whom they were, one of the men from Golden Springs replied, “We’re carpenters for Christ.”
A logo was designed after the group returned to Anniston, and the church began searching for more churches to help under the name Carpenters for Christ.
Since neither the name nor logo was trademarked, other churches in Alabama and the nation soon began forming Carpenters for Christ teams.
Even now, Puckett said no statewide, organized Carpenters for Christ program exists to oversee projects.
Alabama Baptist churches organize efforts individually and promote trips through their associations as a way of letting other churches know of their efforts if they wish to participate, he said.
As of July, churches in 16 Alabama Baptist associations had Carpenters for Christ teams, according to Puckett.
“The ministry thrives because they respond to a place of service as they feel the Lord leading them without the dictates of an organization,” he said of the churches, whose Carpenters for Christ teams sometimes also help repair homes.
Jim Ernest, project coordinator for Carpenters for Christ in Limestone Baptist Association and a member of Lindsay Lane Baptist Church, Athens, said church projects are chosen from those listed on the North American Mission Board Web site, along with referrals from churches helped in the past. The 2008 project involved building a new sanctuary for Zion Hill Baptist Church, Wesson, Miss., June 5–12.
Carpenters for Christ volunteers pay their own expenses and often sleep in churches, schools or gyms.
When a group from East Liberty Baptist Association traveled to Kentucky June 9–18 as part of an effort to build a new 4,000-square-foot sanctuary for Green Road Baptist Church, Obie Fuller, a member of Plant City Baptist Church, Lanett, said volunteers slept in a tobacco barn.
Along with helping a church in need, Fuller believes Carpenters for Christ provides an opportunity for veterans of these trips to serve as Christian mentors to younger volunteers.
Of the 25 volunteers from East Liberty Association, he estimated that half are 16 or younger.
“The older men take the younger men and boys and work with them and share what God has taught them over the years,” Fuller said. “This helps prepare them for their walk with God.”
For more information about Carpenters for Christ, contact Puckett at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 229, or tpuckett@alsbom.org.
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