A few years ago, Jon Glass got a phone call from the principal of the intermediate school just down the road from his church.
“She reached out to me and said, ‘I’d like for your church to adopt us,’” said Glass, pastor of Cropwell Baptist Church in Pell City.
He didn’t even really have to think about his response — he said, “Consider yourself adopted.”
Right away, the church got busy. Within a week, a dozen church members put together a care team and began gathering items to stock a clothes closet for the students, many of whom were “in very difficult financial situations,” Glass said. About a third of the students there don’t live with their biological parents.
Then as the weather got cooler, the care team talked with the school to identify some students who might have need for fall and winter clothes.
“They identified some students, and our team leader, Barbara Goodwin, got in touch with their guardians and got their sizes and their siblings’ sizes,” Glass said. “In the end, our church got together new clothes for about 11 families — 19 kids.”
From there, the partnership grew “sixfold,” he said, to include helping more and more students, helping families at Christmas and providing a coffee bar for the teachers. And the opportunities kept expanding.
At the same time, Cropwell Baptist had been getting more involved in missions outside the city limits also, and all that together got Glass thinking about how they could do more.
“The church had had some kind of debt since the 1980s from growing and building new buildings,” he said. “When I came five years ago, our debt was right at $1.5 million.”
Movement of God
Glass knew it was going to take a movement of God to get the debt paid off, but he also knew if they could do it, they could invest more in missions and outreach.
In March 2022, the debt was down to around $700,000, and Glass said God gave him the vision for a new slogan — “Debt free in 2023 so we can do more in 2024.” Each time the church paid off $100,000, they celebrated with a “candy bar Sunday” where everyone got a 100 Grand bar.
“In 22 months, our church folks got behind it, and through small gifts and larger gifts, we were able to make that last payment around Christmas,” Glass said.
When they paid the debt off, everyone got Zero bars. They also celebrated with a note-burning ceremony during their service Feb. 4.
Future-focused
That day, Glass talked about the history of the church and how the buildings are just the tool for them to do the Kingdom work God has called them to do. And he asked them, “What does God have in front of us?”
In the past 12 months, they have sent teams to New Hampshire, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and several other places, including a closed country in Southeast Asia.
In the coming months, they plan to do even more, and they plan to continue to expand their ministry to the local community. Right now, they’re working on food boxes to provide for students during spring break while they’re not getting meals at school.
“So many folks have become part of our church family because they hear about the school ministry and say, ‘We want to be a part of a church that’s making a difference in the community,’” Glass said. “We’ve had families join our church who were recipients of the ministry too.”
All in all, Cropwell sees this new season as an opportunity to “be a church that makes a difference and is a light for the gospel in the community,” he said. “It’s been really amazing to see the Lord work.”
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