Growing church finds larger building space with aid of Birmingham Baptists

Growing church finds larger building space with aid of Birmingham Baptists

It was dark. So dark, in fact, that Ralph Garth couldn’t even see his hands. There wasn’t a single glimpse of light anywhere to be found. He struggled with intensity to climb out of the engulfing darkness and free himself from the obscurity but there was nothing for him to grip on to.

Then he woke up.

Swept up in a longtime drug addiction, this dream of being in his grave had rattled Garth to the core. He called his mother and immediately went to her house. When he arrived, she told Garth the devil had gotten him. “That scared me even more after having the dream,” he said. 

A best friend of Garth’s had been saved and had taken several opportunities to point Garth to Christ. But Garth’s quest for drugs had consumed him, and for a time he didn’t want anything to do with God. “My addiction had me just all the time running — just trying to get something to get high with,” he said.

But his friend’s influence and words of God’s love had eventually penetrated into his heart. And that day at his mother’s house, Garth dropped down to his knees and pleaded to God for help.

Having previously served in the U.S. Army, Garth called the VA hospital that same day for treatment. He was placed in the mental ward to be monitored and then began a detox program. At the end of the program there was a tutorial on how to write resumés. 

“When I went into the library to find a book on how to write a resumé, I know it was a divine intervention, because where the resumé books were there was a book called ‘The Cross and the Switchblade,’” Garth said. “So I got that book and I started reading it. I couldn’t put [it] down. … All of a sudden it dawned on me that God was telling me He wanted me to go back and help people (who) were just like me.”

With a heart burning to help those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, Garth began his first ministry in Birmingham, a life recovery program known as Discipling Men & Women for Christ. 

When an addict enters the recovery home, he has 30 days to decide if he will stay. “Once he’s detoxed he starts looking for work. … There are mandatory classes he must attend every night — some are about addiction, some about salvation, (some) how to live a life without drugs and alcohol,” Garth explained. The men in the program are also sent to the ministry’s leadership home in Tarrant. At the end of the program, they must remain clean and hold a job.

“One Sunday I was going to get the men (in the program) to take (them) to church, and when I came out the door I saw a prostitute on the corner,” Garth recalled. “I knew this girl and I just started crying because she asked me for some money to buy her something to eat. So I said, ‘Lord, where can this girl go? What church is going to help her?’”

Desiring to reach the unchurched and marginalized with the gospel, Garth planted True Vine Evangelical Outreach Ministries in 2004, a church that began meeting in the former Grace Presbyterian Church building in Birmingham. Garth’s vision for the church as its pastor was to reach people who were depressed, oppressed and didn’t have much. “That’s what was in my heart because I knew that many churches really (weren’t) accepting poor people,” he said. 

One day Garth and a deacon of Brookwood Baptist Church, Mountain Brook, Ricky Miskelley — whose business was near True Vine — began forming a friendship. That connection eventually sparked a meeting with Garth and several people from Brookwood Baptist, including directional pastor Tim Clark, who serves alongside teaching pastor Jim Barnette.  

In that meeting Garth and his wife, Kathleen, introduced the Brookwood Baptist group to former addicts who had been impacted by True Vine’s ministry. 

“We were just overwhelmed by what we heard,” Clark recalled, adding the group wanted to know more and eventually voted to form an official partnership with True Vine. Through this partnership, Brookwood Baptist comes behind True Vine to resource them for various missions efforts. 

For instance, Brookwood Baptist members teach literacy classes at True Vine that are resourced by M-Power Ministries.

And True Vine’s eventual move into the former Inglenook Baptist Church building to meet ongoing growth demands was facilitated by Birmingham Baptist Association with the help of Brookwood Baptist. 

Clark, who also serves as moderator of Birmingham Association, said the association and executive director of missions Mike McLemore have been “unbelievably gracious” to make the move happen. “It’s a great picture of an association doing what an association can do best” in taking hands and putting them together, Clark said.

“On Easter Sunday 2012, we moved in (to the location in Inglenook) and things have been changing ever since,” Garth noted. “There’s been a mighty outpouring of God’s spirit in this community. Crime is down. … We started praying for this community … doing outreach and talking to people.” 

True Vine is currently under Birmingham Association’s WatchCare status, and Clark noted a future step will be the vote for True Vine to become an official member of the association. 

“If you wanted to hear about someone’s life in Birmingham that was totally transformed, you could go to True Vine and hear stories of people who were (once) homeless, addicts, lost all of their families and everything they owned,” Clark said. 

Looking to the future of Brookwood Baptist’s partnership with True Vine, Clark noted there will be many opportunities for Brookwood Baptists to volunteer. Most recently, several volunteers helped with the e3 Partners medical clinic True Vine brought to the Inglenook community in June.

“We did a survey in the community asking people (what their needs were),” Garth said, adding they soon discovered that some of the elderly in the area had no access to medical clinics. The pilot medical clinic served the community in a number of ways, including reading glasses distribution and taking blood pressure. There also was a soccer clinic and door-to-door evangelism opportunities. 

Garth’s face lights up with excitement when he talks about his church. And he becomes equally excited when sharing about those people who have been impacted and transformed and are now ministering across the country. “There are so many out there now who have totally given their life to the Lord, and the Lord is using them in ministry,” he said.

No matter where people are — no matter what type of lifestyle they are living or what addiction they possess — Garth goes to places where others don’t want to go and talks to those who are deeply hurting to try to pull them out of the darkness he once experienced himself. “I understand the life that they are living, and I have worn those shoes — whether it was in poverty … depression, or whatever type of bondage that people are in — I’m able to go in and say I’ve been there,” he said. “And I can hug them and I can really cry with them and I can share the pain.”

Garth noted it’s also a great joy to see a man enter the ministry’s recovery home. “He comes in with nothing but the shirt on his back,” he said. “And after six months you see this man alive and well. That’s one of the greatest things that you can experience. … And to see that man continue on with us, walking with us and to see how he has matured in Christ, it is something that is unexplainable.”