Youth ministries in Guntersville are breaking down barriers — starting with those between churches.
Especially during the past two years, unity has not only become the spiritual norm among the city’s young people but also the breakthrough to reaching them.
“I have never before experienced anything like this,” said Jimmy Earp, youth director for Creek Path Baptist Church, who has also served as Marshall Baptist Association’s co-director of youth for two years. “I can’t imagine any more unity in a community than is in Guntersville. We’re knocking down walls and building bridges.”
The push for unity commenced when local youth ministers felt God leading them to band together to reach their community. Youth ministers from various denominations started meeting together once a month and formed what has become a tightknit group called Guntersville United.
As they began to pray and plan joint events, the youth ministers’ vision moved beyond growing their individual churches to growing God’s Kingdom as a whole.
“Guntersville United is about unity, peace and bringing salvation into our area,” said Russell McCrory, youth pastor of First Baptist Church, Guntersville, in Marshall Association. “We have to be humble. No one church can reach the entire community on our own.”
The first joint event was a rally aimed at 2007’s See You at the Pole, an international, student-led prayer event held each fourth Wednesday in September. While about 250 youth attended that event, this year’s rally drew around 500 youth.
In the spring, Guntersville United sponsored an areawide youth missions day. That day, about 100 youth split into service project teams to visit nursing homes, do yard work and go door to door sharing the gospel, among other things, before coming together for worship that evening. And the 800 youth who turned out for this fall’s Back to School Bash were “beyond our expectations,” McCrory said.
But the success of Guntersville United’s mission to bring denominations together to work for God can be seen in more than just the number of youth attending events.
“Students are able to see their friends from other churches, and the excitement is spilling over into the schools,” McCrory said.
For instance, six students formed an interdenominational band called Heaven Bound.
“We were sitting at school one day talking about how there were no bands that could play at different churches.
Everybody was separated. So we started a band,” said Caleb Mason, an 11th-grader and member of First, Guntersville, who plays guitar in the band.
Some students are waking up early to meet with God before school.
Morgan Patterson, a ninth-grader and member of First, Guntersville, is one of them. Every Thursday morning at 6:45, she joins other junior high and high school girls for Bible study at McDonald’s, led by two women from a local Methodist church.
There are also student-led prayer meetings each Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
“It amazes me how everyone is really trying to get together,” Patterson said. “It’s changing my whole outlook.”
And many lives have been changed as the body of Christ has worked together in the last year since that first Guntersville United event.
At least one of Patterson’s classmates has accepted Christ through the prayer meetings, and others have come to her church after she invited them to participate in the meetings.
“God has been moving in the schools, and students have been gaining boldness in their stand for Christ,” said Jermine Davis, youth pastor of The River Church of God. “They have seen unity among us youth pastors as encouragement for change among God’s people, and it is encouraging for them to be able to worship in a large setting with their peers.”
But Guntersville youth ministers are going beyond encouraging unity among themselves and among junior high and high school students. They are also working together to meet the spiritual needs of college students and single adults.
On the third Thursday of each month, these groups come to The Oasis, a worship service designed to target them specifically. The first Oasis was held at a coffeehouse, and the service moves around to different areas in the community each month.
“We want to see the Kingdom grow and lives changed,” Earp said. “There’s something bigger than our little youth group and our little church. It’s all about the Lord now, not just where you go to church. We’ve seen God move in mighty ways.”
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