A high school senior’s vision, a group of believers, parents’ prayers and church donations intertwined with God’s leadership led to the recent distribution of more than 1,600 Bibles at Hoover High School.
The movement was student-organized and student-led. Members of Christian Club, a group of Christian students at the Birmingham-area Hoover High School, wanted to share the Word of God with their classmates. “The main goal was to get the knowledge of Jesus Christ to people, to plant seeds,” said Brian Smith, a 2000 Hoover High School graduate and student government president.
Smith, who was instrumental in organizing the distribution, gives God the credit for the idea. “It was really God’s idea. He just passed it down through us,” Smith said.
Obstacles and intimidation
Facing obstacles and intimidation, the students trusted God to clear a way. Many students told Smith and the group that the Bible distribution was illegal.
“The whole thing was an uphill battle. When God moves, Satan moves too. He has a lot of false ideas and misconceptions out there,” Smith said.
Knowing that the distribution was just one of their many religious rights in the public school setting, the students continued to plan for the event. Money to purchase the Bibles came from churches, car washes and individual donations.
The Bible distribution went better than expected, and all of the Bibles were handed out within a week’s time. Many students who were at the forefront of the opposition, were some of the first to request Bibles.
The Bibles were to be distributed after school, but God moved in another way, Smith said. Someone during lunch asked about the Bibles, and the student went to get one.
Before long, the students were handing out boxes of Bibles in the lunchroom.
‘God had given me a vision’
“God had given me a vision of a changed Hoover High where Christ’s love had spread through it. When I walked into lunch that day, I saw the vision God had given me a year before taking place before my eyes. Kids were picking up the Bibles and reading them. They saw how much trouble someone had gone to putting this together, and they knew there was something to it,” Smith said.
In addition to the Bible, students were given a packet of stories that illustrated salvation and the Christian life and a copy of Erin McPherson’s testimony.
McPherson was a Hoover High School student who was tragically killed in a water accident. Under God’s prompting and with her mother’s permission, each Bible was dedicated to her memory. Her testimony, which she composed just three weeks before her death, was placed in all the Bibles, Smith said.
The students who handed out the Bibles were the visible agents God used. However, there was also a group of unseen warriors, namely mothers, who prayed earnestly about the Bible distribution.
Mothers in Touch, a group of Christian mothers, meet on a weekly basis to pray for individual students, teachers and administrators. Cheryl Stephens, who prays weekly with Mothers in Touch, is a neighbor of Smith’s and brought the idea to the group for prayer.
“As a mother, I prayed that many children would come to know Christ as their Savior. I hope the Bible distribution will encourage others to share their faith, and that this will open more doors for Christian ministries in the public school system,” Stephens said.
Many students are not aware of or do not exercise their religious rights at school.
“The reason most students don’t speak out is the fear of persecution or not being accepted. People look at the short term instead of the long term,” Smith said.
One factor that encouraged many students at Hoover High School to participate in this event was the love shown by fellow believers.
“Seeing the fellowship among believers encouraged others to participate. It showed people that becoming a Christian isn’t where the fun stops, it’s where it starts,” Smith said.
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