Madison Association church ministers to cancer patients

When the going gets tough at Shipps Baptist Church, Gurley, in Madison Baptist Association, even the tough look to Debbie Alverson for inspiration. 
  
Alverson has been bound to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis since 1981. Nine years ago, at the age of 38, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 
  
Alverson knows what depression is — she just isn’t interested. 
  
“Life is just too short, and we’ve got too many things to do to let things keep us down,” Alverson said. “I try to keep pretty upbeat.”
  
Shipps Baptist pastor, Mickey Bell, would likely call that an understatement. “If I’m ever having a bad day, I’ll call Debbie and she will lift me up. She just has that type of personality,” he said. 
  
In addition to teaching Sunday School, Alverson is one of the driving forces behind Shipps’ Cancer Recovery Group. The group is a weekly gathering of people intimately affected by the disease, be they patients, survivors or family members of patients and survivors.
  
“People who have lost loved ones to cancer are still in the group,” Alverson said. 
  
Coping with cancer is one issue that cuts across denominational and cultural lines. And the ministry, though inspired by Bell’s realization of the disease’s impact on his particular congregation, which averages around 150 on Sundays, is quickly growing to meet the needs of an entire community. 
  
“I want the whole community to know what an awesome God this is,” said Alverson, explaining the monthly support group newsletter she publishes. “We actually have started to try to put [the newsletter] out into the community. We have a prayer list so that if anyone in our community is diagnosed or has family that is diagnosed (with cancer), we try to reach out to them to let them know they’re in our prayers.”
  
The main push in expanding the ministry has been the arrival and distribution of a DVD collection of these stories. Around October 2006, the church decided to extend the support group’s ministry to help more people, Bell said. Heart 2 Heart Productions came into the church and filmed each family affected by cancer as it told its story.
  
The DVD’s feature presentation is nearly 20 minutes in length; each family’s unedited testimony is included as bonus footage. One thousand DVDs were made, and they are available free of charge. About 150 attended the DVD’s premiere Feb. 4. Since that night, the church has already given out 300 DVDs.
  
The Alversons — Debbie and husband Stephen, who serves as Shipps’ music director — are the first family featured in the DVD. 
  
“The whole premise of the DVD is that you can still have hope and faith in God even though the doctors say you have cancer,” Bell said. “Our mission is to hand out these DVDs to every person in north Alabama that is dealing with cancer.”
  
For more information, call 256-776-9930.