The East Alabama Carpenters for Christ have been at the new location of Buck Creek Baptist Church since Wednesday and will stay until Sat., June 16, volunteering their time and talents to build the infrastructure of their new church.

With the church bursting at the seams with people at its current location, Pastor Tyler Ingram said he had to do some praying. Last year, the church received a donation of seven acres for a new church.

“It truly is a blessing,” Ingram said. “We just provide the men with a place to stay and they can use our fellowship hall to cook.”

Ingram said that they have several groups coming in to build the different areas of the new church.

“We already have the two-story building in place,” Ingram said. “Now we have several different groups coming in to do the infrastructure, plumbing, electricity and everything else.”

The volunteers are coming from all over the south including South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Georgia.

“In a week we have been able to get a lot of the infrastructure up,” Ingram said. “We are hoping to be done with all of it by next week. Everything just fell into line and we have been very blessed.”

Ingram said that the members of the church have been very excited.

“Where God works, people will follow,” Ingram said. “The members of the church have been so supportive and it’s not only people from Red Level, people come from all over the county, so it has been amazing to see them want to be a part of it. They are ready to worship in this new house of the Lord.”

Jim Combs, a member of the East Alabama Carpenters for Christ, said the volunteers have been working hard trying to get everything done for the church.

“We sit down and go through different profiles of churches,” Combs said. “Then we think and pray about it and see which one God leads us to. We could tell that Buck Creek really needed our help because they didn’t have enough room for their congregation.”

Combs said that they have been staying at Red Level High School.

“We provide labor for churches that already have the materials, so they don’t pay a dime,” Combs said. “They usually provide the housing, but it has been amazing working here. We usually start out with a concrete slab and put the walls up and then the roof up, but they already had the building set up so we are just working on the infrastructure which is a little different for us.”

The group that the East Alabama Carpenters for Christ assembled has about 60 men from all over South Alabama and even some people from Kansas.

“When we have a mission project, we always invite the men of the congregation to join us on our upcoming projects,” Combs said. “When we were in Kansas, we had a couple of guys want to come down here, so they drove from Kansas all the way here.”

Combs said that the biggest gift that they can give is to be used by God.

“A lot of churches that we help usually say thank you to us,” Combs said. “But we always say thank you back because they are giving us a chance to be used by God.”

Carpenters for Christ is a ministry of the Baptist Men of East Alabama who coordinate this church building ministry involving men from other churches and associations in Alabama and other states. Carpenters for Christ hold the view that the Lord has opened the door of service for every man regardless of his age or ability.  Men from all walks of life from age 9 to 95 have participated in these trips.

Ingram said that if all goes well then the new church will be ready to use in September.