Beeson Podcast, Episode #
Reverend Alton Hardy
Date

>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. 


>>Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by the Rev. Alton Hardy, pastor and founder of Urban Hope Community Church in Fairfield, Alabama, just west of Birmingham. Pastor Hardy is co-founder of Urban Hope Development in Fairfield and the visionary behind the Urban Hope Leadership Initiative, a one -year intensive discipleship and training program for African American college graduates. He's just preached a marvelous sermon on Jeremiah chapter one in Hodges Chapel. We'll tell you a little bit about that in the hope that you'll listen to it online. We're looking forward to hearing all about Pastor Hardy's life and ministry. So thank you, my friend, for being with us. 
>>Hardy:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. 
>>Sweeney:
All right. A lot of people in Birmingham know about you already and know about what's going on in Fairfield, but not everybody who's listening to us now does. So let's introduce you just a little bit more to them. Can you tell us a little bit about ... I've read a whole book that you've written about this, so I know this could go long, but can you do it in just a few minutes for now? 
>>Hardy:
I try. I do my best. 
>>Sweeney:
Tell us about how you were saved from your sin and called into gospel ministry. And then this could be the hard part, but tell us how the Lord took you from there, up North, back down to Alabama and plugged you into Fairfield, Alabama. 
>>Hardy:
Great. Good. Well, born in Selma, outside of Selma and back in the sixties, And still, somewhat, you see in the South, you kind of grow up with a, should I say, a Christian worldview, just because it's around you. And so I got baptized, my parents took me to a ... I can't even think of the name of the church, Shiloh Baptist Church out in Sardis. Got baptized there. I was about seven or eight. Don't remember anything. I've been baptized a few times. And then when we moved to Louisville, I would say the Louisville experience when I got baptized in the Church of Christ in Newburgh, where I was in Louisville. And the reason why I would say that was where I became more acutely aware of my sins. The church used to do summer, what do they call it, Bible, what do they call it?
>>Sweeney:
Vacation Bible School. 
>>Hardy:
Vacation Bible School. We were poor, hungry, so my initial reason for going, they had cookies and donuts and milk. Hot summer time in Louisville. I knew I could get free food, so I would go. But it was in that Bible school that I really learned the books of the Bible. Because when you read the books of the Bible, they would test you and you would get more free stuff, and so I learned that. 
But in that process, I mean, God used it. Just learning the disciples, I learned the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, and just the books of the Bible. It was really interesting when I reflect on that time. But I remember when I got baptized, and my mom had 12 of us, and at the time we were living in Louisville, and this is my salvation experience that I'm talking about. But for some reason we slept on the floor on a mattress. We didn't have a bed off the floor. She would wake me up on Sunday mornings and make me go to church. 
>>Sweeney:
Sounds like a good mom to me. 
>>Hardy:
Yeah. I wanted to ask her, what did she see in me? And at the time, I started a lot. So anyway, I would go. But I remember getting baptized. Man, you know, I'm not trying to make it spooky, but it was something different that time. Just an overwhelming sense, maybe just the Spirit of God coming into me. I don't know if they explained it, but I knew that I was a different guy when that experience, and I was about 13 years old when that happened. 
>>Sweeney:
All right, so you were in Sardis, and for those who don't know Alabama very well, that's a small town, pretty rural, Alabama. And even though you were born as late as the 60s, I know you dealt with a lot of racism and all kinds of pretty bad stuff as a kid. How old were you when you moved up to Louisville? 
>>Hardy:
I was about 10 years old. 
>>Sweeney:
Okay, so you were there a few years before the experience you were just describing. And how long did you stay in Louisville? 
>>Hardy:
About five and a half years. 
>>Sweeney:
And is that when you went up to Grand Rapids? 
>>Hardy:
Yes. 
>>Sweeney:
That was the next move? So you were late teens about then? 
>>Hardy:
I was about 15 years old. I moved on my sophomore year. I had started school in Louisville. I was playing on the basketball team. My mom had a heart attack. And it was about six or seven of us still living at home with her. And so she couldn't take care of us anymore. And so she said, Alton, you got the choice ... Well, she basically wanted me to go back to Sardis and stay with my dad. And I said, I'm not going back to Sardis. I'm not going back to Selma. I would run away first. And I had a sister that lived in Grand Rapids at the time. I said, can I go stay with her? She was about four years older than me. So that's how I got to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I went to stay with my sister. 
>>Sweeney:
Okay. So how does a kid going through all that stuff, sense that the Lord's doing something special in your life? I mean, how do you get from there to feeling pretty sure God's calling you into pastoral ministry? 
>>Hardy:
Yeah. So, having that time back in Louisville, I had developed somewhat of a, at least saying the Lord's prayer, a prayer life, talking to the Lord about, even though I didn't have anyone discipling me, but I did develop a prayer life. So I go to Grand Rapids. Long story short, because you read the book, I had a situation there where it snows a lot in Grand Rapids. They got a lot of snow there right now. And it was somewhat, the house was somewhat, long story short, was in abandonment. And I was living there by myself, playing basketball. I was always being good at basketball. And through that, God provided another family for me. Even to this very day, they're like, my adopted family. And there was a, I don't never call her a first name, but she's like my mom, adopted mom. And they were 7th Day Adventists. So my senior year of high school, I'm moving with them and living in her house. So, once again I had to go to church-
>>Sweeney:
On Saturday!
>>Hardy:
On Saturday. And I get baptized again. But in that I'm still reading the Bible. I'm not really understanding a lot of stuff because life is just moving fast. Go off to junior college up at Alpena. I think it was at Alpena, where, because it was a city where there were hardly any Blacks, only except the basketball team. And I think back to that stuff now, getting old, you just start to see God's hand. But I remember a lot of the basketball players, because, you know, in college, you try to do some more simple things. 

But for some reason, I had a limit. I don't know where my sin would I would just go to as far as, ah, I'm not doing that, whatever the case. And a lot of the guys on the basketball team said, man, are you going to be a preacher? You know, I'm sinning, but I'm sinning with a seatbelt on. And so I think that started something in me. Like, why does everyone keep calling me a preacher? I stuttered. I didn't talk that well. But there was something about my countenance that did give off a ... It was funny when the basketball players were like, we ain't gonna go do girl type stuff, don't bring Alton, because he would, I guess ... 
>>Sweeney:
Be a little too righteous. 
>>Hardy:
Yeah, a little righteous. So that started something in me about, even though I hadn't been discipled yet, I just had this kind of sense that there was God's favor was on me, even though I didn't quite understand it. 
When I come back from college, get married, that didn't go well. Had my first child. But in the process of my wife being pregnant, that's when I had kind of fallen away. I don't want to say fallen away. I just wasn't in church. I wasn't going. Still reading. But even when I was with my first wife, I had this story. People said, why'd you get married so fast? Because we were living together, but I couldn't do it. I was like, this is not right. What's wrong with just living together like most people do today? 
But I had this kind of sense like, this is not holy. There's something wrong about this. We need to get married or I need to move back out because I can't do this. And so after about dating her for like four months, I got married. And what was really driving that is because I had just a sense of uneasiness, kind of doing this kind of shack up living style. But even then, now I look back at it, God was drawing me because I had a sense that this was not according to the blueprint. And it only increased from there. We get married, have our first child. And God was just warning me. And eventually, he won over. 
And by the time my son was born, I'll never forget, Dr. Sweeney, I went to church. And it was like I was just, I mean, this is where, because what happened with this salvation kind of experience was just, for the first time, because I was having my first child, I was having what I call, my fatherlessness in my first marriage just showed up. I saw how broken I was. I didn't know how to do anything. I was so scared of my shadow. I stuttered. I just had no confidence. I didn't have any masculinity traits other than just the look of a man. But internally, I was de-masculated. I just was. I didn't grow up with a dad. And it hit home. 
And my ex -wife, God used her to really help me see that. That drove me into desperation. And I was suicidal. By the time I went to church in 1991, I was broken. And I'll never forget going to that charismatic church that I talked to you about earlier. Before I even got into the church, just walking along the sidewalk, I'll never forget. I was weeping uncontrollably. Just almost like, I don't know how to explain it, except that God was just warning me. 
And He knew that I was fatherless. And I never went to the altar. I just, I just wept through the whole sermon. And man, I have not missed church since that day. 
>>Sweeney:
Isn't that right? Wow. 
>>Hardy:
I've not missed church since that day. So from there, God just drew me. So that was where I just came back to the Lord in a general sense. And then later on, after about a year or so in church, I just remember starting to have the prayer, Lord, is there more to this Christianity than just this? And that's when I was, I don't recommend this, but I did it, and God knew where I was. I just remember I was praying one morning, I said, Lord, show me what I'm supposed to do. I was really on this purpose thing, like, why am I here? What am I supposed to do? 
And I said, I'm just going to open up the Bible, see if you can speak to me. I was in the early days. And I turned, and it was Isaiah 61. And I just knew then, I think God answered me. I was called to be in ministry. Now, I'm still stuttering, so I don't know how God's going to do it. That's kind of what I was talking about today. I won't be called to preach, but I actually stutter. My son, my oldest son stutters like I used to. I mean, he would be like, uh, uh, uh. And obviously, God removed the stuttering. But here I am today. That was the beginning of the call of my life. 
>>Sweeney:
So did God do that in a momentary way or took a while? 
>>Hardy:
So I'm a fatherless kid. The fatherless process of healing me took some time. I never really called God “Father” for a while. If I get emotional and cry, I pull up on these stories because it's part of my ministry now. I don't think we really understand the impact of fatherlessness. I think if you haven't experienced it, it’s just, it's hard to explain. It's spiritual. That's all I can tell you. 
I wasn't just, um, I was hopeless. I didn't know who I was. I didn't, that individual is a very important individual in the blueprint of creating God's order. And I don't think people really understand that aspect of it. So, I would call God, God. Father was too intimate. It meant that I trust him. I'm hurting. I don't know if I can trust him yet. So it's a process. God is wooing me in that process. And it's not until the divorce where God finally broke through to me on the fatherless thing. 
Because I will always say to God, I know you don't love me because I just had this sense of rejection that you don't love me because you just don't love me. You're over there, out there in the millions of galaxies. I know you're there, but you don't love Alton Hardy. Alton Hardy, for some reason, is unlovable by you. And so over a period of time, I get emotional about this stuff, so excuse me. And I tell people, God is so precious. He's so slow. And he knew what was in my heart, that I was like this, guarding myself. Divorce is hard enough already as it is. And I'm just like, man ... And this has been my whole life. So I'm just used to hurting. So I'm like, man, nobody cares about me. And I was sharing this story recently through my church, which is how sad I was. People would see my countenance. Man, why are you crying all the time? I'm sad. I'm just, there was, I just didn't have the joy, gladness on me. I knew who God was, but anyway, he broke through, man, in that time. 
And I can remember the night where I finally, God broke through to me. He was my father. And I remember, it's like he had set the whole scenario up in my life, and proved to me that he was my dad. And the divorce was the right time to do it because I was hanging on a thread about life. It was all coming at me so fast, and I was so suicidal. And so he knew where I was emotionally, and he finally broke through to me that he loved me, that he was my dad, and I have not ever stopped calling God Father ever since. 
And I get the text Paul is saying, when God has sent His Spirit into our hearts that we would cry out, Abba Father. I mean, that is divine ... spiritual. 
And when I talk about Father God, I just know He loves me. I just know He's my dad. And that was a healing wave that came over me. And in that, I would probably say it was out of that God kind of birthed this burden of ministry to the fatherless. And then He contextualized it for me a couple years later into the urban environment where I can just see the pain in an urban environment. I don't know how to explain it to people. I can be in a restaurant, I can be at a basketball game, and I can just see the pain and the woundedness of fatherlessness in children and what it does because I can see myself. I just want me in the room I had when I was a kid. I didn't know where I was coming from. 
I was longing for affirmation. I was longing for whatever this thing, tell me who I'm supposed to be, who I am, what I'm supposed to be doing. And now, in God's providence, that's pretty much what Urban Hope is, is a church. It has grown to be a local church expressing where God's arms, the fatherless, which is, if you're in the African American community, you know the staff, you can look them up online. They're atrocious. 
>>Sweeney:
That's amazing what God has done in your life, the transformation. Praise the Lord. All right, so I know, and we should mention the title of your book that tells your story, “Long Is the Way.” I was telling Pastor Hardy earlier today, I have read it with great gratitude to God for his work in your life. It's a hard book to read, but it's an inspiring book to read. Read it with great affirmation. And then I think I'll lent it to somebody else. I wanted to show it because I know some people listen to these interviews or watch them, you know, on YouTube, I got to show the book, but I don't know. Somebody's got my book. 
>>Hardy:
Somebody out there. If you hear this, you can turn the book back in to Dr. Sweeney.
>>Sweeney:
That's right. “Long is the Way.” So please read it. If it's a book you're interested in being inspired by. But because I read it, I know you got some Bible college in, you went to seminary, you became a pastor and you were in Grand Rapids for a while. How'd you get from there back to Alabama with all the pain and hurt that Alabama represented for you and your life? How come you came back? 
>>Hardy:
Yeah, a God thing. Me and my wife never, I never had any desire to leave Grand Rapids. I was pastoring there. It was going pretty well. But for whatever the reason, God shut the door there at the church where I was. And people wanted me to plant another church. And I said, I don't know. I didn't really know. And I went through what you call a dark night of the soul. About a year and a half just trying to figure out where was I? Should I start a church? I had never intended on coming back to the South. 
When I left Sardis, even though I didn't know a whole lot, but that was a very harsh time for me and my family out in the sticks in Sardis, outhouse, eating from the land. We're eating this, they call it red dirt. And every now and then I go to black churches, y'all know how to know if I'm from the South, I grew up eating dirt. And the old black women say, “Oh, you from the South now, you talk about eating dirt.” Now, if you up North, you're hearing this from California, you're like, what in the world? 
>>Sweeney:
That can't be real. 
>>Hardy:
Humans are eating dirt. Yes. People in Mississippi, Louisiana, they know what I'm talking about. And that dirt was good. My mom would make cookies out of it, called dirt cookies. It was really crazy. And so I never had any intentions on coming back here. But now, being almost 60, I can see God's hand in it, that He wanted me back. It was all the time together from 1977 ... in 2012, I moved back. And I remember when Urban Hope Community Church started to really hit its cylinder, start hitting all cylinders were open. It was 40 years. 
So it's almost like there's a story written by God Himself for me personally. So I would say God brought me back to the South, and here in Birmingham in particular, because all the stuff that you read about in the book. I didn't ask for the stories. I didn't ask for all those racial stories that happened to me. Not only in Sardis with my whole family, then in Louisville, being spat upon, walking to school. I'll never forget the guy saying, “come here to the car,” I'm so naive. I don't know. And the guy just spit all over me. I was coming from Moore High School, walking along the side of the highway. I went home and told my mom. I don't remember what she said. 
And that happened to me twice in Louisville. And then I moved to Grand Rapids. It happened twice. And then some of the other stories, getting beat up, working at companies, just got a lot of these racial stories. 
So here's the funniest thing I can share with you. When that last company that I talk about in my book, where the guy stood over me, fired me from the company, the PCA company logo, I went to the charismatic church where I was connected to, that I talked to you about earlier, meeting with our group this morning, and which they do prophecies and things of that nature. 
So church about 2000 and say, “Hey, young man, come here.” It's like maybe a month and a half after what happened at the company where the guy fired me, stood over me, calling me the word. I begged him for my job. I'm crying like a baby, newborn baby. I'm well and I'm skinny. I'm not as big as I am now. I'm married to my ex-wife. I mean, Doc, I'm just hurting. And this guy is just, I mean, he's laying into me. He doesn't like Blacks. And it's in Grand Rapids, Michigan. People hear this story, it's like, this can't be Grand Rapids, Michigan. Yes, it was. 
>>Sweeney:
As somebody who's lived most of his life in the North, I'm here to tell you there's just as much racism in the North as there is in Alabama. 
>>Hardy:
And showing how real God is, you know, wherever people's theological framework when it comes to prophecy has been real in my life. There's been some bad ones, but there's also been some really bullseye. This man pulls me out. His name is David Ireland. You can look him up. I see him on Facebook. He has a really thriving ministry in New Jersey. But at the time, he went by a different name. He went by Prophet Ireland, but now he's just Dr. Ireland. And he calls me up on the platform, and he tells me a few things. He said, I want to pray for you. I have a few words for you. 
And he begins to tell me that I was, that me and my family have been despised because of our pigmentation. So he brings my family into it. He doesn't know I'm from Sardis. He doesn't know I'm from Selma. 
>>Sweeney:
Did he know you?
>>Hardy:
He didn't know me neither. 
>>Sweeney:
So he just called you up in an unexpected way. 
>>Hardy:
Yeah. It's kind of how they did it back in them days, back in the 90s. And I'm in front of the platform, in front of all these people, 700, 800 people, and he's prophesying. He says, “You've been despised because of your racial pigmentation.” He used the word racial pigmentation and the ethnicity, the New Jersey accent. I'll never forget it. And he says, “But Alton,” he says this to me, “but you've been wounded ... racism has wounded you.” And then he says to me, “But God tells me that you are, but you want to be healed.” He says, “You want to be healed. And you will be and you will be a reconciler and you will be.” And then he ends it this way, “and the people who have despised you because of your pigmentation ethnicity, they will become your friends. And you will see. Amen.” Something like that. 
>>Sweebney:
Wow. Turns out he was right. 
>>Hardy:
Yeah. So here I am now, man. You look at, I think sometimes me and my wife said, man, Lord, people don't know the story. I have a lot of white friends. I mean, I'm not saying that people, no, I have really brothers and sisters here in Birmingham and not only here, but across the country in Grand Rapids. If I died today, they would be weeping at my funeral. Vice versa, me at theirs. And when I preach a lot, white people come up to me all the time. They say, “Man, there is no sting in you.” I said, yeah, I get what you're saying. He took the sting. ‘Cause there used to be a sting, doc. It was a real bad sting. 
When in fact, my first son, Ahmad, his name was Ahmad Rashad, had a sting in my heart. Racism had beat me down. I was so angry and God has taken the sting away. And people said, what happened to you? I said, I met that man on the cross and that's my story. And now in Birmingham, I get to share about that story. And when people hear this story and they hear me preach. We can see in your face, in your countenance, there is a real, real gospel reconciliation. 
And I never take credit for it, because I said, man, that must be Jesus. He just does. I think, man, I would say this, when that man prophesied that to me, he said they would become my friends. My wife would hear me on the phone talking to white friends, and sometimes I had my speakerphone, and they said, “Alton, I love you.” And I said, I love you. And sometimes I hear this voice saying, you know this isn't Birmingham, right? Like, yeah, boy, I do. My wife said, people cannot even know what's happening. She said, I know these people. They love you, and you love them. And y'all are expressing that love here in the city of Birmingham. And it's not a fictitious make-believe. This is what Jesus does, man. And that's why I'm standing. 
>>Sweeney:
It's an amazing God we serve. It's the kind of thing he does. 
>>Hardy:
That's why I love Jesus so much. And I'm fighting for that gospel right now. Because I think our country, there's a fatigue. The gospel has the power to reconcile Jew and Gentile. And I feel like the Lord is really, as I'm in this kind of, he's given a bigger platform, even with this starting today. People think, does Jesus really, can he really heal? 
>>Sweeney:
There's a lot of people with a lot of sting in them these days. 
>>Hardy:
Yes. And I'm trying to tell them he can remove the sting. Part of what that heaven is, right now, where there is no fighting left and right, where Jesus is. But the Lord's Prayer has told us to pray that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that's what's happening.
>>Sweeney:
All right, our people want to be praying for you, so they need to know just a little bit about what's going on in Fairfield. Can you tell us a little bit about your ministry at the church and the community? 
>>Hardy:
Yes, so we got Urban Hope Community Church, Fairfield, which is the first church plant of what I call out of the manifold vision, that gospel reconciliation that Paul speaks about there in Ephesians 3:1-11. And so I've been preaching Manifold Vision since I got here. I just started preaching in Grand Rapids. That's where I first got the initiation. I thought God was going to do Manifold in Grand Rapids, but I don't know. Birmingham has got a little more cachet than Grand Rapids, so I'm going to start it here so everyone can know that it's off me. And so God's been doing that. 
So this year is kind of my transition year where Elder Dion Wines has gone through the process to become the ordained pastor here in the PCA. And then I will step out and run Manifold Vision, which is basically to plant more churches like Urban Hope in Fairfield and other hardcore, urban, poor, dilapidated, fatherless, all the things we see with these kind of urban communities, lots of homicides and fatherlessness. 
>>Sweeney:
And what kind of churches do you mean? I've been to your church. I've got a feel for it. But for people who haven't, what kind of churches you want to plant? 
>>Hardy:
Gospel with young people. I mean, we're young. And people always ask, how do you attract young Millennials and Gen Zs in the church? I don't know. It's part of the movement. So black and white, the multi-ethnic, we don't talk about that, but that is obviously it's a lot more black indigenous from Fairfield all over. And, they're getting married, they're breaking cycles. I mean, you come, you see so many kids running around. I was like, how did this happen to see people who, they’re the first to get married in their families. Most, one guy, he had never been to a wedding till he came to Urban Hope. 
>>Sweeney:
Is that right? 
>>Hardy:
And he's 26. He’s like “I've never been to a wedding,” never seen it. Dad has 12 kids by 12 different women. This is kind of some of the things we're seeing. So God is healing young men and women. They're getting married. They're working jobs. They're buying houses. They're settling it down. The Jeremiah reality is really happening. And God is building whole new communities there in Fairfield. And people are seeing moms push their baby strollers on a hot summer day. It's probably one of the weirdest things. 
>>Sweeney:
It's a beautiful thing to see. 
>>Hardy:
It's like a Homewood in Fairfield. 
>>Sweeney:
How about it? 
>>Hardy:
And so God has been faithful in that. We believe one of the promises God gave, he said, I'm going to start it in Fairfield and then I'm going to take it all around Birmingham and these other communities, like a Bessemer, Eastlake, [inaudible 00:30:10], and then move it out to other hardcore inner cities across America. I'm calling that movement, the Manifold Vision of God, and where it will involve no government, because we have the government that we need, the one that Jesus runs. And we are buying up houses in Fairfield, putting married couples in them. We have young men and women. We've got six weddings this summer alone, between the ages of 22 to 29. And many of them, first time to get married in their families. And all real weddings that were performed at Urban Hope and somewhere around Urban Hope. And we believe that calling what God is doing. Starting in Fairfield is the goal, which is the promise the Lord gave me. I was burdened by inner city and what I've seen. 
How do you address the fatherless epidemic sweeping our country? And how many stats can we read in the prison, the schools, to just say, well, how do you fix it? That's the answer I've been, how do you fix that? Is there a certain program that I can implement? Where, how do you move people towards marriage? 
>>Sweeney:
Well, how do you? You're doing it. 
>>Hardy:
Well, those are the questions I'm asking. Well, that seems to be, seems to be some God type stuff. 
>>Sweeney:
Yes, indeed. 
>>Hardy:
And that's the answer. Well, what's the answer that God told us to do? And this stuff is real simple. Well, how about trying Matthew 28? Go therefore making disciples, teaching them to do what? Watch TV or observe all that I've commanded. What have I commanded, Alton? What do you do with your body? Sexual ethics. What do you do with your hands? Do you steal or do you work? It's real simple. 
And we at Urban Hope have just, oh, preach on God's commands, let Him back it up, let Him convict hearts, bring people to repentance, which is what He's doing. And now, 13 years later, they got a marriage boom. We got a baby boom, we got a family boom, and now we got a housing problem in Fairfield because we don't got enough houses to be able to give married couples who want to live in Fairfield. 
Which I told the people working in the housing department with me, we need to get ahead of this. So we need resources to get ahead of this to buy up more homes in Fairfield, to put these married couples in them. And I am here. I believe this, by what God's given to me in Grand Rapids with all my life, my whole story, is the catalyst, the gospel movement that our inner cities have been longing for, that devoid of the government. 
You say, why is that so important? Because what I've realized, a lot of what you see happening in our urban communities, when I look at what the reality, secular housing, they've been government-sponsored. And if you look at it with a spiritual eye as well, how is building up single-parent families the hope for our inner cities? That's not how Jesus would do it. That's not how the Word of God talks about it. And it finally hit me. And they own these inner cities. People look to the government as a hope and not the local church - which is the hope, as my friend Bill Hyatt used to say, which is the light of the world in a sense. And so that's happening at Fairfield. 
And so we've got the UHLI, we're bringing these young black men in. So if you're listening to this, you're Christian, you're in any college, or you don't have to even be in college, just go online, fill out an application. We will interview you. We're building a waiting list. And from 21 to 26 years of age. 
>>Sweeney:
How do they find you online?
>>Hardy:
UHLI.ORG – You’ve got the application and everything on the website. Hopefully we’ll interview you and we're going to take the best guys, but these guys are becoming what I call frontline soldiers in the urban church planting that will happen, where they can, because we're downloading to them what's really happening and their lives are being transformed. That's where a lot of these weddings are coming from by the way because once they see it that's all you can't go back. It's hard to even find a church to go back to this is like where you gonna go and find this kind of information? 
And then we have the grocery store that's opening back up it was called Carver Jones Market now it would be called Gary Avenue Market Grocery Store. And the difference between this, we have a meat market. So when it opens back up, if you're around Birmingham area, you want to come to a piece shop, you can also order steak, chicken, you know, anything else you can get. 
>>Sweeney:
Get everything you need. 
>>Hardy:
Yeah. So all of this is happening. 
>>Sweeney:
And we want to encourage our listeners, by the way, even who don't live in Fairfield, go shop at this grocery store, make it a success. 
>>Hardy:
You know what, here's the thing. People ask me, I’m glad you gave me this platform. People say, why are you as a pastor involved in grocery store business? First of all, I'm not running a grocery store. We own the whole building. Up top is where the young men live, the fellows program. Downstairs, we have this space. But have you ever been in a dilapidated urban community? Well, how do you bring commerce to it? And why can't, if we planted a church, people are moving in, so now we have families that want to shop there. We can always go to Hueytown, we can always go outside to Fairfield, but would it look better if God provided a grocery store? And then we shop there. It helps our tax base. It helps the city. 
And guess what? The church becomes, and this is what people are saying, how is the church becoming a mechanism of spurning on what some would say, prosperity, if you want to call it that, or shalom, or healthiness, because you've got more families now. Because what marriage rates does, you can see that there's kind of like what they call redemption and lift. There's just a kind of lift out of poverty, a lift into when you start to obey God and according to his commandments. There's a healthiness to that. 
And so I've gotten beat up like, why are you getting involved with the grocery store? If I went to Haiti or some really poor dilapidated country, and all I did was just do a church plant. And I just closed my ears to anything else God wanted to. I don't know if that would be somewhat ... 
>>Sweeney:
Might seem a little lopsided. 
>>Hardy:
So, to my brothers and sisters, Pastor Hardy is not running a grocery store. All we did was buy the building, have the space, built it out. And now we have the right owner with the right heart, with the right temperament, with the right work ethic to come in and run it. And we believe now, Fairfield's all behind me, the government is. This is probably the most excitement we've had in a long time because we just know God's timing has just allowed us to come to this place. And here again, people said, how is it that a local church spurned on that? Well, I don't take credit for it. I said, Jesus. And that was the promise. He said, when you preach the word, get to the families. And Urban Hope and the Manifold, when I say Manifold, has brought in the furniture store. 
Another thing, too, it's great that you bring this up. One of our elders, Alabama Office Furniture Store, that's through the Manifold. So when you can buy any kind of furniture, all the stuff you have in here, you can come there to Fairfield, you can order that furniture today. It'll be at your office, your business, your house, or wherever it is in two days. Now, when you do that, guess what you're doing? You're providing jobs, you're providing taxes, you're providing hope, you're providing dignity, and you're doing something that's beyond just kind of a free handout. And so you can do that. And then same thing with Urban Hope, the grocery store. 
Man, the grocery store's going to hire people from Fairfield. We're always getting young people asking us, we need a job. But they don't have cars. You know the bus system here is third world at best. So where are they going to work? They can work at their grocery store, provide jobs for them, provide income for everyone. And guess who gets the glory? Not me. The Lord does. And that's what God is doing through the Manifold Vision. 
>>Sweeney:
Fantastic. All right, friends. So, please, pray for Pastor Alton Hardy. Pray for the amazing work of the Lord in Fairfield. And go shop at this new grocery store. When's it going to open up? 
>>Hardy:
Right now, we're building out the meat market. We have to do some plumbing, some electrical work. So, that's being done right now. It should be done in about two, three weeks. Early March, maybe late February. I'm going to talk to the guy today, so I'll find out more. But we'll definitely be open by March. 
And I guess a prayer for me, biggest prayer for me, I'm in this transition to run the Manifold Vision. Pray for the new pastor coming on board this year. He's going through the process of ordination. And just pray I stay healthy. Raise lots of money. I mean, some of this stuff takes money. So if you want to support, you can go to manifoldvision.org. We have everything laid out there, what it will support, how it will support. You can go there and you can sign up for our newsletters. You can get that. We'll send that back to you. And so, and just pray for me. 
As I preached today, and I end with this, Dr. Sweeney, you see why that text fit me today. I mean, from Jeremiah chapter one, when God first laid this on me, I said, man, there's no way I can be a part of this. 
>>Sweeney:
Yeah, kind of what Jeremiah said. 
>>Hardy:
I said, Lord, I don't even talk that well. How you need me to do this? And God had a sense of humor. He knew that. When you read the book, you can say, man, that's what God's doing. There's no way Alton could come up with that. And that's the part of the story. It takes me out of the equation. God gets all the glory because there is no way a kid from Sardis, now in Fairfield, being on these levels with all that God is doing, he gets the glory. So that's the story. 
>>Sweeney:
Thanks be to God. Listeners, this has been Pastor Alton Hardy, a dear friend, doing marvelous work in Fairfield, pastoring, community building, about to be used by the Lord to spread the ministry far and wide. Please do pray for him. We're gonna provide you a link to the sermon he preached today on Jeremiah chapter one. It is super edifying. Please click and listen to the sermon as well. Remember that we love you and we are also praying for you. May God bless you. We say goodbye for now. 
>>Mark Gignilliat:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.