Photo courtesy of Bigtime Ministries.
Bigtime Ministries
Bigtime Ministries will celebrate 20 years in existence March 15 at Iron City with an opportunity for people connected with the ministry, and those interested in learning more, to come together and hear how the last 20 years has gone.
Bigtime Ministries will celebrate 20 years this March 15 at Iron City with an opportunity for people connected with the ministry, and those interested in learning more, to come together and hear about the last 20 years.
“We are excited to see what the Lord will do for the next 20 years,” said Executive Director and Founder of Bigtime Ministries Zach Skipper. “We have had thousands of students come through our ministry over the years. We are a community ministry where young men and young women gather for Bible studies and retreats.”
In 2005, Skipper and Bill Garner, along with a local youth minister, were leading several community Bible studies for students in Mountain Brook when they had the idea to lead a community-wide retreat.
The idea then grew toward a ministry to help junior high and high school students grow their relationships with Jesus Christ and minister to their own communities.
Bigtime Ministries became a reality in November 2006 and began reaching an even wider audience when it expanded to Chelsea and Oak Mountain in recent years.
“We have been so thankful that over the years we have seen many students come to faith in Christ and also grow their faith, and we have been able to expand out of Mountain Brook, which is where the ministry originally started,” Skipper said.
When the ministry first began in 2006, the idea was to just focus on boys, but in 2011, Janie Roper was hired to oversee a new girls’ ministry.
Now Roper, Garner and Skipper are still working with the ministry, helping it become firmly rooted after 20 years.
“I think in many ways we ask ourselves, how has it already been 20 years?” Skipper said. “The Lord has come alongside us and sustained the ministry, and we are so thankful.”
Skipper said that over the years, he has found that many students particularly enjoy attending the Bible studies to be with their friends from school.
“For many students, they like to be together with their friends, and if they know their friends are going to be at something, they will go,” Skipper said. “There is strength in numbers, and we see that many of the students are excited to walk into a room with 50 of their peers.”
The Bible studies are separated by grades and genders.
“Because we have been doing this ministry for a while now, we have young adults that have gone off to college and moved back to town and want to come back and invest in this next generation,” Skipper said. “We have been very thankful for that aspect of the ministry, as well.”
Skipper said the beauty of what Bigtime has to offer is that Christians have the opportunity to come together and unite instead of fracturing over various issues and beliefs.
The ministry seeks to partner with, not replace, local churches, reaching students before they transition to adulthood.
Some current challenges the ministry faces are shifts in technology, the impact of social media and the mental health struggles that many students face, Skipper said.
“I think when we look at the next 20 years, we want to really focus on more of the value of face-to-face interactions,” Skipper said. “We also want to continue relationships with churches and parents. I think over the next phase of the ministry, we will likely have more of the same that we offer, which is, how do we reach the most amount of students with the truth and love them well in this increasingly difficult culture we find ourselves in?”
For more information about Bigtime Ministries or ways to connect or become involved, visit bigtimeministries.com.
