More than a building

A church is more than a building, according to Keith Akins, pastor of The Church at Southside, which he founded in 2013.

“Church is not some place you go,” he said. “It’s some place you are. It’s not brick and mortar. It’s flesh and bone.”

He and the other TCAS members put this belief to work. They host their Sunday worship services in a downtown parking lot belonging to Intermark Group.

The services, attracting 150-200 attendees, are designed to serve the spiritual hunger of homeless and low-income people who struggle to survive downtown, while also providing them with hot meals.

And even in bad weather, TCAS holds its service. 

“We want folks to know they are loved and they matter and that every week they can at least count on a warm meal and a smile, a hug and a handshake,”Akins said.

Perhaps most important, the services give TCAS members the chance to build relationships with people they call their “homeless friends.”

“There’s no fakeness out there, said Whitney Anderson, a TCAS team member. “Everybody’s real.” 

“I’ve learned more about Jesus hanging out with these folks than I have in my whole life,” Akins said.

Raised in McCalla, Akins lives in Glen Iris with wife Jamie, who is heavily involved in the ministry. The high school sweethearts have been married for 21 years and have two kids — Morgan, 21, and Bradley, 16. 

Akins said he grew up in a Baptist church being “very religious and trying to stick to the rules and feeling like that made me a better person.”

The church he grew up in had some great people. “But everybody looked like me – middle class,” he said. 

“Just sitting there and listening to a sermon was what my Christian life came to,” Keith Akins said.

And the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels — especially spending time with people shunned by society — inspired him.

“It is so radically different than what we see in church culture,” he said.

After doing youth and college ministry for 15 years, he “felt a deeper calling to move to Birmingham” and do urban ministry. 

The family moved to Southside in 2010, and Akins became a pastor for the first time when he founded TCAS, gathering a group of 20 or 30 worshippers at his house. They leased a building on Green Springs Highway in 2014.  

But he — along with some friends who had a ministry — also began going downtown each week to feed and get to know the homeless.

“It’s remarkable to know some of the stories that have happened out there,” he said.

Akins learned that while some people may be down and out due to addiction or bad choices, many homeless people have faced problems that could have put almost anyone on the street. 

“If it had happened to me, I might be in the same place,” he said.

He began inviting the homeless to visit TCAS at their building but was unable to attract anyone, despite his assurances that they need not worry about dressing up to attend the casual services.

The homeless would also share “horrible stories about the unwelcoming nature” of many churches, Akins said.

But he soon felt the call to try a different approach. “That’s when God began to put on us, ‘What if you went to them? What would it look like? What would it be like if we went mobile?’” Akins said.

In November 2016, TCAS voted not to renew its lease and instead partnered with Intermark and began meeting in the parking lot on First Avenue North and 25th Street each Sunday at 10:30 a.m.

“The first three weeks, nobody from the streets joined us,” Akins said, but the event experienced “slow, subtle growth.”

The meals are all hot, according to Akins. “We wanted it to be a home-cooked meal so it feels like a family gathering,” he said.

The food is prepared at home by nine families at TCAS, according to Jamie Akins. In two years, the church has served more than 10,000 meals, according to Keith Akins.

TCAS also buys food from the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama and provides attendees with bags of canned and dry goods. The food ministry is supported by donations.

TCAS members help support the ministry, taking advantage of the fact that the church does not have to maintain a building.“All of our tithes from all of our members … goes to pay for the food,” Jamie Akins said.

Keith Akins said no one on the TCAS staff gets paid. “We all have full-time jobs,” he said. “Every bit of money that comes in goes right back out.”

The only exceptions are insurance and a few other expenses, he said.

The Akinses said TCAS would like to raise money to have a building downtown to provide access to showers, washers and dryers and other services. 

But that building would not supplant the Intermark parking lot. “We would not change Sundays,” Jamie Akins said. “We love the atmosphere. We love what it is.”

In the meantime, TCAS members enjoy their fellowship as a small, innovative congregation doing the work of Jesus. The members “exude the spirit of Jesus,” said Anderson, who plans community events for TCAS.

TCAS sticks to a simple message in those Sunday services, according to Jesse Crowe, a musician who leads the worship.

“God has led us to stick in the fact that they are loved and cared for, they are sons or daughters of Jesus,  and he is coming after them and is actively pursuing their hearts,” he said.