The Demopolis Community Ministerial Alliance announced plans to have a community-wide interdenominational celebration every fifth Sunday of the month, with the exception of May, due to the Memorial Day holiday. Community-wide celebrations are scheduled for May 23, Aug. 29 and Nov. 21.

“Last year, when we met at the First Baptist Church, we talked about wanting to use each fifth Sunday to come together as a group,” said Alliance president Lacornia Harris. “We talked about having quarterly services so we can fellowship together, and I don’t want us to let that die. That seemed to have been something that has generated from the people that I talked to after our last (community) service here.

“Everybody that I talked to talked about how good and enjoyable the service was, and how well we were together, how we worshiped together.

“We had talked about this, as a Ministerial Alliance, and I don’t want us to lose that,” he said. “I want us to pick that back up, because our goal is, in 2011, to have a city-wide revival. So, the service in between here are to get us ready to have a city-wide revival.”

The Alliance tentatively set the next community-wide service to be on Sunday, May 23, at Church Aflame.

Harris added that there was a need for more ministers from all churches to be a part of the Ministerial Alliance to be more involved in something like this.

“We can’t make them join,” Harris said, “but we surely can invite them.”

Members of the alliance discussed starting a fund to help with people in a dire need, such as families with a loved one diagnosed with cancer. A person approached Harris and volunteered to “seed” such a fund with a $1,000 donation.

All of the alliance members present said that the idea was a good one, but the logistics would have to be established before it is begun. Other concerns were that many churches already have a similar fund, and that church funds often go to other existing needs, such as missionary projects.

Mickey Green, the pastor of Church Aflame, recommended having the person who suggested the new fund come to the next Alliance meeting and talk more about the idea.

“Details need to be worked out, and I think it would be good for him to be in on the detail-working,” Green said.

“There are some agencies here in Demopolis that could serve as referral agencies for this idea,” said Brooks Barkley, the interim pastor at First Baptist Church.“Maybe if the civic clubs in Demopolis were made aware of this, they could be a part of this, and let the Ministerial Alliance be kind of the clearinghouse or the focal point.”

“I’ll tell you why I got hooked on this,” said Harris, the pastor for New Aimwell Missionary Baptist Church. “In the years that have passed, we have shifted our Biblical responsibility off to somebody else. I think it’s time for it to come back to us. What got me was: If there is a person who wants to donate so that, possibly, he can see that there is some effect, and he feels that the people who can produce the most effective effect is the church, I think we need to take a good look at it.”

The Alliance agreed to discuss the idea further at its next meeting on Feb. 25 at the Saints Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.