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Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, located a little less than 15 miles northwest of Galveston, is a place of healing and restoration based on Jeremiah 8:22, according to Pastor Michael Porter.
“We want to be a church for the community, where so many people are hurting,” Porter said. “We don’t look at their outward appearance, but we try to focus on their inward being, helping people out, just getting them different avenues of what they might need, whether it’s food, clothing, or mental help.”
Porter ran from the call to preach in his teen years, he said, but in 2002, he decided to embrace it. In 2013, he surprised himself by starting a church.
“I always felt that we had too many churches,” he said. “If we just take the churches that we have and do right by them, we can fill up these churches. God saw a different plan in my life, and from there we organized Mt. Gilead.”
Rather than be a pastor who knew people were hurting but didn’t try to change it, Porter was motivated to do something.
“The Word of God is a healing tool for us,” he said. “It’s a balm to help us heal and restore us back to the life where God would want us to be.”
The congregation that started with 13 members has grown close to 100 now, but parking is a hindrance at their current building. The parking area can fit 27 cars, but God has provided some property where a new church can be built, and Mt. Gilead is in the midst of a $200,000 building campaign.
Porter had known about the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention for a while. He led the church to affiliate a few years ago after attending an Empower Conference. He was drawn to the resources available and particularly to the multicultural composition of the churches.
“I think we put so much on one color that we lose what God really has designed for the human race,” Porter said.
“The Word of God is a healing tool for us. It’s a balm to help us heal and restore us back to the life where God would want us to be.”
Healing from hurts
As for the daily ministry of Mt. Gilead, Porter is leading people to engage the community.
“We created some different programs to help us reach out to families in the community so we can help them and they can see that the church is not just about itself,” Porter said. “It’s not about everybody driving fancy cars and having luxury lifestyles, but it’s actually about trying to help people be the person God wants them to be.”
Some of the people who attend Mt. Gilead left church in the past because of hurt, and they have been able to return and receive help.
“Life has started to get better for them,” Porter said. “We’ve had people with drug addictions, alcohol addictions, being homeless, and things of that nature who have come back. We’ve given away clothes. We’ve fed people.”
One of the best ways to make inroads in the community, the pastor has found, is to greet people who pass in front of the church on foot between their apartments and the corner store. Some of them have been told “no” by churches so much that they hesitate to ask for a bottle of water, he said, but he’s trying to change that impression.
“We put tears in people’s eyes last Thanksgiving because we actually were handling out real food—turkeys, dressing, macaroni and cheese, the fixings not only for the dinner, but dessert,” Porter said.
Throughout the ministry of the church, one man in particular stays in Porter’s mind. “He was an alcoholic and was addicted to drugs and had a little bit of mental health [trouble]. When he realized the church loved him, he started coming to Bible study.”
At first, the man could not comprehend how God could wash sinners clean, but over time he accepted the gift Jesus offers.
“It was more than just giving him some food or an outfit,” the pastor said. “It was us really loving him, and that was a turning point in his life.”
A woman who was hired as a janitor for the church has been adopted by a couple in the church who helped her get her life on track. They have treated her as a daughter and even took her along on a family cruise.
The work being done at Mt. Gilead, as it advances God’s kingdom, is helping the community recover some of the goodness of its past.
“They want their community back,” Porter said. “They want the feeling back where you don’t have to be scared to go outside.”
