The churches in the Lexington Association have renovated and re-opened its Christian Ministry Center, a 17-year facility that has provided benevolence assistance to a service area that includes 11 ZIP codes along the border of Lexington, Ridge and Edisto associations.

In addition, Dianna Cagle, a US-2 missionary whose home is Birmingham, Alabama, has joined the Lexington staff to manage the center and assist with promotion of the association. Renovations to the center have provided designated spaces for groceries and clothing; and, meeting rooms for discipleship classes, job training, Bible Study, children’s camps and ESL classes. A part of the center’s porch has been enclosed as a waiting room, and the administrative improvements allow for better records of distribution to individuals.

In 1987, the center was born when the final eight members of Sunnyside Church, Batesburg-Leesville, deeded the church property to the Lexington association.   Although the Christian Ministry Center is a ministry of the Lexington Association, the center elects its own board members and operates as a 501 C3 non profit organization.  The association began the ministry center to meet community needs, and it remained in operation until 2003, when it was closed for the renovations. In 2002, the center served 10,000 families.

“The center is a small country church building so everything was in large, open spaces,” Cagle said. “The renovations allowed us to divide services into their own designated areas. We have limited the space for clothing, but the food pantry feels more like a grocery store.”

She said families receive a voucher based on family size and income, and then volunteers assist the family with shopping from the stores. Improved record-keeping tracks how many items and what items are distributed to each family.

“While the benevolence ministries receive lots of valuable attention, the vision for the center is to evaluate community needs and make opportunities available to people,” she said, pointing to the possibilities for discipleship and Bible study classes, as well as language and skill-based classes.

Cagle said area churches have rallied in support of her ministry, and the newly-improved center. “I’ve been blessed. We’ve had volunteers show up individually and as groups, and they have cleaned furniture, stocked food, sorted clothes, and made me feel so welcome in the community. Youth groups have volunteered to assist with ministry activities.”

While emphasizing that the center is focused on Southern Baptist distinctions, she said partnerships are formed with other church crisis centers in the community and beyond. “The center serves such a large area that the needs are greater than one denomination. We’ve cut back on our clothing area and so we look to other churches that might have crisis centers with clothing ministries.”

Cagle, a Birmingham native, graduated in 1996 from the University of Alabama. She worked as a newspaper writer after college. A former college roommate invited her to help with a church Hispanic ministry, and she drove a van and helped with recreation ministry for four years. In April 2003, she attended a Global Impact Conference at her church, and felt the call to missions. At the end of 2003, she resigned her newspaper job on faith, and God delivered her to South Carolina.

“When I first applied for missions, I wanted to minister in New York or California,” she said. “God knew what he was doing. There was a reason the doors shut for New York and California.”