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TRUCKSVILLE — Following an announcement made last week by Back Mountain Harvest Assembly that the church discontinued financial support of the Rock Rec Center as of March 7, Lead Pastor Ray Petts dispelled rumors of the center’s closing at an Upwards Basketball end-of-season celebration.
“Over the past year, we have been looking at restructuring,” Petts said during the March 8 event. “The Rock Rec is not closing. We’re not putting wood over the doors and shutting it down. By no means is it closing. We are asking for your help and your participation.”
Cards were distributed among the packed audience, explaining various financial partnership levels, camp sponsorship and volunteer opportunities.
Petts later explained the reason for the “restructuring” comes from a desire to expand other areas of the church’s ministries. The swim team, especially, is a major drain of finances and the entire complex costs thousands of dollars per month to operate.
He said the new plan will help “bring things into balance.”
Two projects to which the church plans to redirect its financial resources are a new children’s ministry center and an expansion of the worship center. Petts said the children’s ministry is currently crammed into trailers attached to the church.
Rock Rec Center Director Doug Miller spoke briefly during the event, providing a history of the center, which is a non-profit organization.
“Twelve years ago, when we opened the Rock Rec Center, it was opened as an outreach to the community,” he said. “I don’t know if everybody knows, but if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to open a business and make money, you don’t open a community rec center.”
He explained many such complexes are supported by municipal governments, but since its inception, Rock Rec has been supported by the church and is now at the point where it must reach out to the community for help.
About 85% of the people who use the Rock Rec Center do not attend Back Mountain Harvest Assembly.
Miller said the three ways in which the center plans to stay funded are through community involvement, the addition of programs run by outside partners and seeking to save money and cut costs where possible.
Although the center is undergoing a financial restructuring, the mission of the organization, to “provide a safe, wholesome environment for families to get to know each other, to make new friends and to strengthen ties throughout the community,” remains the same.
“Our goal has always been to have a safe place to come, and we also want to teach morals and values,” Miller said. “You learn a lot through sports about life skills and we want to incorporate that along with a Christian message.”
Coach Patrick Murphy agrees.
“Sports is a way to teach kids how to deal with adversity and success,” he said.
One thing Murphy loves about coaching is being able to teach young athletes life skills through basketball. He looks forward to coaching the same players next season and continuing to make a positive impact on their lives.
Wayne Morgan, another Upwards Basketball coach, touched on that concept through his speech during the ceremony.
Starting off the talk by missing a basket and then dunking one, he asked the audience if they ever “lost control.”
“I love basketball because you learn control,” Morgan said.
He then asked the basketball players if they learned about control this season – control of the ball, of their feelings and of their emotions.
“What happens when you lose control?” he asked. “What happens when things don’t go your way? Where do you go?”
He then told his own story of how a few years ago he went to the doctor thinking he had a kidney stone, only to be diagnosed with stage three cancer.
“All of a sudden, my world had lost control,” he said. “I completely lost control. It was worse than that dunk right there. There are times in your life when you lose control and you don’t know where to go, you don’t know what to do. And I want to tell you guys that I turned to Jesus. Because I knew a lot about Jesus, I knew I could trust him through crazy times.”
After chemotherapy and surgeries, he was told he would never dunk a basketball again, never lift another weight, never do many of the things he enjoyed.
“I’m here to tell you that God still fixes broken stuff,” he said before ending his presentation by dunking several more baskets. “And I’m here to tell you that it might be a lot of hard work, but God still wants to use you. Even if you’re 4, 5, 6 years old, God’s still doing awesome things through you guys.”