History

Immanuel Church is the unlikely story of young church in Southside getting married to a church plant from the Eastside. 

In 2009 Steven and Amy Castello moved to Birmingham with a vision to plant a church in the Glen Iris neighborhood of Birmingham. Out of that vision, Ardent Church was launched in January of 2012. A few years later, Andy and Melanie Adkison moved their family from Mississippi to the Eastside of Birmingham, along with a small team, believing the Lord was leading them to plant a church in the Crestwood neighborhood. In March of 2013, Renovate Church was born out of that small team. 

In the Lord’s providence, Andy and Steven soon became friends and church planting comrades. Before long, they were collaborating together for various discipleship events and ministry efforts. Over the next several months, they began to recognize an uncanny similarity between their two young churches. Eventually this sparked a conversation about formally joining forces in order to more effectively advance Christ’s kingdom in Birmingham. The question became:  “Would we be better together?”

After spending nearly a year praying and talking through this idea, the leadership teams of both churches felt strongly that the Lord was leading the two churches to merge together, and they decided to share that vision with their respective church bodies. On March 8, 2015 each church voted on the merger, and the decision was overwhelmingly affirmed. On April 5, 2015, Renovate Church and Ardent Church came together to become Immanuel Church. 

In July of 2018, Steven and Amy Castello were commissioned by Immanuel Church to go to Boston, Massachusetts in hopes of planting a church, believing that God was leading their family to take this step of faith. The Castellos are in the beginning phase of planting in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Boston. 

Heart 

(From Pastor Andy)

I was raised in a melting pot blue collar neighborhood on the Southside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Every day after school, I would come home and the whole block would show up in my driveway to play basketball or whatever game we chose to play that day. The beauty of my ‘hood was that I had white friends, black friends, hispanic friends, Italian immigrant friends, and all in between. Early in life, I was exposed to the joy and beauty of diverse friendships.

At age 13 my parents separated, and I moved from Colorado to Columbus, Mississippi. Like most southern towns, after integration many families moved out of the city limits and began attending county schools. Columbus had only one Middle and High School in the city limits, and the result of white flight was that each were more than 70% African American. Needless to say, Columbus was a quite different experience than Colorado, but I quickly settled in and had a fantastic middle and high school experience. 

During high school I was one of only two white boys on our school’s basketball team. Though I was with my teammates everyday, and we did all kinds of things together, and although they were some of my closest friends, one thing that we never did was attend church services together. What Dr. King said in 1960 was still true 40 years later: “Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour in Christianity in America.” This bothered me then. It still bothers me now. 

After high school I went to college at Mississippi State, and then to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky for pastoral training. In my third year enrolled at SBTS, I accepted a college pastor position at Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, MS. It was during this time of leading in the local church and finishing my degree at Southern that the Lord began to stir my heart for church planting. 

As I internally wrestled and prayed about planting, I sought counsel from mentors about the idea of planting a church as well. It was important to me that godly people I respected spoke into (affirmed) my sense of calling to plant. So when my pastor, Tony Merida, encouraged me to do it, as well as another staff member of my church who I hadn’t even told I was considering it, it became clear to me that God was indeed leading in this direction. 

As I continued to seek the Lord, a few things came into focus. One was that I felt led to plant in the South. Flannery O-Conner once referred to the southern culture she grew up in as “Christ-haunted.” In my own experience, the South is pervasively religious yet gospel anemic. While there are church buildings everywhere and a familiarity with Christian customs, many people do not know the real Jesus or his gospel. I sensed God was calling me to plant a church in the heart of the South to play a role in making the real Jesus known. 

Reflecting upon my upbringing and adolescent years, I also felt a strong burden to plant a church that embodied the melting pot neighborhood of my childhood and the brotherhood I experienced on my high school basketball team. I longed to be part of a community from all cultures where Christ is King–for church to be a multicultural family united in Jesus. Ephesians 2:14-15 says, “For he [Jesus!] is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.”

Thirdly, I felt strongly about the idea of church being more than a service attended once a week, but rather, a genuine community where each person is known, loved and welcomed–where together we live on mission through the power of God’s Spirit, under the authority of His Word. I longed for church to be like what we read about in Acts 2 where it says they were devoted to the teachings of the apostles, to fellowship, and to prayer. And they were taking care of each other– meeting needs. Everyone was in awe of God, and He was working powerfully among them, adding to their number those were being saved.  

It was out of these desires and longings that a vision for a new church was birthed. That vision has stayed the same: it’s the vision for what is now Immanuel Church.  

The heart of Immanuel is to be a diverse family of disciples living to make the real Jesus known in Birmingham and beyond.