Image courtesty of Mark Berry
Billy Ainsworth and his wife, Sharon, have witnessed significant change around Albertville, Alabama, over the last 30 years. With the prominence of the poultry industry in northern Alabama, the Hispanic population in Marshall County has grown from not even registering on the 1990 census to becoming the second-highest concentration of Hispanic residents in the state, nearly 20% of the county population in 2020. What’s more, the Alabama Department of Education reports that more than 50% of Albertville High School’s students come from Hispanic/Latino households.
With these demographic shifts, the Ainsworths saw great need. Meanwhile, Ainsworth was building relationships with the growing Hispanic community through Progress Rail, the company he owned and later managed after he sold it to Caterpillar. Knowing the positive impact literacy has on at-risk kids, Ainsworth spearheaded a reading mentorship program first through Progress Rail, recruiting his employees to volunteer as tutors and then expanding it into the community. Seeing the success of the program and the positive outcomes it produced directed Ainsworth’s focus to meeting Albertville’s spiritual needs.
Meanwhile, Sharon saw other community needs. As the director of Real Life Pregnancy Center, she noticed an increase in Spanish-speaking and Haitian mothers coming to the clinic for assistance. But she also saw the need as a God-given ministry opportunity. The Lord, she realized, was bringing the nations to Albertville.
In 2022, the session of Grace Fellowship Presbyterian Church, on which Ainsworth serves as elder, discussed the idea of planting a new church. Pastor Jackie Gaston explains Grace Fellowship was the only PCA church for nearly 100,000 people in the county.
“I was just thinking we’ll plant a church like us in one of these neighboring towns, a little bit further away, and see if we can grow another church,” he says.
But Ainsworth recognized the convergence of the spiritual needs of the greater Marshall County community and the growing, unreached Hispanic population.
“Billy said, ‘No, we’ve got all these Hispanic people, and what they need is a good Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church.’ And the rest of us just looked at him and went, ‘You’re right,’” Gaston recalls.
So Ainsworth headed up the search committee for a church-planting pastor, learning from others in the PCA that it might take up to two years to find such a pastor.
“Our feeling was, if God’s in this, that’s not a big hurdle to take care of,” Ainsworth says. Two months later, he received an email from Mark Berry.
Berry and his wife, Lori, had dedicated 21 years to ministry in Peru and Chile, first with Mission to the World — church-planting, discipling, and evangelizing — and then with Serge, leading missionary groups. But in 2022, they sensed God calling them to come home to the U.S.
“I was really just feeling tugged back to direct church planting, feeling a burden to be doing that here,” Berry says.
As the Berrys explored opportunities in the U.S., they assumed they would end up planting an English-speaking church, but still, they prayed that they would also find an opportunity to continue speaking Spanish.
When the Berrys heard about Grace Fellowship’s vision, they headed to Albertville to check it out.
Gaston, along with his wife, Mary Shea, and the Ainsworths, spent an afternoon with the Berrys, showing them the area and sharing how the session had been praying to reach the Spanish-speaking community.
“No one knows how to speak Spanish, and they were just burdened . . . to offer something more,” Berry recalls. The Ainsworths and Gastons knew having such an experienced couple join the church’s mission would be a game changer, but they were unsure their church of just 140 members could afford hiring the Berrys.
But Ainsworth believed God was in control, so he said he waited a week and called Berry. Berry told Ainsworth that if Grace Fellowship wanted them, they would like to come.
By the summer of 2022, the Berry family — Mark, Lori, and their teenage daughter, Hadassah (the youngest of their five children) — moved to Albertville, and Iglesia Presbyteriana Cristo Nuestro Refugio (Christ Our Refuge Presbyterian Church) began with a small, Spanish-speaking adult Bible study.
“We’re doing what’s known as an incubator church,” Berry says. “We’re a mother-daughter plant, where we’re using the facilities of the mother church.”
That also means that the leaders and members of Grace Fellowship share time and resources with Cristo Nuestro Refugio, often co-facilitating the events of their daughter church.
During Cristo Nuestro Refugio’s first summer, Grace Fellowship hosted a bilingual vacation Bible school, with children from Cristo Nuestro Refugio, Grace Fellowship, and the Albertville community in attendance. That fall, Grace Fellowship began hosting free ESL classes every Monday night, with nearly one third of their congregation volunteering as facilitators, despite many volunteers not knowing Spanish. The mutual desire to connect and the students’ focus on learning English overcame the language barrier. While the adults practiced English, their children, most of whom were already fluent, participated in the Bible-centered kids’ program.
To advertise the program, Berry posted flyers at the community center next door, where a soccer league draws hundreds from the Spanish-speaking community. By spring 2025, the church hosted more than a 100 ESL students.
But recent immigration crackdowns have led to that number shrinking by more than half. With some community members facing the risk of deportation, or shouldering additional responsibilities after a loved one’s deportation, Berry said that fewer people are willing to leave their houses for anything but work. Yet the mother-daughter church team continues serving those who show up, and not just on Monday nights.
Grace Fellowship provides Wednesday night programming for children, youth, and adults. The children’s and youth ministry events combine the two congregations, as nearly all the children from both churches speak English. Meanwhile, Berry leads a Spanish-language Bible study for Cristo Nuestro Refugio participants while the Grace Fellowship members attend their own classes.
On Sunday mornings, the two congregations gather at the same time, with Grace Fellowship in the sanctuary and Cristo Nuestro Refugio in the fellowship hall.
“There’s something about [having] 30 people down the hallway having another worship service in a different language,” Gaston explains. “It’s like a little picture of heaven …. We’re crossing in the hallway; we’re sharing nursery and children’s Sunday school. I just love it that we’re in the same place, in the same building, doing stuff together.”
Experiencing the growth and fellowship between the two churches has profoundly enriched the life of his congregation.
“I would recommend planting churches out of your church. Just because it’s good for your church to plant another church” Gaston says.
The Berrys, too, have benefitted from the incubator model.
“As missionaries, you’re always working with very little resources, and it’s just your family and maybe another family. And here we have a whole church that prays for us and has loved us and has received us,” Berry explains.
That prayer has proved effective as Berry works to build relationships in the Spanish-speaking community through Cristo Nuestro Refugio’s programs and as a volunteer chaplain at a chicken processing plant. One meaningful relationship Berry has developed is with Adrián Ortiz, who had been searching for what Cristo Nuestro Refugio was offering.
“He came knocking on the church door and said, ‘I believe that you’re teaching Reform doctrine. I’ve been studying this. Could we start coming?’” Berry says.
Ortiz and his wife, Ana, did start coming, and now he leads the music at their Sunday services.
“The way in which the Word of God teaches and reveals itself to us is one of the main reasons I am there,” Ortiz says.
Another reason is Berry’s mentorship.
Gaston and the leadership at Grace Fellowship are dedicated to supporting the plant for the long haul. He says observers have assured him that even if the church plant is never able to become a fully independent church and must continue to share space and resources with Grace Fellowship, the work is still important.
“And so we’re committed to that, that if it never particularizes and becomes its own church, then great. We’ll do it just like we’re doing it. That’d be great, too.”
Berry knows that church planting is a long-term process, but he has committed to seeing it through, no matter what that looks like.
“Church planting goes through ups and downs,” Berry says. “In the first couple years where I’m teaching preaching, and, you know, there’s 10 people, seven people, it gets discouraging. And then all of a sudden, next week, it’s 20 . . . But I just know that’s what I signed up for. And God has to do it.”