Dave and Angela Anderson are a couple that volunteer/work for the Dream Center with Church of the Highlands. They came up to UBC with their large box truck to receive a donation of strollers and coats to be dispersed throughout the numerous ministries that they partner with through the Dream Center.
We had the pleasure of interviewing them to find out a little bit more about their mission and history. Such a beautiful story!!
UBC: What part of Oklahoma are you from again?
Dave: Well, I’m going to tell you, but you’re not going to— well you may know where it’s at. It’s a huge town of 450 people. BUT it’s on the news every night because there is an airport there and they get the temperature there for the weather station. It’s Gage, OK. It’s right below the pan handle. Let me say this—I am not bragging, but since you brought it up. I graduated 6th in my class.
UBC: How many were in your graduating class?
Dave: There were 11 of us—true story.
Angela: Basketball was more important to him, so for school he just did enough to get by. Life was basketball.
Dave: I actually made better grades in College than I did in high school.
UBC: Awesome! So, when did you guys move down to Birmingham?
Dave: In ’89. We moved down here with a family and they stayed for about a year. Then they moved out to the west coast, and I didn’t think I wanted to go out there so I made a wise decision and stayed in Birmingham. We ended up living in the inner city about a mile from the Dream Center in a place called East Lake. Raised 4 blonde haired blue-eyed girls among the gun fire. Just recently in August we moved.
UBC: So how long have you guys been with church of the highlands?
Angela: Well, since about a year after they started.
Dave: I would say probably 14 or 15 years maybe?
Angela: We started when they Mt. Brook high school and our girls started going to the youth group. So for a while we did the two church thing, because he was on a missions team at our other church. So we went there and then we went to highlands for about a year then we gave up and decided to commit to Church of the Highlands.
Dave: It’s a great place. So now, they brought the dream center about a mile from the community in which we lived. I had been doing ministry with fatherless boys. So when they moved the dream center over there, instead of going to Grants Mill, we started a church right there in the dream center. And that was about 6 years ago.
UBC: Wow! So are you on staff with COTH?
Dave: Yes, I have been on staff less than a year as an Outreach Coordinator.
UBC: How will these coats and strollers help you guys? Tell us a little bit about that.
Dave: We have a thing at the dream center on Tuesdays and Thursdays called the Café. Every person that is homeless, on the streets, in boarding houses, living in abandoned houses in the community can come and be fed. We have small groups there, and then they listen to message from our pastor Chris. There is another church right across that also feeds the community on different days. So we partner with them to reach the homeless community. Anyway, yeah, those jackets will go to that. We also partner with “Serving You: The Christian service mission.” We have hope street ministries.
Angela: We have groups that go to all the correctional facilities throughout the state.
Dave: The love lady center. 400 women in a transitional facility coming out of prison with about 100 kids there. They’re within about a mile of us. So there are a lot of different ministries that we partner.
Angela: It’s just a matter of getting on the internet and reaching out to people saying “Hey this is what we have, how can we help?”
Dave: When we started going to COTH we had about 600 people going to that church.
UBC: Wow, and isn’t it the largest growing church in the Southeast?
Dave: We used to be! In our all-day staff meeting the other week we found that on the average we have about 42-45k people at a service every Sunday. BUT on average we have upwards of 90k in tithing members.