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By NOAH WORTHAM | Staff Writer

ALABASTER – Amazing Grace Church in Alabaster has partnered with Turning Point USA to bring the organization’s first faith group to Alabama.

“Our church partnered with Turning Point USA,” said Ashland English, president of the Turning Point USA Faith Group at Amazing Grace Church. “(Turning Point USA is) an organization that strives nationally to educate, empower and mobilize individuals to discover biblical truth and apply that in their churches, communities, schools and civic institutions.”

Turning Point USA was founded by political activist Charlie Kirk in 2012. The organization works with churches around the country to form faith groups, and Amazing Grace Church’s faith group marks the first to be formed in the state.

“Our mission is to serve the community by engaging in the restoration of our God-given liberties,” English said. “We’re wanting to educate the community, raise awareness and inspire people in our community to discover those biblical truths and then put them into action in our communities and civic institutions and schools in any way that we possibly can.”

Ashland shared that the partnership came about after Amazing Grace Church Pastors Kevin and Gina Blankenship felt that God had spoken to them about getting back to the center with the focus on the nation and getting back to the basics.

The Blankenship’s went to Montgomery for the Kingdom to the Capitol tour where Sean Feucht held worship at the steps of the State Capitol and there they met Turning Point USA.

‘That’s really where they learned about faith groups and really wanted to start that group at our church,” English said. “They found a group of individuals that had the same passion and that’s how the faith group came to be.”

The Turning Point USA faith group at Amazing Grace Church will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 13 at 6:30 p.m.

“The first one is really just to introduce everybody to the group and let them know the format, what we’re going to be talking about and then we’ll talk about a few current issues at the first meeting,” English said.

The group will continue to meet at 6:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.

“We just want people within the church, people within communities, to come and learn about biblical truth and how that applies to society today,” English said. “There’s a lot of people who hear things but they do not necessarily understand what it is. Or maybe the agenda behind it or maybe even ways to go about supporting good things or raising awareness against things that we really don’t know about that we need to understand so that we can stand against certain things in a biblical way.”

Each month, on the second Wednesday, the group engages in a lesson and, on the fourth Wednesday, an open forum is held on current issues in which members discuss the issues, how they relate and how to take a biblical stance on them.

More information on the faith group can be found on its official Facebook page at Facebook.com/TPUSAFaith.AmazingGraceChurch.