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March 5, 2008

Friends & Neighbors: Bart Ponders

Youth pastor plans to work full time as evangelist

By Lara Hayes

Bart Ponders spent much of his childhood feeling as if he was living two lives.

In public, he was a fun-loving athlete who appeared happy. Privately, however, he was a product of divorce, living with his grandmother in a government apartment and wishing for a family. Then one day, on a curb in Varnell, Ponders says everything changed.

“I was 19 and at my lowest point,” said Ponders, now 41. “I had suicide on my mind. I was walking around my neighborhood and ran into Stan Green. He took me for a walk and led me to the Lord on a curb.”

Ponders says when he stood up from the curb, he was a new man.

“Right then, I realized I would have loved to have had that experience as a young boy,” he said. “Right away I wanted to help young people.”

Green, who served as youth minister at Grove Level Baptist Church, told the church’s pastor, the Rev. Bill Walker, about the incident. The church needed a maintenance man, and Walker wondered if Ponders would be interested. He wasn’t — at least not at first.

“Pride made me hesitate, but I ended up doing it for seven years,” he said. “It was the best thing I ever did. I cleaned the church during the day and preached to young people at night.”

Ponders met his wife, Tara, in 1990 at Dalton Junior College when he asked her for help with his English class. Tutoring led to dating, and the couple married six months later. They have two children, Trevor, 7, and Kaylee, 5.

“I proposed to her in the church,” he said. “She was not a Christian at the time, but I wanted our marriage to start off with the foundation of God and keep him in it.”

Tara became a Christian approximately a year after they married.

In 1996, Ponders’ friend and fellow minister Bryan Fossett asked him to serve as youth pastor at Grace Baptist Church on Dawnville Road, a church he was starting up. Ponders did that for a few years, then moved to Macedonia Baptist to work as a general helper.

“Churches have a lot of committees and dynamic programs, but they’re not sharing the gospel,” he said. “If you don’t share the gospel, nothing else matters.”

Ponders began serving as youth pastor at Crossroads Community Fellowship in 2006. The small church led by Jeff Bramblett meets each Sunday at Dalton State College. On May 30, Ponders will leave his job as a teacher’s assistant at Mountainbrook Academy to work full time for the church as a missionary/evangelist/associate pastor.

“It’s a step out on faith,” he said. “I’ll have an office downtown. It will allow me to be part of the community.”

In addition to those who may come through his office door, Ponders also hopes to reach each of his classmates from the Northwest High School Class of 1986 this year and speak to them about Christ. He says God laid this on his heart at the recent funeral of classmate Kelly Fields, who died from injuries in the sugar refinery explosion in Savannah.

“When we buried Kelly, God told me if you have the ability to contact people you know like your classmates, do it,” Ponders said. “So many of them came to the funeral. Them hearing about Kelly knowing Jesus, about him going into the fire three times (to help get people out), let this have an effect on them. I hope to kingdom build through Kelly’s death. I don’t want to encounter any more classmates at their funeral without talking to them first.”

When he’s not working with young people, Ponders concentrates on being the best dad he can be. He wants to give his children the stability of a family that he didn’t have.

“I coach on their teams, and we like going to the beach and fishing,” he said.

His love, however, is leading young people who may be at their lowest point to Christ, just like Green did with him.

“That was my crossroad — when Bill Walker gave me a job as a maintenance man and Stan led me to Christ. The greatest thing a person can do is invite Jesus into their heart.”

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