Manifold Vision at Work in Fairfield, Alabama

Pastor Alton Hardy and Tristen Bryant of Urban Hope Community Church and Manifold Vision joined Tennessee Valley Presbytery’s church planters earlier this year at our April network gathering to share about their ministry in Fairfield, AL.

Located on the southwest side of Birmingham, the town of Fairfield carries a weighty history of racial tensions and generational poverty. Alton, Tristen, and the rest of the team at Urban Hope and Manifold Vision are working to bring the truth, life, and hope of the gospel to the community, much like TVP’s church planting goals to “reach the lost and renew communities.”

Alton founded Urban Hope Community Church, a PCA church, and he leads Manifold Vision, which was inspired by Ephesians 3:10 to make known the manifold wisdom of God through the Church.

Manifold Vision addresses critical needs like enhancing Gospel-centered teaching on marriage and family, fostering Black male leadership, promoting economic development, planting urban churches, and ensuring quality housing for low-income families.

Under Alton’s leadership, racial tensions in Fairfield are diminishing, and the community is moving toward gospel reconciliation. He published his book, Long Is the Way, in 2023, sharing his personal journey through fatherlessness, poverty, racism, anger, sadness, loneliness, a constant search for belonging, and ultimately the hope of the gospel.

Alton talks about the deaths that young Black men bring upon each other and how Urban Hope is using the gospel to transform young Black men's lives.

As Alton shared about his life story and time in ministry with our church planting network, it became clear that the way is long indeed. He highlighted the spiritual warfare that pastors and ministers face, and he shared three lessons the Lord has taught him over the years: Know your world, root yourself in the essence of the gospel, and “Visions from God are not overnight successes.”

First, know your world. Alton highlighted the importance of knowing the context, ethos, idols, pain, suffering, and social demographics of our communities if we wish to minister effectively. Alton knows Fairfield’s cultural failings. Just one area he touched on was the lack of a biblical view of marriage, sex, or family. “Shacking up” is normal, and abortion is seen as contraception instead of a sin or murder.

Not every community has these particular issues because each community is unique. Alton became intimately familiar with the problems of Fairfield’s culture as well as the beautiful, redeemable parts of the culture. Before he could possibly begin to address the breakdown of the family and the long-held hate that much of the Black community holds toward white people, he had to saturate himself in the community—not as a doctor prescribing solutions, but as a brother to his neighbors.

As Alton said, the answer to each community’s problems is: “You must preach the gospel. Most of the churches in Fairfield are not even remotely preaching the gospel.”

Alton explained that before he moved to the Birmingham area in 2012 to plant Urban Hope, he would have pushed back on the idea that the gospel is the answer to the problems that communities like Fairfield face. He said, “What Jesus says here in Matthew 28, Acts 1, Mark 16, that’s the answer? To go into Fairfield and tell them about Jesus?”

For many years, he thought that there must be something more—Jesus plus something.

There was a time when he believed that anti-racism (what is now critical race theory) was the answer. Sure, the gospel was great, but anti-racism was the extra piece needed for these communities.

However, over years of ministry, God made it clear to Alton that the gospel is, truly, enough. Jesus is the answer to racism. Jesus is the answer to poverty. Jesus is the answer to broken families. He encouraged TVP’s church planting network that Jesus is also the answer to the problems that any community faces, whether middle class or upper class, rural or suburban, white or black.

Therefore, for lesson two, he encouraged our church planters to root themselves in the gospel.

Third, Alton shared about how long his road in ministry has been. Like many church planters, he started out with a vision—a calling placed on his heart by God—of what planting would look like. He imagined a thriving church and a transformed community after a few years of pouring into the community.

However, eight years into planting Urban Hope, he finally learned that even when following faithfully what the Lord has set before us, success is not overnight. The timeline might take a whole lot longer than we want.

He humorously recalled a conversation about another church plant that had 900 people attending just three years after being planted. Alton said, “You got 900 people? I got two! You got a worship leader? I got YouTube—with the commercials in the middle!”

For Alton, it took 24 years from the time God gave him a vision for Fairfield to the fruit that Urban Hope is now seeing take place. Today, Urban Hope is addressing inner city problems with the truth of the gospel through the church’s “Manifold Vision” mission.

As Alton studied Ephesians 3:10, he came to realize that the Church is the answer to racial tensions—not a nonprofit, not the government, not any other institution. “I had tried everything else but the church to fix some of these issues in the inner city,” he said.

So, the church expanded to add Urban Hope Development to preach the gospel with word and deed.

Next, they added Urban Hope Leadership Initiative (UHLI). As Alton said “In my world, young black men don’t live long, and they don’t get married.” UHLI works to raise up young Black men into the husbands, fathers, employees, leaders, and church members that God created them to be.

Then came Housing Hope. Alton said, “I was just going on faith. God said, ‘You’re going to be doing a lot of weddings. You’re going to be getting people to stay in the community, so you’re going to need housing.”

Manifold Vision has many other ministries and programs, and it continues to grow, but Alton reminded everyone, “That vision did not come overnight.” It took over two decades of God working in Alton’s heart and over a decade of him leading a little church plant before this life-transforming community impact came to fruition.

TVP’s church planting network, Alton, and Tristen talked about so much more than we can hope to capture here, but we ended the day encouraged to keep moving forward faithfully, amazed at the work God is doing in Fairfield, and thankful for our Black brothers and sisters who are reaching their specific communities with the gospel.

To learn more about Manifold Vision, visit manifoldvision.org. To learn more about Urban Hope, visit urbanhopecc.com. Alton’s book is available to purchase through most major booksellers.