First Priority of Alabama

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Shop for Christmas and support First Priority at the same time!

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This Christmas, shop for your family and friends and support First Priority at the same time!
    
Make your family and friends smile this holiday season… buy your Christmas gifts at smile.amazon.com, and Amazon will donate a percentage of the purchase to First Priority. As you begin your online Christmas shopping, we hope you’ll take advantage of this great and simple opportunity to support First Priority. Don’t forget that Cyber Monday is November 28! That will be the perfect time to not only shop online to get the best deals, but to help First Priority at the same time. All you have to do is log-in to your Amazon account HERE and begin shopping; it’s that simple!
Amazon’s program called AmazonSmile allows shoppers to select their favorite charitable organization to receive 0.5% of the purchase as a contribution from Amazon. AmazonSmile is the same Amazon you know, the same products, same prices, same service! The benefit: you are helping First Priority reach students with the love and hope of Jesus Christ.
CLICK HERE to get started today. Designate First Priority of Alabama as your charity of choice and start shopping! You will know your purchase is supporting First Priority when you see, “Supporting First Priority of Alabama” in the top left corner of Amazon’s Web site.
Make your family and friends smile this Christmas season! We truly appreciate your support!

How First Priority began and how you can help!

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Learn how First Priority began and how you can help! Now is the time! 
First Priority began, informally, in 1990 with local youth minister Benny Proffitt as the visionary and leader. First, in only a handful of Over the Mountain schools, the vision quickly formalized into a functioning non-profit organization in 1992 under the leadership of businessman Tommy Brigham. Over the years to follow, First Priority practically exploded on every High School and Middle School campus in Greater Birmingham. From the late 1990s through the late 2000s, First Priority of Greater Birmingham served these schools and focused on making ministry at each school the best it could be.
First Priority of Greater Birmingham flourished for many years under the leadership of Board Chairmen Tommy Brigham, Garry Ard, Mark Peeples and Tom Lambert. Executive Director Greg Davis, who first volunteered with the organization in 1994, joined the staff in 1996 and continues today as President of the organization. From that small group of men, the vision of First Priority spread like wildfire.
Six schools have now grown to over 200 in central Alabama alone, involving approximately 13,000 students every week during the school year. As more churches began implementing First Priority in their communities, the movement spread outside Alabama. As a result, Benny Proffitt left Birmingham to form First Priority of America, which has now touched all 50 states.
Here’s what’s happening with First Priority across the United States:
–          200+ communities being touched by First Priority
–          2,605 First Priority clubs in the U.S.
–          186,000 Students attend First Priority each month
–          7,715 commitments to Christ during the 2014-2015 school year
–          2,500 networked student ministry leaders and churches
In the late 2000s, with the dip in the economy and loss of funding, First Priority was forced to reduce its staff and, therefore, began losing effectiveness in many of the communities that had been served for years.
In 2011, with the culture changing and more and more parents asking First Priority to help them establish campus evangelism for younger children, the idea of FPKids became imperative to accomplish. We are now entering our fifth year of implementing FPKids, a strategy for churches and parents to partner together around schools to empower elementary and intermediate students to influence their school with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Last year, 35 schools and nearly 3,500 students participated in FPKids, and the numbers continue to rise this year as new clubs are starting. The FPKids strategy focuses on teaching students to know and do what “Jesus Said.” The curriculum consists of four parts that are repeated every month: Read It, See It, Live It, Tell It. Each month, students Read and learn what Jesus Said; they See how His teaching changes them and the marks it leaves on them; they experience real ways to Live out the truth with love; and they encourage each other to Tell others about Jesus. FPKids is taking God’s Word and putting it into action on campus.
So how can you help? We would never be able to do what we do without your prayer and support. There are several ways you can get involved:
Pray – This ministry can never be what God truly wants it to be without consistent prayer. Please pray for our staff, volunteers, faculty sponsors, campus coaches, students and schools. When you pass by a school, pray for that school. Pray for those students who don’t know Christ. Pray that Christian students will be bold in sharing their faith.
Promote – Share the vision and mission of First Priority within your circle of influence. Pray about who would be blessed and interested to know about and support the mighty work that God is doing on our school campuses. We have a lot of resources available that you can share with others.
Provide – Support First Priority financially and help ensure that every student in our area is reached with the hope of Christ. It takes $3,000 to fund each school that we serve. We would like to encourage you to help support one or several of the more than 200 schools across the Greater-Birmingham Area. CLICK HERE to support First Priority.

We hope you will begin praying now about how you can serve First Priority during the 2016-2017 school year. Call 205.871.8886 or visit firstpriorityal.comto learn how you can join this Gospel movement to advance the Kingdom of God.

Another great year of campus ministry; DOUBLE your investment to reach students with the Gospel

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VMC 2015 header (2)The 2015-2016 school year is First Priority’s 25th year of ministry and it has been very exciting and productive. Tens of thousands of students are touched each semester in Greater Birmingham by the ministry of hundreds of First Priority volunteers and donors like you. During the 2014-2015 school year, nearly 13,000 students attended First Priority every week and over 900 students made a decision for Christ! With life changes like these, a city can be changed and our generation can be changed. We thank God for His great power and we give Him all the praise and glory for the lives that were touched and changed throughout the year. None of this would be possible without you! We thank God for you and your continuous support to ensure the Gospel is shared each year in schools across Greater Birmingham.

At the beginning of 2015, nearly 900 students, teachers, youth leaders and parents attended our 10th Annual Leadership Conference. Because of the demand from teachers and principals, we are planning to offer another Leader’s Summit in January 2016. In September, more than 30,000 local students participated in See You at the Pole. Rallies planned by local churches across the area gave thousands of un-churched students an opportunity to hear the Gospel. FPKids is growing vastly! We now have over 40 elementary and intermediate schools with clubs and more than 7,000 students. We have new FPKids clubs starting every semester! This is the wave of the future for campus ministry.
None of this would be possible without your vital partnership! It is parents, educators, business owners, community leaders, ministers and students who are helping raise up the next generation to share the hope of Christ. We would like to invite you to continue your partnership and get involved in our Victory Matching Challenge campaign. Some friends of First Priority have gotten together to challenge the ministry to raise $100,000 in November and December, and they will match every penny donated! Your gift of $25 will be immediately doubled to $50. Your $100 gift will be matched to make a $200 gift and $250 becomes $500. We hope you will consider giving a gift for our year-end Victory Matching Challenge. We have been doing this campaign for over 14 years and because of the impact it has made we have seen tens of thousands of lives changed. Every gift of love, every prayer, every word of support to a Christian student, faculty sponsor or youth worker means that another student will have the opportunity to hear the life-changing Gospel of Christ! Please prayerfully consider giving a gift for our year-end Victory Matching Challenge.
Please consider sending a generous gift by December 31! A gift in any amount will be instantly doubled for twice the joy, twice the hope and twice the love to a student who so desperately needs to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ! Please let me hear from you soon! May God bless you this holiday season!
Keeping Christ the First Priority,
Greg Davis

President